what I was looking for was
That's what *you* are looking for, in Jesus, to say he was a great man. The problem is, that's not all he said. He also said things like
"Destroy this temple and I will rebuild it in three days"
"Eat my body and drink my blood in my memory"
"I and the Father are one"
and claimed
to forgive sins against God
to have lived before Abraham
to be the one fortold by the prohpets
to be the Messiah and the King of the Jews
You can't just pick and choose amongst what he did for what you like and say "that's how I judge him as a great man" because all you've really shown is what matters to you, not what he was about. This applies to anyone; whether you judge Nixon as a corrupt crook or a great statesman says as much about you and what you value as it does about who Nixon actually was. If you only take a small portion of Jesus teaching and based on those selective parts, you judge him a great man, you've only revealed your own values and actually done him a disservice but not judging him based on *eveything* he said and did.
You look at the things he did and said and you want to admire him for doing and saying those things, but it's not that easy because he also did and said a lot of things that are not things you admire, so you select what you want to pay attention to and brush aside or ignore the rest. It's not that simple