Jesus, Madman or Something Worse
Madman or Something Worse is a short film that critically examines the ethics of Jesus of Nazareth. Produced by Peter Brietbart, with animations by Many Artists Who Do One Thing.
Part 1 of 2
Jesus of Nazareth was an awful moral philosopher. He compares badly to such modern greats such as Mill, Rawls or Ross and also to historical thinkers such as Aristotle, Diogenes or Plato. His moral contributions are not original, and his original contributions are not moral.
God is little more than a pleasant fable for adults, a pacifier for the mind that quells the nervous forebodings of death. And so Lewis is right. The Nazarene was a Madman or Something Worse.
This film was shot in the summer of 2010 on no budget, and over the course of the next few months, sections of it were animated by Many Artists Who Do One Thing, a Brighton-based multidisciplinary artist, whose imagery also populates this website.
~ Peter Brietbart
Part 2 of 2
C.S. Lewis, a serious and sensible theologian wrote in 1942 about Jesus:
“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.
You must make your choice.
Either this man 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.”
Learn more: http://www.madmanorsomethingworse.com
