You don’t have to believe that the whole Bible is true in order to have a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. Do you struggle with Leviticus? Do the Bible’s teachings on certain social issues, gender roles, or God’s judgment present you with a leap of faith you’re unwilling to take?
Relax. You don’t have to accept every word of Scripture from the get-go. And that’s not just my opinion; I’m taking it straight from the Apostle Paul himself:
If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. – Romans 10:9
According to this passage, becoming a Christian is as simple as the Texas two-step.
Step One: Declare that Jesus is Lord.
Step Two: Believe in the Resurrection.
That’s why, for Christians, the resurrection of Jesus is everything. In my last two FG&T reflections, I tackled two of the most common arguments against the resurrection of Jesus. On Good Friday I addressed the popular secular claim that the New Testament accounts of the resurrection weren’t written down until decades – if not centuries – after Jesus died and (according to Christians) rose again. I offered the “Five Facts” about the resurrection that even the most skeptical scholars now accept:
Fact #1: Jesus died on a cross around 30 AD.
Fact #2: He was buried in a tomb belonging to Joseph of Arimathea.
Fact #3: The tomb was empty three days later.
Fact #4: Hundreds of eyewitnesses encountered the risen Jesus in the flesh.
Fact #5: Those eyewitnesses were willing to lose everything for their conviction that Jesus rose, and even as they were being hunted and slaughtered, they fearlessly spread the news about Jesus’ resurrection across three continents before the end of the first century.
Last Friday, I examined the anti-resurrection argument that Jesus’ followers fabricated the story of his resurrection as part of an elaborate hoax. The only trouble with this explanation is that all the so-called hoaxers were willing to lose their families, their dignity, and in many cases their very lives for their belief in the resurrected Jesus. And while some people have been willing to die for a lie (i.e. Jonestown or 9/11), no one is willing to die for something they know to be a lie.
In the case of the resurrection, the eyewitnesses to the event – the original leaders of the Christian movement – were the same people who died on guillotines and crosses, or they were stoned to death or impaled, or they were torn apart in lions’ mouths in the Roman Colosseum because they refused to recant their belief that Jesus rose from the dead.
The historical, factual case for the resurrection of Jesus is simply too strong to be dismissed as religious wish-fulfillment. In recent years, secular critics have recognized their predicament and have been forced by facts to resort to anti-resurrection arguments that are, quite frankly, nonsensical…which brings us to today’s argument against the resurrection of Jesus.
Argument #3: The eyewitnesses of the Resurrection shared a mass hallucination.
Seriously. This is what they’ve come to.
The late Dr. Gerd Ludemann, an atheist scholar of the New Testament, famously conceded that the eyewitnesses of the resurrection must have seen something: “It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus’ death in which he appeared to them as the risen Christ.”
In spite of this indisputable fact, Ludemann was so hell-bent on disputing the resurrection that he devised what is now known as the Mass Hallucination Hypothesis, which goes something like this:
After denying Jesus three times, Peter must have been so disappointed in himself and traumatized by shame that he subconsciously projected a psychological vision of Jesus (who was still super-dead, except in Peter’s mind). But the mind is a powerful thing, and after having his private hallucination of the risen Jesus, Peter must have convinced himself that Jesus had actually risen from the dead.
According to Ludemann, “Under the impression of Jesus’s proclamation and death, there finally awoke in Peter the ‘And yet. . . ‘ of faith. Thereby the crucified Jesus showed himself to be the living Jesus, so that Peter could once again apply to himself and this time with profound clarity God’s word of forgiveness present in Jesus’s work.”
Peter’s experience must have been infectious among the early Christians, and soon others, too, who did not share Peter’s trauma, also must have seen hallucinations of the risen Lord. When Jewish opponents objected and asked where Jesus’ body was, his disciples – still under the influence of their shared hallucinations – lied without knowing they were lying.
Meanwhile, Saul of Tarsus (a.k.a. The Apostle Paul) must have struggled so mightily with guilt as he labored under the impossible demands of Phariseeism that his passion for murdering Christians must have actually been a manifestation of his secret, inner attraction to the Christian message. The famous psychologist Carl Jung hypothesized that Paul had subconsciously been a Christian for some time but had repressed his true faith until it broke into his conscious mind, which resulted in a vision of Jesus followed by “psychogenic blindness”.
On the Damascus Road, Paul’s inner struggle must have erupted in a hallucination of Jesus, which must have resulted in Paul’s wholesale conversion to the faith he once persecuted. Ludemann, once more: “The guilt complex which had arisen with the persecution was resolved through the certainty of being in Christ.”
In similar ways, all the early Christians who saw the resurrected Jesus – including the five hundred who saw him at the same time – fell victim to their respective subconscious selves, as their repressed guilt surfaced in the form of a single hallucination of the risen Jesus, which they all must have simultaneously shared.
You don’t have to be a psychiatrist to diagnose the insanity of the Mass Hallucination Hypothesis. These guys have become so committed to their belief that Jesus could not have risen – despite all the supporting, historical facts – that they’ve painted themselves into a proverbial corner. In their attempt to dispense with the outrageous Christian claim that a man rose from the dead, they have concocted an even more outrageous claim: that five hundred men simultaneously manifested the same, subconscious vision of a man who rose from the dead.
They explained away the Christian miracle by making up their own.
It’s sad to see such brilliant scholars scramble to support their presuppositions about Christianity in such patently pathetic ways. It’s also a cautionary tale about how our pride can keep us from seeing and accepting the Truth, and I suppose that’s where I’ll end this series of reflections. If you find yourself struggling to believe that Jesus rose, it could have more to do with your pride than you care to admit.
When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.
– Proverbs 11:2
I speak from experience here. I know what it’s like to hate the idea of admitting that I’m wrong. Before I surrendered to Jesus in 2013, I despised the thought of becoming “one of those Christians” because I’d built my entire identity around criticizing those Christians!
But at the end of it all, I discovered that, in this life, you can follow your pride where it leads, or you can follow the facts to the Truth. By the grace of God, I chose the latter, and it’s made all the difference in my life.
And by the way, even though I didn’t believe the whole Bible was true when I first became a Christian, my faith in the risen Jesus has led me, over time, to believe that the entirety of Scripture is trustworthy and true.
But it all started with the resurrection, and I pray you will choose to follow the facts about the resurrection and to allow the Truth to set you free.
