In this clip from our “Chaos to Clarity” Reality Apologetics Conference, J. Warner Wallace explains how Jesus’ unmatched influence on art, music, literature, science, and education makes him history’s true “person of interest.”
Transcript
So, if you were thinking, “Where should I start? Where should I start? I’m a spiritual person. I’m a seeker.” Well, why don’t you start with Jesus? Since everybody else has got him in their system, you can save yourself some time.
Jesus happens to be in every other system. Now, that’s interesting, right? So, all of these systems look at Jesus and they say, “We want a piece of you, bud. We want to hat tip you. We want to include you. You are important to us. We want to borrow your story. We want you in our group,” and Jesus never returns the favor. No, he doesn’t do that.
Remember, most of these religions preceded Jesus. He knew they existed. He never included them in any way. He never had to. He never said, “Hey, there’s a place for Buddha over here.” No. “There’s a place for Indra over here.” No. As a matter of fact, he said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me.”
I just want you to see—I had a case one time. I’ll never forget it. A woman was killed, and I had about eight potential suspects when I started the case. Eight guys—all who I thought were equally capable of killing this woman. As I worked these eight guys, I realized that one was starting to emerge because he had unique features the other seven didn’t have. He had the unique opportunity, the unique anger level they didn’t have, the unique ability to build the weapon they didn’t have, the unique access to her that they didn’t have, the unique opportunity on his calendar to do the crime that they didn’t have. When one suspect emerges and stands apart from the rest in a unique way, he’s probably your suspect.
Jesus stands apart from the rest in a unique way. He’s the one who says, “No. Not over here. Can’t come over here. I’m the only way to the Father. And by the way, nothing—they all say you got to do something to gain access to the next level, to gain access to Nirvana, to gain access to the Father. I’m telling you, I’m the only one who says you can’t do anything that would merit your salvation. If there is a perfect God, you could never reach perfection to please him. You’re going to have to trust me to do something for you that you can’t do.” That unique position separates him from every other world leader in religion. He’s the unique suspect.
Now, when we talk about suspects, we typically build the case this way. We have a fuse, and we have a fallout. When it comes to Jesus, we have a fuse, and we have fallout. This is important to me because it turns out that this fuse and fallout demonstrate something powerful about the person of Jesus—something almost kind of scary. Did you realize that—I didn’t discuss any of these other areas of fallout—but there is no one in the history of somebodies who has been written about more or had a bigger impact on literature than Jesus of Nazareth? No one. No one’s been written about more. Go do a search at the Library of Congress. Go do a search on Google Books. No historical figure. No one has been—you can reconstruct the entire story of Jesus just from the history of literature. As a matter of fact, there are things called Christ figures. See over here. Christ figures. There are no Buddha figures in fiction, but there’s lots of Christ figures in fiction—fictional authors who are writing stories, including characters, that they broadly steal from the overarching narrative of Jesus. They’re called Christ figures. This dominates popular fiction. If you aren’t paying attention, you might miss it. But there are literally hundreds of characters in everything from Harry Potter to Star Wars to The Matrix that are Christ figures. As a matter of fact, from just the screenplays, literature—both ancient and current—you can reconstruct the story of Jesus with all of this detail.
So, if you destroyed all the New Testaments, it wouldn’t be enough. You’d have to destroy the history of literature. But, even more surprisingly, you’d have to also destroy the history of art because no figure in the history of art has been drawn, sculpted, etched, painted more than Jesus of Nazareth. No one has had the impact. I love art. I was an artist before I became a detective. I have a bachelor’s degree in design, a master’s degree in archi-torture—I always call it that because that’s what it was. And I’ll just tell you that if you just Google the top three artists in every genre of art history—from ancient history all the way to pop art through impressionism, whatever part of art you want—Google the top three artists. Look at their catalog. You’ll find that one historical figure is common in all of their art. At some point, they all illustrated, painted, sculpted, drew Jesus of Nazareth. This is not just here in America. This is global. It’s every nation. I can give you an A-to-Z list of art. And if all you had—do you realize—let me show you. These are all the scenes from the Gospel of Mark. If you go through the Gospel of Mark, and you just looked at every chapter, and you kind of pulled out what was the feature of each scene, you can reconstruct the entire Gospel of Mark scene by scene just from the art before the Dark Ages. You’d have to destroy the history of art to get rid of Jesus. You’ll never be able to get rid of him that way.
It’s not just that. It’s that music is the same way. Whatever your love of music is—if you like hip hop, if you like rap, if you like country—whatever you like, do a Google search. I did it on Billboard, Rolling Stone magazine, and the IMDb of the top 100 artists in the last year in every genre. I got a list of about 150. All but two had sung a song about Jesus of Nazareth. No other figure in the history of figures has been sung about more than Jesus of Nazareth. None. And he’s responsible for the history of art.
Oh, you like music? Well, how about musical notation? Thank a Christian for that. How about minor scales, major scales? Christian invention. How about harmonies? Christian invention. The entire history of music has been shaped—whatever you’re listening to, you got there through Jesus and his followers. We are a singing tradition. Where on earth in this culture do you go every week to sit in an audience or stand in an audience and sing for people who are performing on a stage? Why do you think so many pop stars come out of the church? We are a singing tradition. That’s why we have shaped the history of music. And from that music, in just the first 300 years of hymns, you can reconstruct the entire story of Jesus. You’d have to destroy the history of music to get rid of Jesus, too.
Science and education—I talked about in my breakout, and I won’t go through it all again—but I’ll tell you, science is dominated by leaders, fathers of disciplines that are all Christians. Education—modern education you know about in universities—is an invention of Christ followers. And from just the campuses and the personal writings of scientists, you get more information about Jesus than any other single source. And I just showed you how you can reconstruct the story of Jesus from world religions. No one has had more of an impact on world religions than Jesus of Nazareth. And again, I showed you how, if you did not have the New Testament, you would know this about Jesus from everyone else’s religious story.
There’s no doubt in my mind that Jesus is the one historical person of interest who is larger and greater and more impactful than any other person of interest. But let me ask you, why would that be the case? Who else is more important historically than Jesus of Nazareth? Tell me who that could be. We call that the first century for a reason, folks. It wasn’t the first century. It wasn’t the first century humans lived in or the first century we wrote history about. But we call it the first century. Why do we call it the first century? You think it’s because of somebody other than Jesus? Okay. Let me show you every other person of significance who lived in the first century. Here they are. This is globally—leave as far east as you can go to as far west as you can go. Most of these people you don’t even recognize. They don’t matter. I’m sorry. It’s sad, but none of these people are the reason why we call the first century the first century.
Okay. How about just historically all global leaders—military or national empire leaders, whatever. Here they are. Tell me, which one of these do you think is sung about as much as Jesus, written about as much as Jesus, started schools, founded most of the sciences. It was no followers of these guys. This is every other religious leader and deity in the history of religious leaders and deities of significance. Tell me who here had the kind of impact as Jesus had on art, music, literature, education, science, world religions.
These are all the other people who claimed to be the Jewish Messiah. Did you know there were a bunch more of these? Yeah, there were until about the 12th century. Here they are. Household names, right? No! You don’t even know these people. You know why? Because they’re not the Jewish Messiah. Jesus is. Right?
Why Jesus? Think about that for a minute. Of all the people, this nobody—who was born in a nowhere town and raised in another nowhere town, who never traveled more than about 200 miles from anywhere he ever lived and only spent about three years in public ministry—this is the guy who changes the world. Yeah, this is the guy. This guy had no friends. He was rejected by people who had power, hunted by people. The people who loved him—his best buddies—they all abandoned him and denied him. Seriously. This is the guy who changes all of history. This is the guy who didn’t even have a family. No kids. No education we even know of any importance. This is a guy who never ruled a nation, never led an army, never wrote a concert, never wrote a book. This guy was nobody compared to others who were somebodies. This is the guy who was falsely accused, brutally mocked, humiliated on a cross, and executed unfairly. And then he has to borrow a grave. This is the guy who changes history! How can this be? This is the last guy you would expect to change history. He is truly nobody from a human perspective. Yet, this is the guy who is history’s person of interest. Maybe it’s because he’s just not a person.