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 the 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. … Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God. – C.S. Lewis; Mere Christianity

I grew up in a Christian environment, my parents were active in church, my dad a preacher, my aunts and uncles all leaders and teachers in the church. We went to church many times a week, I’ve been involved one way or the other, a part of the Sunday School, youth groups, singing, I was involved in the Christian culture. However, that phrase, “in not of” didn’t apply to me, I didn’t really live IN the world, I lived in a Christian bubble.

As a child, when I decided to give my life to Christ it was an easy decision because that was all I knew. I was young, I thought about it, it felt like the right thing to do and I did it. Then, I moved to New York.

Moving to NY was a culture shock. For the first time I was exposed to a different culture. Life in NY is faster and harder than life where I grew up. The lifestyle we had there could not fit into the lifestyle of a NYer and in the process of adapting I met people who had no religion, many because they never grew up in any religion, and many more because they grew up in a church and decided it wasn’t for them.

With the latter group, I have asked questions, why did you leave the church? There were many answers, too strict, burnt out, but a big one was never really believing what was going on because their parents send them or took them to church. Some believed that Jesus was real, but they don’t believe that he is the Son of God, be it historical reasons – many leaders were called Sons of god during that time – scientific beliefs or personal reasons. One other thing that I found amazing was that they thought he was a good guy, or just another prophet. However, I can’t really think of anyone who told me flat out that Jesus was a madman or a liar and I wonder about that. Was it that they were being polite? Or did they just not think it through?

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