What Makes a Person Great?

WHOM would you call really great? No doubt, a person who accomplished something truly noteworthy. But don’t you agree that the personal qualities of the individual and his attitude toward others are also important factors?

Do you prefer the company of a person who expects to be served, or one who takes pleasure in serving others? Whom would you rather live with​—one who demands love from others, or one who knows how to show love?

Surely you admire such qualities as courage and mental strength. But aren’t they even more appealing when coupled with a willingness to accomplish something of lasting benefit for others?

Outstanding knowledge and wisdom elicit admiration for those who possess these. But isn’t it true that the person most appreciated is the one who uses his knowledge to help others​—if possible, to have a life filled with meaning and one that brings contentment?

Some rulers have been named among the “great ones” of history. But under what kind of ruler would you like to spend your life? One who is famed mainly for the wars he fights, or a ruler who exercises authority in such a way that people follow and obey him out of love?

There are many persons who have one or two traits that make them outstanding. But who has all the qualities that really count?

Who Measures Up?

Alexander, who was called “the Great,” has been termed “one of the greatest generals the world has ever known.” He was heroic and skilled in strategy, but was obsessed with megalomania and self-indulgence. He demanded to be declared a god and eventually was. In a drunken rage he killed a very close friend. Taken ill after a prolonged banquet and drinking bout, he died in his 33rd year.

Napoleon has been ranked as one of the most celebrated personages in the history of the West. He was a brilliant leader and reformer. But he has also been called the “Corsican ogre” because he sacrificed millions of men for his ambitions.

Socrates is claimed to be one of the greatest philosophers and teachers in history. But what kind of teacher was he? One of his main theses was that man cannot do what is wrong if he knows what is right. Human history has proved this to be wrong. His teaching method was to question people with biting irony to convince them that their knowledge was but fictitious. He built much of his teaching on his own understanding and, as he claimed, on an inner voice called, in Greek, daimonion.

Many have been geniuses in one field but miserably incompetent in others. Ludwig van Beethoven was a musical genius and, as one encyclopedia states, he was “widely regarded as the greatest composer who ever lived.” However, he was also known to be very impractical in everyday matters of life, an ineptitude that periodically ruined him economically.

Other geniuses and great artists have ruined their lives by immoral living, alcohol and drug abuse. Is there no one, then, who measures up in all the qualities that are truly important?

Yes, indeed, there is one man whom millions of people down through the ages have recognized as having all the desirable qualities​—Jesus Christ. He lived and worked in Palestine almost two thousand years ago. Interestingly, as shown in the quotations in the box on the opposite page, even “great” men confess to his greatness.

Evidence that Jesus Lived

Especially during the 19th and 20th centuries have critics denied that such a person as Jesus ever existed. They claim that he is nothing but a myth, a legend, made up by some Jewish swindlers back there in history.

But how could simple swindlers produce such a masterpiece? Or, as the American scholar Theodore Parker puts it: “Shall we be told such a man never lived, the whole story is a lie? Suppose that Plato and Newton never lived. But who did their works, and thought their thoughts? It takes a Newton to forge a Newton. What man could have fabricated a Jesus? None but Jesus.”

Besides the foremost source, the Bible itself, there are many other reliable sources confirming Jesus as historical. For example, there is the famous first-century historian Flavius Josephus’ testimony of the existence of Jesus as he writes: “Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles.”​—Antiquities of the Jews (Book XVIII, chap. 3, par. 3).

There are also a number of prominent first-century pagan Roman writers who made mention of Christ and his followers. Among them are the historian Tacitus, the author and administrator Pliny the Younger, the biographer Suetonius, the poet Juvenal, and the stoic philosopher Lucius Seneca, who was a contemporary of Jesus and the leading intellectual figure in Rome in the middle of the first century.

Concerning such early non-Christian writers, the Encyclopædia Britannica states: “These independent accounts prove that in ancient times even the opponents of Christianity never doubted the historicity of Jesus.”​—1980 edition, vol. 10, p. 145.

Some object that if Jesus was such a great personage there should be more mention of him in early historical records. On this, Blaise Pascal, quoted in the column to the right, refers to Jesus as living “in such obscurity (according to what the world calls obscurity) that historians writing only of important political events hardly noticed him.”

Despite this, there is an abundance of historical evidence. Even the well-known skeptic, the mission doctor Albert Schweitzer, admitted: “We have to avow that there are not many of the personalities of antiquity of whom so many indubitable historical facts and of whom so many statements have been preserved as in the case of Jesus.”

The evidence is clear, Jesus Christ is a historical person. He also measured up in the qualities that make one really great. He is the greatest man in history.

The more you study Jesus in detail the more convinced you will become as to his greatness.

[Box on page 3]

Do You Prefer the Kind of Person Who . . .

● Expects to be served or Gladly serves others?

● Acquires much wealth or Does things that benefit others?

● Possesses great knowledge or Uses knowledge to help others?

[Box on page 5]

WHY THEY ADMIRED JESUS

• Napoleon is reported to have said: “Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded empires, but upon what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ alone founded his kingdom upon love.”

• Concerning Jesus’ unique personality, the noted French philosopher Rousseau wrote: “What sublimity in his maxims. What profound wisdom in his discourses! What presence of mind, what subtlety, what fitness, in his replies! How great the command over his passions! Where is the man, where the philosopher, who could so live and so die, without weakness, and without ostentation?”

• The famous 17th-century French mathematician, physicist and philosopher Blaise Pascal, in his “Proofs of Jesus Christ,” wrote about Jesus’ ability as a teacher: “Jesus said great things so simply that he seems not to have thought about them, and yet so clearly that it is obvious that he thought about them. Such clarity together with such simplicity is wonderful.”

• Mahatma Gandhi, the Hindu “father” of India, once stated to Lord Irwin, former viceroy of India: “When your country and mine shall get together on the teachings laid down by Christ in this Sermon on the Mount, we shall have solved the problems, not only of our countries, but those of the whole world.”

[Pictures on page 4]

Alexander

Napoleon

Socrates

Beethoven