I'm sure he was amazing, a good man and everything but he died two thousand years ago. Why does he still matter now?

If he was just a good man it wouldn't matter at all but that's not really an option. The way he talked about himself, either his birth, death and resurrection was the most important thing that has happened to our world or he was a complete nutter.

How do you mean?

Well he claimed to be the Son of God, said that he had the authority to forgive sins and that one day he would come to judge the world. He claimed to be he Way, the Truth and the Life. He was either who he said he was or he was a nutter; there's no in between really.

Yeah, fine, it's OK if you're interested in that stuff but I'm just not religious.

Most of the people Jesus go through to weren't religious, that's one of the things I find so real about him. He didn't have much time for 'holier than thou' types; the ones that obeyed the letter of the law and thought they were well in with God; they usually got the rough end of his tongue.

Do you remember the story he told about a man who got robbed on the road and was helped by the Good Samaritan? Who do you think passed by on the other side of the road? All of the religious types that's who.

He was always breaking their rules, healing people on the Sabbath and such like. He said the Sabbath was for man and not man for the Sabbath. His rules were about loving one another and living our lives like God wants us to. He was always trying to make them understand that obeying rules is no good if there is no love in your heart.

He wouldn't let them stone the woman who was taken in adultery, said the man who was without sin should cast the first stone. None of them could claim not to have sinned anymore than any of us could.

he said that the people who stuck by all the rules had their own reward. Doctors don't heal well people and Jesus was more interested in people who felt the burden of their own failures and were ready to acknowledge that there were things wrong with their life than those that considered themselves without sin.

He went out of his way to befriend outcasts; people like Zacheus the tax collector who went to such lengths to see Jesus, climbing a tree so he could see over the crowds. He was criticised for mixing with wine bibbers and sinners but he was adamant that those were the people he had come to reach.

He said the more people had to be forgiven for the more they would love him and he was right. It was Mary Magdalene for instance, frowned on by many, who stayed with him to the end. Once a woman smothered his feet with ointment, it was expensive stuff and she shouldn't have been there but Jesus appreciated her actions. She understood something of who he was while most of the self righteous ones didn't.

The conversation concludes in Part Three.