While most Christians spend their lives awaiting the return of their Lord and Savior, there are those who believe he has already returned--because they are him. I'm fairly sure there are at least three people at any given time who believe themselves to be Jesus Christ himself. Prophets and even antichrists seem to pop up a good deal too. There appears to be a profound psychological need in some people to believe themselves to be more than just your average human being.

So what happens when you round up a bunch of alleged Jesuses and put them in a room together? One Dr. Milton Rokeach decided to study just that back in 1959. He received a research grant to carry out an experiment in which three men who all believed they were Jesus would live together for two years. The men were all clinically psychotic patients institutionalized at Ypsilanti State Hospital in Michigan. They were aged 70, 58, and 39 at the time and they were all absolutely convinced that they were the reincarnation of the one and only Jesus Christ.

As you might imagine, some conflicts arose when the three men were instructed to spend time together. Perhaps the most fundamental quality of being human is the knowledge that there is one of you and everything you perceive around you is not you. The first distinction we make in consciousness is "me" and "not-me". Every other division is secondary. No matter the threat to our particular identities, we know throughout life that we are the only ones behind our eyes, that we are individuals and that every other person has a distinct identity. Meeting someone who believes he has the same identity as you could obviously be problematic--especially if that identity is one as lofty as God Himself. 

Of course, these being psychiatric patients with some fairly severe mental disorders, the three men all had different ways of manifesting their Godhood and of knowing that they were the only God. They all had slightly different ways of introducing themselves. One stated that he would never claim to be God unless it were true. He knew he had to be careful, being in a mental hospital, but he would never give up that claim. Another concluded that the other two men were lesser, dead beings. The third figured that the other two men were, in fact, gods, but hollow, instrumental ones. All found themselves slightly antagonistic towards each other. Two figured that they were being forced to interact with the other gods in order to convince them of their non-god-ness. The third understood that the three of them were being studied--that qualities of identity were in some way on display. 

By today's standard, the experiment does not seem highly scientific. The process of keeping three differently ill patients together and studying their interactions seems more metaphysical than psychological--and perhaps cruel at that. But The Three Christs of Ypsilanti contains some fascinating discourse on what it means to be an individual human and how we react when that individuality is threatened under adverse conditions.