two (more) responses to Reece

Excerpts from two of three letters to the editor published in the C-J, responding to Reece's book excerpt...

I can empathize with his early church experience, as I experienced the same sort of "drug" problem. Being "drug to church" that is. His conclusions, while uniquely personal, are rationally flawed.

Most of his writing centers around losing his faith, but as his pastor father and grandfather would probably have asserted, it is impossible to lose something you've never had.

He then turns his sights on Easter, probably the real purpose that The C-J published the article this Holy Week. Without the Cross and Resurrection that Reece is so quick to dismiss, then Christ is just like every other great teacher/philosopher of his day -- dead. There is no kingdom, for the king is dead. In the immortal words of C.S. Lewis, "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."

That is the decision that faces those like Reese: liar, lunatic or Lord?

JOHN R. PECK, Jr.
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Erik Reece's "An American Gospel" is well titled. Reece speaks for a growing segment of Americans, and Bible-believing Christians will do well to listen.

As one who has taken the inverse path -- from agnosticism to a gradual, strengthening faith in Christ -- I can appreciate Reece's plight, but I am also compelled to illuminate his imploding logic. Reece has decided that although he rejects the accounts of Jesus' resurrection (and therefore his divinity), he really digs what the "radical street preacher" had to say.

Of course, what makes Jesus so radical is his title -- Christ, or savior. In his own words, he claimed repeatedly to be the son of God and the only way to heaven, and he predicted his own death and resurrection. Jesus' teachings will always be inextricably tied to his divinity. If he is not God, and he did not triumph over death, then his teachings are the most outrageous lies in human history and worthy only of scorn.

Those of us who believe the biblical Gospels must be prepared to give an answer for the hope that we have. As Reece's own words revealed, an American gospel provides no hope at all.

BILL WOMACK