If Jesus was who he said he was … then that changes everything.

Words from Max Lucado:

What do we do with such a person? We applaud men for doing good things. We enshrine God for doing great things. But when a man does God things?

One thing is certain, we can't ignore him.

Why would we want to? If these moments are factual, if the claim of Christ is actual, then he was, at once, man and God.

There he was, the single most significant person who ever lived. Forget MVP; he is the entire league. The head of the parade? Hardly. No one else shares the street. Who comes close? Humanity's best and brightest fade like dime-store rubies next to him.

Dismiss him? We can't.

Resist him? Equally difficult. Don't we need a God-man Savior? … a God-man Jesus? Near enough to touch. Strong enough to trust. A next door Savior.

A Savior found by millions to be irresistible. Nothing compares to "the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord" (Phil 3:8 RSV). The reward of Christianity is Christ. (Max Lucado, Next Door Savior, p.5)

The entire first chapter of Lucado's book Next Door Savior is available for free on his website. (PDF) The full book is available online or in most bookstores.

For more information about who Jesus is, try these resources:

• Jesus: Fact or Fiction – Multimedia site featuring videos of top scholars discussing Jesus' life and questions regarding the Christian faith.
• Who Is Jesus Really? – All about Jesus' life, prophecies predicting His coming, claims, impact, and what it all means to you.
• Discover Purpose – What are the "Four Spiritual Laws", and how do they help us understand God and God's purposes for us in our lives?

When Ben Stein's Expelled movie was released, it was criticized by some skeptics because they thought that the crew had used duplicitous methods to conduct their interviews. Whether that was the case or not, I do not know, but it seems as though the newly released Religulous movie (starring Bill Maher) not only used extremely deceptive tactics to secure their interviews, they also needed to sneak past security to do so … see here:

http://www.tektonics.org/religuguff.html#cmvisit

Sad that they had to resort to such tactics … sadder still that such a movie was made at all. I'd love to see a serious film depicting the religious excesses in North America done with charity and made with the purpose of making things better … but this is clearly not such a film. One review mentioned Maher as being the "Michael Moore of religion" (due to his pseudo-documentary style) … not necessarily a compliment, there.

Everyone else is writing a blog post about the most recent mockumentary so I figured I should too … until I read this great post on Boston Bible Geeks (HT: Tektonics) about the movie, which already sums up a lot of my thoughts about the movie pretty well:

Seriously Maher-ulous, Part I

I have not seen the movie and don't plan to, given what I've heard about it. Maybe once it's on TV but I don't really want to support this kinda thing.

I do have one comment though … think about what would happen if a group of Christians made a movie like this mocking Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists. The Christians would be blasted in the media as being intolerant and bigoted. Why then is it totally acceptable for Maher, an atheist, to do the same thing? Could it be social & media bias against anyone deemed as being "religious" (and, I'd say, Christians in particular)?