https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/apr/13/god-or-madman-the-awesome-story-of-jesus-an-obscur/God or madman: The awesome story of Jesus, an obscure Jewish carpenter
By Michael McKenna - - Wednesday, April 13, 2022
This coming weekend, the world’s 2.5 billion Christians will celebrate — emphasis on “celebrate” — the torture, execution and resurrection of an obscure Jewish carpenter.
Others will simply note in passing the execution of that same man.
Those are really the only two choices that people have. Either Yeshua, son of Yusef, (and better known as Jesus) was God, in which case his torture, execution and resurrection are central to the lives of everyone on the planet, or he was a carpenter and an itinerant Jewish preacher who was probably a madman and whose life and death meant nothing.
While both seem incredibly improbable, the second option — that he was, essentially, no one — may be as difficult to explain and believe as the first.
If you believe that he was just another Jew executed by the Romans, you’re left with the uncomfortable fact that what he did and what he taught touches almost everything we do, say, and see on this planet. His life, teachings and example have driven humanity for 2,000 years.
Even now, at this desiccated spiritual and intellectual moment, the religion he created remains the most powerful force for good in the world. Most of what we consider Western civilization — art, music, sculpture, literature — was built or created by his followers. Most of the institutions that have survived for any length of time — universities, hospitals, orphanages, nursing homes, the judicial system — were invented or reinvented in their current form by his followers.
Most of what we aspire and appeal to every day — fairness, charity, individual freedom, the proper relationship between rulers and ruled, etc. — is derived directly from what he taught.
That’s not bad for someone who never published a thing, never left his small Roman province on the edge of the Mediterranean, never had children, and died a pauper at the age of 33. Most of his immediate associates were probably illiterate. Only one or two could manage a bit of spoken Latin or Greek, the dominant languages of commerce and statecraft, for 500 years after the first Good Friday.
It is almost easier to believe that the man tortured and executed on a hillside outside of Jerusalem was God and did, in fact, rise from the dead.
More at URL above...A good essay by Mr. McKenna for the days ahead.
