The Only Options Summary

What are the Alternatives?

ANY IMPORTANT DECISION IN LIFE, like: Who should I marry? How do I respond to a dangerous situation? What do I believe?, etc., comes with different options, consequences, and support. Standing on the one best supported is the standard and best approach.
EXTRAORDINARY EVIDENCE: It is unique in the extreme to have the amount and strength of evidence we have regarding the resurrection of Jesus. Try to find another worldview belief system setting itself up to be tested, or even another historical event near that time, which has comparable supportive evidence. The evidence we have is extraordinary, and leaves us with extremely limited options.
ONLY 4 OPTIONS: Jesus, his disciples, and others close to him, are either liars, lunatics, just a legend, or are telling it like it is. There are other proposed ideas, such as hallucination or coma theories, but in the end, considering the disciples claim Jesus provided many convincing proofs while with them, and even for over a month after the resurrection, these other theories funnel into the theory Jesus, the disciples, and New Testament writers were liars or it was all legendary.

THE ONE THING JESUS IS NOT is what is typically taught in schools and often repeated in our culture. Jesus was not just a “great man and moral teacher.” He was either a severely narcissistic liar, an insane but lucky fraud, the greatest hoax of all time, or the most important potential love in your life. Sounds dramatic, but that is SIMPLY THE REALITY OF THE SITUATION.

As C.S. Lewis noted:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish things 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. … Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse … 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.” (Lewis, C.S., Mere Christianity, London: Collins, 1952, pp. 54-56)

Jesus, and the disciples, and other close followers during his ministry, claimed: he was God, the one way for us to be freed from the debt of our acts against God (sins), Jesus did numerous and continuous miracles, predicted his own death and resurrection, rose from death and gave finishing lessons before leaving to Heaven, and even losing your life on Earth is worth following Jesus into Heaven – if anyone claimed those things about themselves or anyone else, they leave us with only 4 general alternatives.

Any belief about Jesus is a claim about reality or truth, therefore, it is judged the same way we do other truth claims in science, history, life (as explained in the How Can We Know blog).

So what is the best explanation? When you analyze all the different alternatives, you may be surprised with the clarity of difference there is between the options. Below are all the general possibilities given since the time of the cross, you decide for yourself which of them you believe. Below is a quick summary, then each of the alternatives are covered in detail.