A Stark Raving Savior
May 17, 2006
“The greatest blessings come by way of madness, indeed of madness that is heaven-sent.”
—Socrates on the Oracle of Delphi
In his famous book “Mere Christianity,” C. S. Lewis makes this statement: “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg – or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God.”
Lewis constructs for us a sharp ultimatum: Jesus of Nazareth is either insane or he is Lord of All. For the relentlessly reasonable Lewis these are mutually exclusive categories; Jesus must be one or the other. Therefore, Lewis’ very rational faith leads him emphatically to conclude that Jesus categorically must be both sane and Savior.
However, these categories may not, as Lewis assumes, be mutually exclusive. His argument is fashioned out of a desire to make sense of the person who is Jesus, to fit the incarnation—a logically preposterous idea—into a rational framework. This is a noble but misleading exercise, an ultimately futile attempt “to vindicate the ways of God to man.”
I would like to propose a different perspective. I would like to suggest that the historical Jesus is not only the Lord but a bona fide madman too. He is a fool of the first order. He is not simply a misunderstood prophet but is incapable of being understood in rational terms. In the literal sense, Jesus of Nazareth is a Maniac Messiah, a Crazy Christ.
Insanity is generally defined as a mental disorder that renders its victim incapable of managing his affairs or of conforming to social standards. In the Gospel of Mark we read that on one occasion such a crowd gathered around Jesus and his disciples that they were unable to eat. We are told that “when his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him” because they concluded, “He is out of his mind.”
The Greek phrase rendered “out of his mind” here literally means “to stand apart” or a “change of place.” This becomes figuratively “degeneration,” “confusion of spirit,” “alienation,” and “ecstasy.” Taking stock of Jesus’ behavior, his family had determined that he was “beside himself.” His ecstatic religious vision had unmoored him from customary and productive behavior. The religious leaders who saw all this were far less generous in their assessment.
The four Gospel accounts are filled with incidents that suggest the same thing. Even the epistles deal with the often disturbing deviance of the one called Christ. This is not even to consider the hand-wringingly bipolar God of the Old Testament. Disorders seems to run in the family.
We religious folk tend to “redeem” Jesus from madness by lifting him out of context and by protecting him from his own strangeness with sterile doctrine. (Even Lewis didn’t do that.) Then we vilify those who saw (or see) Jesus as questionable or unstable. But we do them an injustice. His closest, most loyal associates could not themselves escape a nervous uncertainty about this enigmatic figure who claimed to be the life of the world. Jesus seemed oblivious to standard concerns, social practice, and religious custom. (The Holy Spirit of Acts is guilty too.) No matter how they cut it, Jesus was way out in left field. The villains of the story were at least up front about it. We want to make nice.
Yet madness may be a key to his extraordinary impact. Playwright George Bernard Shaw once said, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” A rational man, no matter what his authority or power, could not forever alter human destiny. History is replete with “great” men and women who have tried. Name your hero. Except for a momentary light, they have only postponed the inevitable coming night. The only hope for an inexorably fallen world is an insanity embodied by a madman.
Henry David Thoreau, defending the radical abolitionist John Brown who led the ill-fated raid at Harper’s Ferry, wrote: “Many, no doubt, are well disposed, but sluggish by constitution and by habit, and they cannot conceive of a man who is actuated by higher motives than they are. Accordingly they pronounce this man insane, for they know that they could never act as he does, as long as they are themselves.”
Insanity is never self-confessed; it is the “reasonable” ones who bring the verdict. C. S. Lewis insists that we—the rational judges—make the choice concerning Jesus. The orthodox, of course, must champion the savior’s sanity. (Who wants a holy Logo who’s nuts?) Yet I wonder if we do so sincerely.
Perhaps behind our reasonable creeds and rituals lurks a secret fear that the author and perfecter of our faith really is insane. What else can explain our fierce reluctance to actually embrace his example? Do we dare follow in the steps of a madman?
Do we dare not to?
Apparently no one dares even comment on this post …
It seems that the assessment of who’s reasonable or insane depends on the point of view of the ones doing the assessment, making the determination quite subjective. This makes the determination of insanity questionable at the very least, when the subject is arguably Deity and having access to knowledge of a reality apart from ours.
So, the issue of sanity is, then, a matter of perspective, or access to appropriate information. In legal terms, it is known as the “reasonable and prudent person” standard. It is entirely rational, when tossed out to sea, to continue to tread water and conserve energy when possible. The same actions are arguably insane when you are within easy reach of the shore.
From every standard of honest “rationality” I can think of, Jesus was neither reasonable nor prudent. Assigning the salvation of the world to a single death on a Roman cross cannot be arrived at through any rational method. Jesus insisted that no one can come to him unless God draws him. Paul was convinced that man’s wisdom cannot lead to divine illumination.
In spite of Western philosophical attempts, even by some of the most brilliant minds of the Church, Jesus of Nazareth simply cannot be apprehended rationally. Using the Wimber term “transrational” doesn’t help either; since it implies what is outside human understanding, it is a meaningless term.
I guess that’s my original point anyway. Against the standard of the “reasonable and prudent person,” Jesus must be considered mad. But, as Socrates pointed out, madness may be divine and thus blessed.
I think Clive [Lewis] was not talking of sane-ness or lack thereof in the sense discussed here. Rather than measuring Jesus against the “norm” of the day or “normal” people, Clive was saying either Jesus was who he said he was or was not. If he was not, he was either knowingly or unknowingly (to himself that is) so. It is the latter that would make him a lunatic, not the fact that he did not fit in well.
So a lunatic in the sense he is grossly self-deceived.
I write all that to write: I think Clive was on-track in his rational rationale, and I think Musehead (dare I say it) is on-track here.
We are pilgrims and sojourners, we are citizens of Heaven, we are to not be conformed to the patterns of this world, we are to set our mind on things above… I could go on. Point is Jesus LIVED that “different” life that is to grab the attention of others. Either an aroma of Life or death (He is THE Son of God or He is outta his mind) depending on our heart.
Ah, now the discussion begins!
Okay, let’s get presumptive: As man is created in the image of God (obviously not meaning physically, as God is spirit), we can presume that man’s ability to reason is finite, based upon God’s ability to reason. Therefore, our standard of “rationality” is a finite “copy,” for my lack of a better term, of God’s infinite standard of rationality.
When God says, “my thoughts are not your thoughts,” I think He is referring not only to a non-sinful way of thinking, but also a “bigger” way of thinking, being infinite and possessing a whole lot more information than we have.
My presumption, therefore, based on my limited (but grand, nonetheless) ability to reason, is that God (including Jesus) never acted irrationally by the standards of Diety. Knowing what God knows, and reasoning as only God can reason, His actions are consistent and rational. Redemption is a perfectly rational plan, as opposed to anything we would have come up with. We can presume that the idea of the cross (a precursor to defeating death and the resurrection) is “perfectly” rational, within God’s framework.
“Transrational,” then, is perhaps an imperfect characterization, but a fair word (as fair as “trinity”) to describe a God who is not irrational (inconsistent, erratic), but whose thinking transcends our ability to follow along.
Was Jesus or will God ever be “rational” or “sane” by man’s standards? Of course not – and God told that to us. Most scientists as well as psychologists will tell us that faith is irrational. But what do they know?
I will grant, by definition, a deference to the deity’s superior rationality. But that deference is by faith, not by a reasoned human process. We must remember that for you to even say that “redemption is a perfectly rational plan” implies faith which is absolutely not founded on your ability to think it through to belief. (Paul’s wisdom objection again.) Faith is a “gift” not a reward for thinking rightly.
From the human perpective redemption of humanity through the death of one person makes no rational sense at all. (The concept of “original sin” is the companion sticky wicket.)
Jesus is crazy and so’s his Dad. I can see no honest way around this.
However, faith is not necessarily unreasonable, as Paul implies in Romans 1. In fact, it ls the lack of faith defines a fool (from God’s vantage point, anyway).
According to Jesus, no one comes to faith “unless the Father draws him.” (John 6) So, certainly, man’s reason alone cannot achieve faith. However, that does not mean that arriving at a position of faith is unreasonable or irrational (unless your “standards” of reason will not allow any supernatural input).
The issue (of the post anyway) is not whether or not faith is reasonable, but whether or not Jesus is. I contend that by his actions and words he is not reason-able as we have tried to cast him since Aquinas.
Oddly, I think our modern attempts to do so have made the Gospel less appealing even as we’ve made it more rationally accessible.