As cliché as it sounds, human beings have a "God-shaped hole in our hearts". This, of course, is an intentional design feature, intended to draw us near to God. When God is absent in our lives, we begin to fill it with other things. For most of human history, that God-shaped hole has been filled with... other gods. Knowing by instinct that we are not the highest power in the universe, our species has invented various gods over the centuries, in some cases even literally crafting them out of wood, stone, and precious metals.
But the construction of graven images is not the only way in which we construct gods. In fact, ironically, while God made mankind in His image, we have a rather nasty habit of trying to return the favor. Whether we believe in Him or not, we often act as if, somehow, He would be on our side, supporting our every choice, personality quirk, and lifestyle.
This has increased exponentially since the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Even before the Apostles drew their last breaths, people tried using the Christian faith as a means of personal gain (1 Timothy 6:5). Outside of Christianity, other religions even began to develop their own teachings on Christ, as if He was (and indeed, He is) more than just the Son of a carpenter.
The great irony is, if you strip Him of His divinity, that is all He is. Whereas certain religions, such as Buddhism, seek to make Him into this "good teacher", He simply cannot have been just this, simply because His claims, if untrue, would be so extravagant as to make Him wholly unreliable. Jesus made a number of claims about Himself, about God, about Himself being God, about Himself being the way to the Father, about Himself being the one and only way to salvation, all of which must either be so true that we must forsake all to follow Him (e.g. Luke 14:26), or so false that we can only regard Him, as C.S. Lewis so eloquently put it, as a lunatic, or a liar. Stripping Jesus of His deity strips Him of His authority, and therefore, whenever any religion, be it Buddhism, be it Islam, or even some kind of fake version of Christianity, must necessarily be regarded as false.
But perhaps the greatest irony here is that it isn't even always the Theists who do this. Sometimes, even those who do not believe Jesus has authority will nevertheless twist His words as if He was.
Throughout history, a great many men and women have made names for themselves which far exceeded their natural lifespans. The history books are filled with people like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Genghis Kahn, Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, Amelia Earhart, and a great many others. We look back at these people, and whoever they are to us, they probably are to everybody. Nobody's faith rests on the shoulders of any of these people, and so any errors about their beliefs are largely due to genuine ignorance. They are rarely, if ever, cited as authorities, and even when they are, no one seeks to alter the person, but the perspective of them. When it is pointed out, for example, that Isaac Newton was a faithful Christian, and prolific apologist, even hardcore Evolutionists don't pretend he was actually the first to propose that humans are descendants of fish (and apparently still are). No, they simply say he was a product of his time.
But no one is content to accept that Jesus may have been a product of His time. Objectively speaking, Jesus was the perfect Jew. This means He not only worshiped the Jewish God, but spent His entire life acting, speaking, and believing, what Yahweh desired. He never deviated, even for a second, in deed, in word, or even in thought. This, He did so perfectly that His single sacrifice was sufficient to atone for every time we, as a species, have failed to do so. Every time God said "thou shalt not", and we did, Jesus did not, and every time God said "thou shalt", and we did not, Jesus did. Therefore, He who knew no sin was able to become sin for us, that we may become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Now, you may not yet be so humble as to believe that. You can pretend there is no God, and look at Jesus as a mere man, descended from Mary and some mysterious human father whose identity will never be found. In this case, you still cannot deny, Jesus was a devout Jew. In fact, He was so devout that many Jews came to view Him as He is portrayed in the Bible. His affirmations of the Jewish Scriptures, the Jewish God, and even the authority of the Jewish institutions (Matthew 23:1-3) that would eventually put Him to death out of envy, are forever recorded, now in many languages, in black and white.
With all of this in mind, it really shouldn't boggle anyone's mind that Jesus wasn't a Liberal, a Communist, a Fascist, an Anti-Semite, an American patriot, a Palestinian, or any of the other umpteen different, often mutually-exclusive worldviews that try to claim Him as their own. Why, then, do they do this so frequently?
The answer, of course, is the same God-shaped hole that causes mankind to invent whole new religions. No one has a Ghandi-shaped hole in their hearts, but we are designed to worship. Yet, even the most delusional among us have a desire for foundation. The things we make up, the things we know are nothing but the products of our own imaginations, do not carry as much weight to us as when we believe in something beyond ourselves. The result of that is that even those who firmly reject God's ways are quick to confess His manifestation.
But God has a message for such people: "What right have you to declare My statutes, Or take My covenant in your mouth, Seeing you hate instruction And cast My words behind you? When you saw a thief, you consented with him, And have been a partaker with adulterers. You give your mouth to evil, And your tongue frames deceit. You sit and speak against your brother; You slander your own mother’s son. These things you have done, and I kept silent; You thought that I was altogether like you; But I will rebuke you, And set them in order before your eyes. “Now consider this, you who forget God, Lest I tear you in pieces, And there be none to deliver: Whoever offers praise glorifies Me; And to him who orders his conduct aright I will show the salvation of God." (Psalm 50:16-23).
God does not enjoy being treated as the waiter at an all you can eat buffet. When you claim Him as your foundation, He expects you to walk in His ways. That includes not taking His name in vain by attaching it to things He most assuredly would not approve of. Thus, He says we have no right to invoke Him if we won't follow Him, giving various examples of sins He despises. Interestingly, He goes as far as to rebuke the delusion that He is like us. Though we are made in His image, God makes it very clear: There is a world of difference between us and Him. We cannot reasonably assume He shares our opinions, but we can know this for a fact: There will be consequences if we fail to adopt His.
So what are we to say to those who try to wrestle Jesus to their cause? Put simply, pick a lane. If you don't believe Jesus, there is no need to lie about who He was, or what He believed. He should be as irrelevant to you as Henry VIII, or even Moses, one of His prophets. If you truly believe Jesus was only a man, then treat Him as one, not only differing with Him where you would differ with any other man, but frankly, dismissing Him as either a liar, or a lunatic, because if He is not the Lord, that is exactly what He must have been. This is an erroneous position, but at least it is a consistent one.
But what if you do believe in Jesus? What if He is such an authority figure in your life that what He believed actually means something to you? In this case, you should still let His beliefs remain intact, and adopt them as your own, even if it is painful to you. If Jesus believes something you do not, Jesus wins. If Jesus does not believe something you do, Jesus wins. If you don't know what Jesus believes, do not put words in His mouth. Simply obey Him, relying on His grace to compensate for your failures to do so.
Because of the God-shaped hole in our hearts, there will never be a shortage of people who, to one degree or another, confess Jesus, even if they deny Him with the same breath or stroke of a keyboard. But sin causes this denial, locking us into this chaotic cycle of running to Him and from Him, as if we are in a three-legged race against our own selves.
And against ourselves it is! For the wicked, to even acknowledge the conscience is to drink eternal condemnation from which there is no respite. But even the penitent, while we are in this "body of death", will war against the flesh until we are parted from it in death.
But as God says, he who orders his conduct aright will be shown the salvation of God. That salvation came in the form of the very man of whom we speak: The non-lying, non-lunatic, Lord of Heaven, to whom all authority in Heaven and on Earth has been given (Matthew 28:18). Through His perfect obedience to the Lord God of Israel, Jesus became the one and only sacrifice for sin, allowing all who confess Him as Lord, and believe in their hearts God raised Him from the dead. This confession must be true, for as His word says, "But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble; for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." (2 Peter 1:5-11).
Let us all, therefore, make a choice: Acknowledge Christ as Lord and take what He says on board, including all His Scriptures, or reject Him along with His teachings and He'll set you straight on judgment day. You don't get to take the worst of both worlds, but be assured, He has the best in store for those who love Him.