Mystical Teachings Of Jesus
This is an important subject “Mystical Teachings Of Jesus“. What we think of Jesus and his self-identity is the biggest single issue in today’s arena of thought. Oscar Wilde expressed a view, quoted in an interesting book by Rivkah Zim, that Jesus was a deluded mystic, whose creative imagination was the source of all his ideas. So, was Jesus merely a mystic Jewish peasant teacher, who conjured up fabulous visions of himself as the I AM, of his God, and of heaven and hell, or is he who he claimed to be? Are we able to distinguish between megalomania; a person with a vast deluded sense of self-importance and true deity?
• GREAT DIVIDE
This is where no one stays on the fence. Jesus is the great divider of humanity. Like Oscar Wilde with his, ‘Out of his own imagination entirely did Jesus of Nazareth create himself’ [1] you form a judgement based on whatever views you have gathered about Jesus, and are ready to condemn him as a deluded mystic. Or to use Stephen Fry’s view of Jesus, he was ‘twee'[2] – quaint or sentimental. But each must form their own conclusion.
Here is a cluster of subjects that may help in any evaluation.
• WITNESS
The first is the issue of the historical and factual nature of the Scriptural information about Jesus. This includes the quality of eye-witness reports, the nature of the relationship to Jesus of the people who knew him, and their eye-witness claims. Here, we ask, were these people prone to exaggerate, perhaps for spiritual favours or material self-advancement, and if so what motivations were there, for unschooled Jewish men, to transform a peasant teacher into God-incarnate? Was this merely a common trait of Jewish messianic extremism, of which Jesus’ followers were conspicuous examples?
• BALANCE
A second subject might concern the psychological balance of Jesus as portrayed in the New Testament. Are their elements of grandiosity, a serious delusional disorder, which, if part of a person’s psyche today, would require treatment? Or was Jesus well-integrated, and how would we assess that?
Allied with this, a third question might ask if Jesus was subject to mood swings. Was he a prime case of a manic-depressive, whose genius fired a brilliant moral and ethical splendour, but which then quickly sank to depths, when he washed the feet of others and taught them he was destined for a sacrificial death?