Oxford historian, Christian apologist, and former atheist, CS Lewis outlines a point that has been on my mind a lot recently. Known as "Lewis's Trilemma," he explained on a series of BBC Radio talks (later published in his book Mere Christianity) that there is no middle ground with Christ and his divinity. I think he says it much better than I can:
"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 [the Son of] 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 be a lunatic . . . or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this 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 patronizing 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 [the Son of] God."
Either Christ is who he said he was–the Son of God–or he is the worst kind of liar.
Often times in our journey through life we go through periods of doubt, or questioning. That is human nature, and we are forced to fall back on the most fundamental aspects of our testimony.
The aspect that has been on my mind is this: Either God and his Son Jesus Christ appeared to the boy Joseph Smith or they didn't. Either he was called by them to restore the Church of Jesus Christ, or he wasn't. Either the Book of Mormon is the ancient record of a true and living people, or it is 100% a fraud.
I feel that whatever thing we are struggling with, the real questions we need to turn back to are, did Joseph Smith see Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ? Was he called by them to be a prophet? Is the Book of Mormon true?
And if we're struggling with even more basic truths than that: Does Heavenly Father love me and know me? Did Jesus Christ die for me?
The answer to all these questions is either yes or no. There is no middle ground. There is no kind of or sort of answers.
As for me, I know that Heavenly Father knows and loves me. I know that Jesus Christ died so that I can be made clean from sin and live with God again after this life. I know that they appeared to Joseph Smith and called him to restore the Church of Christ, and I know that he translated, through the gifts of God, the Book of Mormon.
