To say that Jesus Christ is a controversial figure in history is clearly an understatement. When it comes to His teachings, however, there can be little doubt that His sayings are amazingly wise. There is also, however, one set of sayings that Jesus makes that spark intense controversy and that centers around who He says He is. Throughout Scripture Jesus claims to be one with the Father, thus making Himself to be God. This can clearly be seen from the Scriptures below:
“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” Again, his Jewish opponents picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus said to them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?” “We are not stoning you for any good work,” they replied, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.” (John 10:27-33).
Some say can’t there be a middle ground where we can respect Jesus as a great moral teacher but not God? The great British scholar and apologist, C. S. Lewis shared why this is not a valid option when he stated:
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”1
And according to apologist Lee Strobel: “If Jesus is the Son of God, his teachings are more than just good ideas from a wise teacher; they are divine insights on which I can confidently build my life.”2
As a Christian for 45 years, I am more and more amazed at just how wise and practical the teachings of Jesus really are. I echo the words of Lee Strobel that His teachings are “divine insights on which I can confidently build my life.”
All of us have issues and problems in life. Sadly, when mounting issues such as anxiety, loneliness, fear, and stress become too much for us many turn to a host of bad solutions. Some turn to drugs and alcohol, others to psychiatrists, many to false religions, and a few to even suicide to try to cope. I, however, have found that the best and only place to go for answers to these issues is to the “good book” – The Bible, and its author – Jesus Christ.
You see the Bible is God’s instruction manual on how we can function at peak efficiency in every area of life. Since God created and designed our complex make-up, He knows better than anyone how we can best face those difficult situations in life. If you have issues concerning life you need to turn to your Creator – and rest assured He has all the answers you will ever need.
My friends Jesus loves us so much that He has left us with the ultimate answer book to every difficult situation in life – the Bible. But before we can find the solutions we are looking for we need to know God personally and intimately. And the only way we can do this is to invite Jesus into our hearts and make Him our Lord and Savior. Once we do this we can be confident that the answers to all of our problems will be revealed to us, God’s children, through the pages of the Scriptures. Since our main problem, a broken relationship with God, is now fixed through our relationship with Jesus, we can now use the Bible and its timeless wisdom to address all of life’s difficult issues.
In our society today when a person has problems with his car he usually takes it to the auto mechanic for repair. When a person has problems with his marriage he often sees a marriage counselor. And when a person has problems with his soul and overall mental health he often turns to religion to cure what ails him.
But with so many different religions out there the question becomes does any one of them have a real cure for the hurting soul. While all religions teach some form of the golden rule only Christianity, and the teachings of Jesus, tell us that we, on our own, can never truly obey this rule. While all religions teach us that the way to find fulfillment is by doing good works, only Christianity tells us that all of our good works will never earn our way into God’s presence. And while all religions tell us that the only way to find God is to reach up to him, only Christianity tells us that we can only know God because He has invaded our universe and reached down to us.
Our soul is in desperate need of repair and according to the Bible all of our human attempts to satisfy its deep yearnings for peace, joy, and meaning will fall short until we make our peace with God through Jesus Christ. You see all religions have left man reaching out to gods that can never deliver because they are but mere inventions of our human intellect. Only the God of the Bible, Jesus Christ, can cure our sin sick soul and restore our hurting mental health through spiritual surgery. Until our sin issue is addressed we will never find the antidote for our hurting souls.
The blueprint, the antidote, and the answer to all of the deepest yearning of our soul can be found in the manual for our human existence – our Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth – the Holy Bible. I have found that if I want to know how to live life to the fullest I need to go to the Creator of my soul – Jesus Christ; and the book that is all about Him. While the golden rule is good only Christianity, and Jesus’ teaching from the Scriptures, and especially from the Sermon on the Mount, offers us the total solution for healing our hurting souls and experiencing positive mental health.
American psychiatrist, J. T. Fisher shares some closing insights on this whole question:
“If you were to take the sum total of all authoritative articles ever written by the most qualified of psychologists and psychiatrists on the subject of mental hygiene, if you were to combine them and refine them and cleave out the excess verbiage, if you were to take the whole of the meat and none of the parsley, and if you were to have these unadulterated bits of pure scientific knowledge concisely expressed by the most capable of living poets, you would have an awkward and an incomplete summary of the Sermon on the Mount. And it would suffer immeasurably through comparison.
“For nearly two thousand years the Christian world has been holding in its hands the complete answer to its restless and fruitless yearning. Here rests the blueprint for successful human life, with optimum mental health and contentment.”3
The Bible, and its teachings, down through the centuries, have proven to not only be the great medicine chest for humanity, but the only book that can calm mankind’s restless soul. Cherish your Bible and Jesus – they will never let you down!
1 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1952), p. 52