Carty’s Messiah Complex
I got a kick out of the Maumee Dearest political cartoon of 12/21/05. To refresh your memory, it’s the one where Mr. Finkbeiner, realizing the city is advancing without his input, declares in exasperation, “Hey, stop toying with my Messiah Complex.” That tickled me to no end. The cartoon was meant to be funny, and it was.
Let me abruptly shift gears into serious mode. The Messiah Complex is a surprisingly common phenomenon. Messiah Complex defined literally refers to a person who thinks they are the Messiah. For a more general and generic understanding think of people who believe they’re spokesmen for God, whether prophet, priestess, mystic, shaman, spiritualist, the names may change but the mentality never does.
Most are harmless souls, others are downright dangerous. Consider the “Warrior for God” mentally of the 911 hijackers, or the numerous suicide cults we have witnessed.
People who think they’re doing God’s bidding when they are not cause more harm than good, both here and in the hereafter.
They are difficult people to reason with. Someone with a Messiah Complex would never say what the lampooned cartoon Carty said. If confronted and accused of having a Messiah Complex the person in question would likely parody the Walt Whitman line and say, “it ain’t delusional if it’s true.”
So what to do? How do we keep from being swept away in religious error? Stay true to Scripture. Speak where the Bible speaks; remain silent where the Bible is silent. Do not accept as doctrine the commandments of men.