Lord, Liar, or Lunatic-How Noodles Brought Me to Christ
By: Missionary Team
I’ve been Catholic my whole life. My family and I went to Church every Sunday, attended Catholic schools, and volunteered at various places. But there was a problem. From about the time I was in second grade, I did not believe Jesus was a real person. I lived my life believing this for the next twelve years until one fateful lunch at Noodles and Co. in Pittsburgh Pa
It was a dreary day in mid-February. A light rain had been spewing on and off all morning and I walked down Forbes Avenue to go to the restaurant I had agreed to meet my friend at. My buddy walked in a few minutes later. He was a second-year missionary who had agreed to help me get on a mission trip this summer, since I had already missed the deadline. This lunch was meant to discuss that. We got our food, sat down, and began eating and talking. At some point, I uttered the defining words that threw us into a conversation that changed my life forever:
Me: “Look man, I think what you’re doing and all is cool, but what’s the point? Why do you believe what you believe?”
Missionary: “Bro, that’s a great question. I remember I was on a mission trip of my own to Ecuador. I had started taking a minor interest in my faith but nothing too serious. During our stay in Ecuador, I noticed these people, despite having nothing material, were rich beyond measure in joy and happiness. One day, I was lying on the beach and just sunk into this deep prayer. I made a commitment that day to stop going halfway in my faith. I told Jesus I would give Him everything. He had my full support.”
Me: “Dude, but why would you do that? I mean I believe in God, but Jesus was just a made-up story. He didn’t actually exist. Why would you make such a huge commitment to a fantasy?”
Missionary: “Well actually, Jesus did exist. Besides for the accounts of the Bible, there are multiple records of Him walking this earth from different sources. For example, Josephus, a Jewish historian, and Tassedus, a Roman historian, wrote about Christ and His existence on this planet.”
Me: “Oh dang dude, I didn’t know that. But still, just because He existed doesn’t mean He was the Son of God.”
Missionary: “Have you ever heard of the three “L’s” argument?
Me: “No, what is that?”
Missionary: “So based on the Gospels, there are three possible options that can come from Jesus’s claim to be God: 1. He is crazy and truly believes He is, even though He is just a man 2. He is a Liar and deliberately fooled everybody He came in contact with, or 3. He is what He says: The Lord. Lunatic is the easiest one to rule out. A crazy person would not have acted in the way Jesus did. He would not be able to continually make logical arguments that stood against the teachers of the law and help countless poor, while closely leading 12 men. If Jesus was a Liar, then He would be the evilest man in history, but also the most stupid. This man died a failure. He was penniless, powerless, and picked on. He endured incredible torture under the hands of the Romans and made literally no worldly gains. This leaves us with the Lord option.”
Me: “Okay I’m with you so far. What is the Lord option?”
Missionary: “So the best way to prove that Jesus is Lord is by looking at the Resurrection. If He never rose from the dead, all of Christianity would collapse. There were three groups of people who knew about Jesus’s death: The Romans, the Jews, and the apostles. The Romans would launch enormous persecutions of Christians over the next couple hundred years in attempts to suppress it. Not once did they say ‘You know what, that guy you believe in who rose from the dead, well we actually have Him and uh, here is His body. Yup, it’s pretty dead looking to us, so why don’t you all go home.” Likewise, the Jews, who wanted to put an end to Christianity, so that their religion (and the power that came with it) could thrive, never revealed the body of the man Jesus Christ.
Me: “Okay, so what about the apostles?”
Missionary: “Right. So, the apostles are the most likely option. They had the most to gain. But here is the problem. Every one of them was martyred in excruciating fashion. Saint Andrew was crucified on an X-shaped cross. Saint Bartholomew had his skin peeled off bit by bit with small metal rakes. Don’t you think that at least one of these 12 men would have admitted to stealing the body? No one dies for something they know is false, and yet not only did the 12 maintain the reality of the resurrection, but they died blessing and praying for their killers.”
Me: “Oh my gosh... This all makes so much sense. Jesus was real and He was who He said He was. I need to start making some major life changes.”
If any of you reading this are struggling with your faith, I encourage you to research your doubts more on your own. This is a VERY brief explanation. There is a lot more proof of Jesus that I was not able to go into. I have found that any teaching or belief of the Church is backed up by hard reason.
