Trying to Fathoming Jesus´s Magnetism

Two fishermen who were brothers were casting a net into the Sea of Galilee about 2,000 years ago when a man they had never seen before came up to them and said, “Come with me and I will make you fishers of men.” The men, Simon (Peter) and Andrew, dropped their nets and followed him. As they moved on, Jesus spotted two other brothers, James and John, who were in a boat with their father. He called them too and they immediately left the boat - and their father - and followed him. In time these were joined by eight others who subsequently formed the 12 disciples and became known as the apostles after Jesus´s death.

Jesus must have had some awesome power to appear from nowhere, metaphorically snap his fingers and get these weatherbeaten fishermen to follow him like lambs. In fact he had almighty power but that did not mean that he wanted just anyone to follow him or that everyone he called did follow him. He knew that by recruiting these men he was virtually sentencing them to death. Most of them paid a high price for this devotion as they were all later martyred for their faith apart from St John and Judas the traitor.

The order in which the disciples joined him is not definitely known but it is generally accepted that it took several months for them to come together perhaps up to a year. Many others may well have turned their back on his call during this period.

This personal magnetism is a quality we have become wary of in modern times. It is OK when it comes to entertainers and sports idols like John Lennon or Michael Jordan but not political leaders. Compelling leaders like Hitler, Lenin and Mao have proven to be disasters and inflicted death upon millions. All of them started as outsiders but they built up reputations and eventually used modern mass communications methods to spread their message. By contrast Jesus had no such means of spreading his message. He did so by his words in front of individuals, groups and crowds. There was no mass communication in his days and his fame and message spread by word of mouth. Before he went to his Passion he delegated his authority to his disciples and told them to go out into the world, take nothing with them and spread the word just as he had – with their tongues and not at the point of a spear.

When we look back it is incredible to think how the Christian faith spread so far and so rapidly in the wake of the apostles´  journeys. The message was obviously stronger than the messengers because not all of the apostles could have been dynamic orators. St Paul was criticized for his poor delivery and even admitted that he was a poor speaker.

The message continued to spread for centuries after the first disciples went off on their missions. The big breakthrough for Christianity occurred during the reign of Constantine the Great over 300 years after the death of Christ. He converted to Christianity, stopped  persecuting the faith and made it the official religion of the Roman Empire. He went even further and set up the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD to establish basic doctrines. The most famous is the Nicene Creed which we still recite today.

The faith endured for over a millennium, apart from the schism with the Eastern Orthodox churches in 1054, until the Reformation in the 16th century split the Catholic Church. Despite this Jesus´s message has prevailed and gone from strength to strength.

How did one man achieve this? Was it through his divine will? If so why did he appear in human form? Why was he born of a mortal woman? Obviously Jesus´s strength lay in the fact that, despite performing miracles, he was just as human as the rest of us during his time on earth.

With the arrival of the Enlightenment and greater belief in reason rather than blind faith Jesus´s credibility came under attack. The miracles were dismissed as tricks, examples of mass hypnotism and stunts which have never been confirmed outside the Gospels. Jesus was accused of being a shaman or magician.

A large number of commentators from the 19th century onwards have said that Jesus suffered from a mental illness and those he attracted were bewitched by him. They justify this view by pointing to episodes in the Bible such as in Mark: “When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, ‘He is out of his mind.’ And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He is possessed by Beelzebub! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.’”( 3:21–22.)

John states,  “The Jews who heard these words were again divided. Many of them said, ‘He is demon-possessed and raving mad. Why listen to him?’ But others said, ‘These are not the sayings of a man possessed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?’” (10:19–21.)

Others using modern psychoanalytical theories have described Jesus as suffering from paranoia, megalomania and egoism amongst other conditions. However, others have defended Jesus and dismissed the use of Freudian and other  theories to describe Jesus´s personality.

Going back to the disciples, the men who put their lives in Jesus´s hands, they saw him as someone straight out of the Jewish tradition. As Paul Johnson points out in his masterly study “A History of Christianity” Jesus  appeared at a time when there were many preachers wandering throughout Palestine claiming to proclaim the word of God or even be the Messiah. Johnson says Jesus could have easily just become a cult leader who, like the other voices in the wilderness, have disappeared into obscurity.

However, there was something about Jesus that singled him out. As Johnson says, “He radiated authority – it was, from the very start, the most conspicuous things about him.”

That may be true but Johnson also highlights that not everyone was either spellbound or intimidated by this authority. Johnson is no hagiographer. Read what he says about Jesus and bear in mind these words when you have questions the next time you are at mass and read or hear about his actions, words and parables.

“A great many people found Jesus impossible to accept or follow. He was repudiated by his family, at least for a time. His native district did not accept him. There were certain towns where his teaching made no impact. In some places he could not work miracles. In others they caused little stir or were soon forgotten. He made many enemies and at all times there were a large number of people who ridiculed his claims and simply brushed aside his religious ideas. He could assemble a crowd of supporters, but it was always just as easy to collect a mob against him. Once he began to operate openly in the Temple area, he became a marked man for both Roman and Jewish authorities and an object of suspicion. His refusal to make his claims explicit and unambiguous was resented, and not only by his enemies. His followers were never wholly in his confidence, and some of them had mixed feelings from time to time about the whole enterprise. What had they involved themselves in? There is a hint that Judas's betrayal may have been motivated less by greed - an easy and unconvincing apostolic smear - than by shock at the sudden fear he might be serving an enemy of religion.” (P. 29 Simon and Schuster edition 1976.) 

Yet Jesus was a complicated person – or God – or combination of both. He preached love yet lost his temper and chased the merchants out of the Temple. He was short tempered with his mother and disciples. He was either incredibly brave – or foolish – to defy the religious and Roman authorities so openly. He virtually challenged them to arrest him. He offered no defense when Pontius Pilate gave him the chance to go free. He spurned the Devil contemptuously when Satan offered him the world. He said, “Blessed are the peacemakers” but he made no attempt to forge peace with those he regarded as hypocrites.

He was a charismatic figure who dazzles us with his personality and force as he did the disciples who followed him and the crowds he preached to. He was a humble carpenter who was cruelly put to death using the very materials he used in his daily work – nails and wood – yet he proclaimed his message from the cross where he expired as clearly as he did when he told Simon Peter and Andrew to follow him. Over two thousands years later we are still following him.

© John Brander Fitzpatrick 2026