TOM GILSON — The more I study the story of Jesus, the more the story itself convinces me it must be true.

Skeptics will undoubtedly call that circular logic. It’s irrational to say something is true because it’s true.

But there’s something different about Jesus. I’m not saying logic doesn’t apply to him, or (heaven forbid!) that faith is irrational, as a lot of skeptics say it must be. Rather I’m saying that when we speak of Jesus Christ, we’re speaking of someone whose story is too great, too good to stuff into a mere logical circle.

Everyone agrees that there’s a story of Jesus, after all. Not everyone sees its uniqueness. Jesus is the only character in all human history and even all human imagination who was both perfectly powerful and perfectly other-centered at the same time.

That’s more astonishing than it might appear at first glance. Think of it: how many really powerful people do you know of in all history who were really, really, good? Lord Acton wrote, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” Abraham Lincoln said, “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

The people we think of as great in love are almost always those who are weak in power. Mother Teresa. Mahatma Gandhi. Mom. This is true of persons in history, and with few exceptions it’s true of characters in literature and mythology. The gods are corrupt. Dostoyevski’s Prince Myshkin is very good, but he is at the same time (as the title of the novel emphasizes) the hapless Idiot, or at least seemingly so.

Shakespeare never invented an extraordinarily powerful, extraordinarily good character. Neither did Goethe, or Dickens, or Sophocles, or any of the great authors and playwrights.

There is only one such person in all human literature. Jesus wasn’t just extraordinarily powerful, according to the story, he was the Creator of heaven and earth. Superman (one candidate for a very strong, very good character) could fly through space. Jesus created space. Superman saved lives. Jesus raised people from death. The difference is more than several orders of magnitude — it’s infinite.

For all his power, though, it’s hard to pin down any occasion on which Jesus used it for his own benefit. Sure, he walked on water, and in Chapter four of the Gospel of Luke he slipped through a crowd. The story says he didn’t even need to be here, though. He was God in the flesh, who gave up many of the prerogatives of Godhood to mingle among us in the dirt. He died for us. “The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve,” he said in Mark 10:45, “and to give his life a ransom for many.”

That was the story of his life, from beginning to end. The goodness of it utterly overwhelms me. I think of what I would do if I had even a touch more power than I’ve been granted; if, for example I suddenly came into a million dollars I could use any way I pleased. I could imagine being truly Christian with it, and giving it all away — but probably not without taking my family out for a nice dinner first. Jesus firmly resisted the Devil’s temptation to make a meal just for himself with his great power — though he did share a meal with 5,000 others.

Can you imagine being perfectly giving with a sudden million-dollar windfall? Maybe you can. Now try to imagine being perfectly other-oriented, never indulging yourself even briefly, with a lifelong inheritance of more money and more power than you could ever spend or use.

I gaze upon Jesus and all I can do is worship, stunned at the picture of a man who was that good, and even better.

Skeptics can cavil over this reportedly doubtful saying of Jesus or that supposedly questionable historical detail. Christian scholars can (and do) explain how these issues are not the problem they seem to be. The disagreements go on.

But no one doubts that there is a story of Jesus, and no one can reasonably deny that there is an aspect to it that shines with unparalleled ethical perfection.

It is a story, and stories always come from somewhere. It could have come our way as the invention of a band of fishermen and their faith-infected followers, as the skeptics say. In that case, though, as Phillip Schaff asked years ago, “If the early Christians produced Christ, who produced the early Christians?” He went on to add, “The poets in this case must have been superior to the hero” — and greater than Shakespeare and Sophocles besides.

Or the story could have come our way as the faithful account of a life actually lived by One whose identity as the Son of God is sufficient to explain the life he lived. That explanation makes a whole lot more sense to me.

The more I study the story of Jesus, the more the story itself convinces me.

It’s too good not to be true.