Kerby Anderson

A few weeks ago, a Breakpoint commentary had the intriguing title: “Yes, Jesus Had a God Complex.” John Stonestreet and Timothy Padgett were writing about a survey of UK teens, ages 14 to 17, entitled “Troubling Jesus.” The goal was to understand how non-Christian kids think about Scripture.

They obviously didn’t think highly of God, Jesus, or the Bible. Some felt that the God of the Bible was “really violent and aggressive.” They said God had an “unequal power dynamic.” From their perspective, God the Father came across as a bully.

Jesus didn’t come off any better. They said that God the Son was “arrogant, powerful, religiously motivated, and male.” Perhaps the most telling claim was that Jesus had a “God complex.”

Patrick West wrote about this in his article “Why Gen Z is troubled by Jesus.” He explains that unfortunately, “young people raised in a world without authority figures who command respect . . . are naturally going to regard the teachings in the Bible as hostile and aggressive.” They “find the idea of Christianity simply incomprehensible.”

When I talked about these young people who thought Jesus had a God complex, my guests had to agree with their conclusion even if it was ill-informed. And the Breakpoint commentary ended with the famous C.S. Lewis quote about Jesus: “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.”

Yes, Jesus did think He was God because He was and is God.