JESUS SUFFERED FROM SOME MENTAL DISORDER
JESUS' MENTAL ILLNESS - PEER JOURNAL
Even those who deny that Jesus existed - and I am one of them – must agree that
whether the gospels are true or not they don’t give us any confidence in the
sanity of Jesus Christ. Even if Jesus didn’t exist the gospels could have been
based on stories about eccentrics and fairly obscure prophets of the time who
did exist.
If we can prove that the Jesus Christ in them was disturbed or mad then that is
all we need to destroy Christianity. It would mean that the apostles he chose
and the Church he founded were all very silly people indeed. It would mean that
we have to be on guard against any other religious movement because if
Christianity was founded on the ravings of a madman and was such a success any
other religion could have been the same.
We can be sure that there is no evidence for Jesus’ sanity and plenty of
evidence against it.
You will see plenty of Christian books written in defence of the faith that deny
that Jesus was mentally ill and claim that he was the sanest person that ever
lived. None of the psychiatrists or psychologists have the right to
pretend they have the authority to assess somebody at a distance especially when
the distances is 20 centuries!
In those times, a bird descending on a person during a religious
ceremony was sometimes seen as a demon or evil magical influence
being removed. We read in the gospels that the Holy Spirit in
the form of a dove descended on Jesus at his baptism by John.
Jesus in his core statement of morality, the Sermon on the Mount, said that merely wanting sex with somebody's wife was adultery and merely calling somebody a fool was murder. These ideas are pure paranoia and it is remarkable that the crowd didn't say, "He is crazy. Let us go away. We are not wasting another minute listening to this rubbish." We must keep remembering these extreme statements and let them define Jesus for us.
A woman was brought to him to see if he would allow her to be stoned to death for adultery. If he didn't they could say he was taking a stand against God's word which demanded that she be liquidated brutally. Strangely he wrote on the ground and said that whoever has no sin can stone her. Thus he said that stoning her is an honour. He dragged it out for all he had to do was walk away for they could not stone her anyway. It was banned by the Romans and the mob had not followed the proper legal procedure as laid down by the God Jesus, according to some, claimed to be. He punished her with terror.
The Bible God decrees that all offenses such
as murder, adultery must be followed by stoning the persons involved
to death. Moses was forgiven for murdering. So when
directly dealing with God an exception could be made. Jesus
then if he freed this woman was not implying that the law must be
suspended in other cases.
Albert Schweitzer held that Jesus was insane. His Jesus believed that the
kingdom of God, the overthrow of all the nations and the replacement with God’s
kingdom, was about to happen any day and when he was on the cross he cried that
God had forsaken him for he was dying and none of what he had predicted had
taken place. His Jesus gave insane teachings believing that it was foolish to
bother trying to stop somebody thieving for the world was about to end.
Jesus said many irrational things such as that God saying he was the God of the
deceased Abraham, Isaac and Jacob meant that God was God of the living not the
dead so that the dead were still alive. There was no reason to take such a
bizarre interpretation of what God said. God said it in the Law of Moses, in the
Book of Exodus, and the Law never gives any hint of an afterlife. It promises
only material blessings for obeying God.
We are not told that the people he associated with were really close friends.
Everybody has friends even when they are crazy. But close is a different matter.
He did not accept everybody. He told a woman that she and her suffering daughter
were dogs (Matthew 15:26) and to confirm it he only helped he after she admitted
it. Dogs in the Bible according to many theologians refer to those pagans
who do not believe in God and hate what he stands for. They say the
problem with the woman was that she had no real intention of
following Jesus. She just wanted the miracle. Instead of being a
guest at Jesus’ table and having all the miracles she wants, she
chooses to get the scrap from it, the miracle without obligation.
This account though ignores the fact that Jesus knew she had faith
and did not care. And the story says nothing about her as a
rebel and a sinner so who are they to judge this woman?
The claim by some that Jesus was not ego-bloated is untrue. The Case for Christ
by Lee Strobel says that. But the book would answer that Jesus made great
claims about himself just because they were true and he backed them up with
evidence. The Case for Christ maintains that Jesus gave unique teachings, worked
miracles over nature and did healings to prove that he was who he said he was.
But the trouble with miracles is that all believers are selective in what
miracles they will believe in. For example, the Protestant regards the miracles
unique to Catholics as psychic fraud, trickery or the Devil’s work as he schemes
to keep people away from the truth and get people damned in Hell with himself
and his angels. The Catholic Church only recognises miracles as from God if they
fit its theology and if they don’t the Church ignores them. So this is doctoring
the evidence. Also the gospel miracles are not as well backed up as modern
miracles are. And miracles are so extraordinary that one can be forgiven for not
believing in them unless one sees them – an attitude the apostle Thomas had. The
bigger and stranger the claim the more evidence is needed. Jesus’ miracles would
be no help for we cannot have commonsense and believe in them.
It is no less equally certain that if Jesus did not claim to be God but to be
the greatest man ever or the supreme messenger of God he was still insane.
Strobel’s book tells us that Jesus said that John the Baptist was the greatest
man ever meaning he thought he himself was better than John for in other places
he claimed to be superior to John. Jesus should have said nothing and let others
decide. After all, if God was with him God could influence them to see that so
that Jesus wouldn’t need to say it. His saying it was therefore boasting.
It is absolutely certain that if Jesus claimed to be God
or to be the greatest prophet ever that he was insane. Why? Because he left no
reason for us to believe in his claims. The Christians argue that he couldn’t
have been insane for he backed up his claims with miracles. The resurrection
suffers from the fact that no evidence is given about what happened to the body.
The tomb was found open so anything could have happened to the body. Jesus
could have been stolen and risen anyway but nobody told us anything. Jesus
destroyed any case for himself when he said that false Messiahs would come
showing great signs that could fool even the elect. He did not say their
miracles would be fake. He said they would point to lies. He had
something to hide when he said that anybody who thought God wasn't giving him
the power to get demons out was guilty of an eternal sin for thinking that.
Jesus' own mother thought he was mad and he refused to meet her saying he had
found new family, those who listened to the word of God. She had diagnosed
him with possession. She said so in public. In public.
He claimed to be in danger at the time so this is significant. How she
could think that would help him is anybody's guess. Mary and her entourage
tried to take custody of him then too which is worse.
Jesus' behaviour, if you read Josephus, was different but not that unusual. There were many faith healers and similar hellfire and brimstone preachers. This only shows how sure Mary was.
If you read the gospels, people with epilepsy and
mental illness were considered possessed. This was so cruel that it shows
that when Jesus validated that evil culture of fear by exorcising he did more
harm than good.
The Jews when they accused Jesus of being mad meant he was demon possessed (John
10:20). They were not saying he was a madman foaming at the mouth. Jesus was not
that kind of madman. They were saying he was very eccentric. Perhaps he seemed
normal most or some of the time. That would make them feel he was possessed for
nobody can see a demon and not all possessions are necessarily gruesome and
tormenting. Satan might possess a man to use him to lead people away from the
truth and ruin God’s plan.
Jesus attracted people who as far as rationality was concerned had problems.
Most people are weak at rationality especially when it comes to religious claims
they want to believe in and so they would devote themselves to lunatics who seem
relatively sane. Jesus failed to attract people of great intellectual calibre,
though he brought in some who thought they had, which often happens when
lunatics run a sect.
Sanders mentioned the fact that in the ancient world and in Palestine at the
time of Jesus, exorcists were known to engage in frenzied and erratic behaviour.
Jesus was known to be an exorcist. He certainly did strange things at times such
as writing on the ground aimlessly and spitting on the ground to make mud paste
that he rubbed into the eyes of the blind. He claimed to be equal to God in some
way. This resulted in the Jews lifting stones to kill him. He engaged in long
and raving rants against the Jews.
It is thought that since Jesus lived in a society that expected the Messiah and
an apocalyptic disaster that since he was conditioned by these beliefs he was
not insane for taking them as seriously as he did. It is true that sane people
can expect god men to appear and the world to end but if one of them starts
claiming to be a god like being and the instigator of the end that is a totally
different thing. Christians expect the world to perish in fire or nuclear war
because the Bible says so. If one of them started a nuclear war because of that
belief even the Christians would say he was insane. They would not use the fact
that the person believed as they do as evidence that he was sane.
It is thought that if Jesus was suffering from a disorder those who took him
seriously such as his disciples must have been as well. But perhaps it was the
disciples being conditioned by the intense desire for the Messiah to come at
that time that made them devoted to him and turn a blind eye to signs of Jesus'
madness?
Others say that though Messianic claimants are often insane, Jesus was not for
he thought he had reason to claim to be the Messiah. Actually he had not. The
gospels are forced to invent implausible genealogies for him to show that he
fitted the requirements. And Jesus himself spoke of fake messengers of God who
could do miracles and heal like he could. Also Jesus learned the Old Testament
off by heart like all Jews did. And when he tried to fulfil prophecy, he was
fulfilling prophecy that was not in the real Old Testament but in a Greek
mistranslation of it. Plus he was consciously trying to fulfil these prophecies
as he did in the case of the entry into Jerusalem on a donkey. That does not
sound like the behaviour of a man convinced on rational grounds that he was the
Messiah. If he thought he was the Messiah then he did not think this on solid
grounds or excusable grounds.
Caiaphas had to try Jesus. He went to the trouble of getting lying witnesses so
as to be able to find Jesus guilty of blasphemy which carried the death
sentence. He didn't know that Jesus was more than willing to be convicted and
put to death and had been making that clear by his behaviour and statements
during arrest and so on. A man wanting to be put to death like that is mentally
diseased.
The gospels indeed have failed to convince us that Jesus
was sane.
The Christian system was designed to produce psychopaths and neurotics. And it
did that with insane saints like Mother Teresa and St Margaret Mary. You
can't expect much else when you look at the ravings of its founder particularly
in the Sermon on the Mount. Gaze at its bloody history for proof. It has been
very successful in producing religious mental disease.
THE CASE FOR CHRIST, Lee Strobel, HarperCollins/Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 1998
PORTRAIT OF A KILLER, Patricia Cornwell, Little Brown, London, 2002
THE RISE AND FALL OF JESUS, Steuart Campbell, Explicit Books, Edinburgh, 1996