Long ago I learned an important principle regarding communication.   Mathematically stated, the effectiveness of our communication is inversely proportional to the number of communication devices we employ.   Put more simply, the more we talk, the less we communicate.  The problem is not new.  Scripture addresses the danger of idle words and of speaking more than we listen.   Scripture also warns us against the trap of Job who “multiplied words without wisdom.” (Job 38:2)   Yet we fail to heed this warning in our zeal for a good rant.  Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, messaging, email, Skype and all the tributary feeds that flow into the ocean of expression, more often than not, lead to a drought of actual conversation.  Social critic and communication theorist, Neil Postman prophetically warned of this long ago.

“When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.”
― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

While syndicated news outlets have always led with a bias, most news is now presented, not by an anchorman, but by an angry forum of verbal combatants – an art form that culture at large emulates through social media.   Entertainment, not expression, is now the aim, as public discourse is replaced with the arguments of madmen.   Social critic, G. K. Chesterton, noted the futility of arguing with a madman.

“If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by things that go with good judgment. He is not hampered by a sense of humour or by clarity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the more logical for losing certain sane affections. Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this respect a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.” —G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York: John Lane Co., 1909), p. 32

And so, we live in a world awash with outrageous claims and inflammatory statements.   Faced with the daunting challenge of distilling fact from fiction out of the mash, we may be tempted to believe everything or nothing.   But among all the outrageous claims, what if there is life giving truth?  What if there is truth we cannot live without?

No man made more outrageous claims that Jesus Christ.   He shocked the men of his hometown, by claiming to be the Messiah.  He challenged the religious leaders to point out a single one of his sins.  He pushed the limits with his disciples, commanding them to love enemies and offer unlimited forgiveness to offensive brothers.   But no claim of Jesus was more outrageous than his claim that “I and the Father are one.  He who has seen me has seen the Father.”   Jesus did not claim merely to be God’s servant, or God’s prophet.  He did not claim to be “a son of God,” but “The Son of God.”  Despite the best efforts of Arian heretics to erase Jesus’ claims to divinity, the Scriptures claim pervasively and decisively that Jesus is fully God and fully man.   Men who seek some value in Jesus as a mere man and moral example, but disbelieve his outrageous claim to deity must face C. S. Lewis’ scathing critique.

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 patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.  — C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

Jesus did not come to point out the way, the truth, or the life, but to be the way, the truth and the life.  This demands that he be both fully human and fully divine.  The Heidelberg Catechism, a time-tested set of questions and answers drawn from Scripture, explains why this is necessary.

Q16. Why must [Our Redeemer] be a true and sinless man?  Because the justice of God requires, that the same human nature which has sinned should make satisfaction for sin; but no man, being himself a sinner, could satisfy for others

Q17. Why must He be at the same time true God? That by the power of His Godhead He might bear in His manhood the burden of God’s wrath and so obtain for and restore to us righteousness and life. 

Join us this Sunday, December 8 as we examine John 1:1-18 and consider the indications, implications and invitations to us that arise from the truth Jesus full divinity.   We meet from 5:00 – 6:30 pm in The Commons at St. Andrews Anglican Church at 8300 Kanis Rd in Little Rock.  Click here for directions. Come with a friend and join us for fellowship and worship. We look forward to seeing you there.