Maybe not. Figure it out right off the bat.
You guys would much rather have a girl here, wouldn't you?
May I see your glasses?
Set.
I kind of worked through the, the theme
of having a lot of different ways to God,
and God sitting on a mountain,
and it depends on which path up the mountain, uh, you take.
But, uh, as I looked at that,
there were so many different contradictions
among, uh, the paths up the mountain,
and there was different types of gods that they were starting.
And then I kind of came to the realization, uh, one time,
when I said, "You know, if you're really
going to be serious about this,
somewhere along the line, no matter what you learn
about 'Does God exist?' and other religions,
you've gotta come back and ask the question,
'Who is Jesus?'"
Because of all the religious leaders in the world,
Jesus is the only one who claimed to be God.
What the Bible talks about is that,
you know, Jesus revealed what God is like
in a way we could comprehend—
this unseen, infinite God that we can't even fathom.
And, you know, people would say,
"Well, yeah, that's a, that's a great thought,
but, uh, it's just probably myth."
But actually, God put into history
signs and markers so that we could know
it really was true, that it really was from Him.
You know, the Old Testament is, is not one book.
It's actually 39 books
written by about 40 different authors
over a period of about 1,500 years.
And, and all throughout, God was foretelling
when He would actually send this Messiah,
this one who would reveal the unseen God
in a, a way we could relate to.
And it foretold when that would happen, um,
I mean, to, to the, to the time and the place.
Like, it'll happen in Jerusalem
and before, uh, the, the temple is destroyed.
Well, that's real history, uh,
because the temple was destroyed
by the Roman General Titus in 70 A.D.,
and it still hasn't been rebuilt, to this day.
So there are lots of reasons like that
to, to realize this isn't just myth.
You know, and I thought— that's what I thought.
I thought it was myth,
but I just hadn't taken the time to really look.
You know, Jesus claimed to be
the way, the truth, and the life.
He announced a new order of things,
a new way that the world would work,
uh, that was going to look, going to look very different
than how the religious leaders of the day
had sort of set things up.
Uh, he was somebody who was going to set people free,
who had felt captive.
And I think many of them had felt captive to religion,
had felt captive to a list of to-dos
and a, a big moral rule book that they felt like
they had to live by, otherwise,
they couldn't be in a relationship with God,
and He was breaking through that.
Religion says, "I do,
therefore I'm loved."
Jesus says, "You love, therefore you do."
And I think that is the demarcation,
that is the line in the sand,
so clearly expressed through His character.
I think Jesus is a different sort of king
and a different sort of savior
because He doesn't express
His message through power
or making an enemy
or success.
He displayed His power
through suffering and a crucifixion
and dying and
losing on the cross.
But then the, the kicker on the story
is that, uh, He rose again.
If Jesus actually rose from the dead,
nobody else, no other religious figure,
nobody else in all of humanity has ever done that.
You look at the fact that,
you know, we know Jesus lived 2,000-ish years ago.
There was a man named Jesus,
lived in Nazareth, was crucified by the Romans.
We know that, like, not just, not just from the Bible,
but other sources have testified to that.
Three days later, He comes back to life,
and the authorities are so freaked out
by this reality that they pay off the guards,
and they come up with some
ways to obfuscate what's happened.
But the reality is, there was an empty tomb,
and all they'd have had to have done
is hauled out the broken body of Jesus Christ,
but they couldn't produce it.
He was resurrected, rose up from the dead—
with over 500 witnesses
that saw Him—
and based on that encounter,
were willing to die
in order to testify to what they had saw.
They truly were so convicted
that this— that they saw a dead guy rise
that it m— you know, it made history.
I would speak to my friends
who are atheists, agnostics. Um...
I have not had a moment
where they would shut me down
because I talked about Jesus.
People throw rocks at me for
talking about the church,
but not Jesus.
Oftentimes, I, I find Jesus there.
Uh, he's already there before me
in the studios and in the backstages, um,
with dancers and actors.
He's already there in the conversation.
He's already in, in their bones,
and my practice has been to
go and look for him.
I realized this historic figure of Jesus
was no longer just a historic figure, but
he was the one who
was calling me all along,
through my creativity.
And he wanted to reveal Himself to me
into a way that I could understand.
When Jesus says, "I am the, I am the truth.
I am the way, truth, and the life,"
actually to me, as an artist,
he is actually claiming to be the author of life.
And he's, he's actually not only doing that,
but he's saying that we are his artwork.
Imagine that there were a man
who's making all these claims about himself.
And then imagine that, okay, uh,
he's not God, he's not, you know, the Messiah,
so it kind of makes him crazy.
Uh, but he doesn't sound crazy.
But why would he make these claims that he can forgive sin,
that he can do all these amazing things, that...
Okay, he's not crazy, well, then what?
Then he's a liar?
Uh, he doesn't sound like a liar.
He's saying these beautiful things.
He sounds like a beautiful, authentic person
with incredible wisdom, so...
it feels like the only option is to say, he is who he says he is.
That's where your logical thoughts take you,
but this is, there's more to this than logic.
Believing that Jesus is God
is one of those things that at the end of the day,
God has to sort of reveal it.
At this point, I do know that it's true,
but I don't expect other people to accept it.
I think that they have to
think it through for themselves.
I would encourage them to think it through,
because it's kind of important.
As you look at the men and women
in the Bible, they all come back
to this one simple statement:
The love of Christ compels me.
Not their love for Christ,
Christ's love for them.
The love of Christ compels.
That's the spectacularness of who he is,
and that's what He wishes to do in and
through each of us.