The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus

by Lee Strobel

“We have to ask, Why is there no other first-century Jew who has millions of followers today? Why isn’t there a John the Baptist movement? Why, of all first-century figures, including the Roman emperors, is Jesus still worshiped today, while the others have crumbled into the dust of history?

“It’s because this Jesus—the historical Jesus—is also the living Lord. That’s why. It’s because he’s still around, while the others are long gone.”

“One last question cannot be ignored: Was Jesus mad?”8

even the earliest material about Jesus showed he was claiming to be God incarnate. That naturally raises the issue of whether Jesus was crazy when he made those assertions.

Lord, liar or lunatic.

Jesus said he was God—was he crazy,

this is a legitimate topic that’s worthy of further analysis. Experts say that people suffering from delusional psychosis may appear rational much of the time yet can have grandiose beliefs that they are superlative individuals. Some can even attract followers who believe they’re geniuses. Maybe that’s what happened with Jesus, I suggested.

“psychologists don’t just look at what a person says. They’ll go much deeper than that. They’ll look at a person’s emotions, because disturbed individuals frequently show inappropriate depression, or they might be vehemently angry, or perhaps they’re plagued with anxiety. But look at Jesus: he never demonstrated inappropriate emotions.

“He certainly got angry at times,”

“Yes, he did, but it was a healthy kind of anger at people taking advantage of the downtrodden by lining their pockets at the temple. He wasn’t just irrationally ticked off because someone was annoying him; this was a righteous reaction against injustice and the blatant mistreatment of people.

“Other deluded people will have mis...

“They think people are watching them or are trying to get them when they’re not. They’re out of contact with reality. They misperceive the actions of other people and accuse them of doing things they have no intention of ever doing. Again, we don’t see this in Jesus. He was obviously in contact with reality. He wasn’t paranoid...

people with psychological difficulties may have thinking disorders—they can’t carry on a logical conversation, they’ll jump to faulty conclusions, they’re irrational. We don’t see this in Jesus. He spoke clearly, powerfully, and eloquently. He wa...

“Another sign of mental disturbances is unsuitable behavior, such as dressing oddly or being unable to relate socially to others. Jesus’ behavior was quite in line with what would be expected, and he had deep and abiding relationship...

“He was loving but didn’t let his compassion immobilize him; he didn’t have a bloated ego, even though he was often surrounded by adoring crowds; he maintained balance despite an often demanding lifestyle; he always knew what he was doing and where he was going; he cared deeply about people, including women and children, who weren’t seen as being important back then; he was able to accept people while not merely winking at their sin; he responded to individuals based on where they were at and what they uniquely needed.”

“All in all, I just don’t see signs that Jesus was suffering from any known mental illness,”

we don’t see obvious signs of delusion in Jesus. But what about people who were directly interacting with him? What did they see from their much closer vantage point?

Jesus wasn’t just making outrageous claims about himself. He was backing them up with miraculous acts of compassion, like healing the blind.

Jesus didn’t just claim to be God—he backed it up with amazing feats of healing, with astounding demonstrations of power over nature, with transcendent and unprecedented teaching, with divine insights into people, and ultimately with his own resurrection from the dead, which absolutely nobody else has been able to duplicate. So when Jesus claimed to be God, it wasn’t crazy. It was the truth.”

Have you ever seen a stage hypnotist give water to someone they’ve put in a trance and then suggest to them that they were drinking wine?

British author Ian Wilson

discusses the possibility that Jesus may have been a master hypnotist, which could explain the supposedly supernatural aspects of his life.

“This guy has a whole lot more faith in hypnosis than I do!” he exclaimed. “While it’s a clever argument, it just doesn’t stand up to analysis. It’s full of holes.”

“First, there’s the problem of a whole bunch of people being hypnotized. Not everybody is equally susceptible.

“Second, hypnosis doesn’t generally work on people who are skeptics and doubters.

“Third, concerning the Resurrection, hypnosis wouldn’t explain the empty tomb.”

“Fourth, look at the miracle of turning water into wine. Jesus never addressed the wedding guests. He didn’t even suggest to the servants that the water had been turned into wine—he merely told them to take some water to the master of the banquet. He’s the one who tasted it and said it was wine, with no prior prompting.

“Fifth, the skin healing that Wilson talks about wasn’t spontaneous, was it?”

“Compare that,” Collins said, “with Jesus healing ten lepers in Luke 17. They were instantaneously healed—and 100 percent. That’s not explainable merely by hypnosis. And neither is his healing of a man with a shriveled hand in Mark 3.

“And finally, the gospels record all sorts of details about what Jesus said and did, but never once do they portray him as saying or doing anything that would suggest he was hypnotizing people. I could go on and on.”

“Jesus

talked to demons and cast them out of the people they supposedly possessed. But is it really rational to believe that evil spirits are responsible for some illnesses and bizarre behavior?”

I accept that demons exist,”

many people believe in angels.

it’s not too hard to conclude that some might...

“At the same time, we shouldn’t be too quick to jump to a demonic conclusion when faced with a recalcitrant problem. As C. S. Lewis put it, there are two equal and opposite errors we can fall into concerning demons: ‘One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased with both errors.’ ”8

but would secular psychologists consider it rational to believe in the demonic?”

“It’s interesting how things are changing,” he mused. “Our society today is caught up in ‘spirituality.’ That’s a term that can mean almost anything, but it does recognize the supernatural. It’s very interesting what psychologists are believing in these days. Some are into Eastern mystical stuff; some talk about the power of shamans to influence people’s lives.

“Whereas twenty-five years ago the suggestion of demonic activity would have been immediately dismissed, many psychologists are beginning to recognize that maybe there are more things in heaven and earth than our philosophies can account for.”

Jesus claimed to be God. Nobody is suggesting he was intentionally deceptive. And now Collins has concluded, based on thirty-five years of psychological experience, that he was not mentally impaired. However, that left me with a new question: Did Jesus fulfill the attributes of God? After all, it’s one thing to claim divinity; it’s quite another to embody the characteristics that make God, God.

Oddly enough, the concept of an artist’s drawing can provide a rough analogy that can help us in our quest for the truth about Jesus.

Here’s how: The Old Testament provides numerous details about God that sketch out in great specificity what he’s like.

Now, Jesus claims to be God. But does he fulfill

characteristics of deity? In other words, if we examine Jesus carefully, does his likeness closely match the sketch of God that we find elsewhere in the Bible? If it doesn’t, we can conclude that his claim to being God is false.

issues seem to suggest that Jesus doesn’t resemble the sketch of God.

of the many things he did, one of the most striking to me is his forgiving of sin.”

if you do something against me, I have the right to forgive you. However, if you do something against me and somebody else comes along and says, ‘I forgive you,’ what kind of cheek is that? The only person who can say that sort of thing meaningfully is God himself, because sin, even if it is against other people, is first and foremost a defiance of God and his laws.

“So along comes Jesus and says to sinners, ‘I forgive you.’ The Jews immediately recognize the blasphemy of this. They react by saying, ‘Who can forgive sins but God alone?’ To my mind, that is one of the most striking things Jesus did.”

Jesus

asserted that he himself was without sin. And certainly sinlessness is a...

“Histor...