Could Jesus read minds?

[askandanswer]

First paragraph, chapter 20, Jesus the Christ

Had the Master been mindful of policy and desirous of securing official recognition, this opportunity to attach to Himself as influential a person as a scribe would have received careful consideration if not immediate acceptance; but He, who could read the minds and know the hearts of men, chose rather than accepted.

 

Luke 9:47 And Jesus, perceiving the thought of their heart, took a child, and set him by him,

 

Mark 2:8 And immediately when Jesus perceived in his spirit that they so reasoned within themselves, he said unto them, Why reason ye these things in your hearts?

 

Luke 5:22 But when Jesus perceived their thoughts, he answering said unto them, What reason ye in your hearts?

[Guest]

Looks that way.

[Vort]

"Reading minds" has become a meme of cheap sci-fi. Knowing the thoughts of another is a gift of the Spirit, given to those whose calling requires it.

[pkstpaul]

One is certainly left scratching their head when seeing magicians and mind readers such as viewable on variety shows. Those tricks and skills are as old as time.

 

But, for Jesus, He knows the hearts of all men simply by His being God. He created the hearts of men. So, I don't see the mystery.

[prisonchaplain]

I would argue that Jesus could not read minds.  He was, after all, fully human.  He became "a little lower than the angels."  My take is that the Holy Spirit granted him the insight, just as he might to us, as a gifting at a particular time. 

[Blackmarch]

interesting question. we read faces,  we read actions, we can read brainwave activity charts, and other physical phenomena to come to a judgement on what someone intends, is feeling, thinking, etc... with varying degrees of accuracy (or inaccuracy).

on the spiritual side of things God knows everything, spirits communicate in ways we don't really understand.

What would constitute reading a mind or a thought?

I think the word percieved is apt in this case- rather than an invasion of someones thoughts or whatever along that line... percieved would seem to imply an attentiveness to what another would emanate from themselves- I'd just wager that Christ is able to percieve better than others being more attuned to the world of spirit, as well as being able to commune with the Holy Spirit and God better than others.

[Guest]

I would argue that Jesus could not read minds.  He was, after all, fully human.  He became "a little lower than the angels."  My take is that the Holy Spirit granted him the insight, just as he might to us, as a gifting at a particular time. 

I believe I agree with you. I don't think of knowing their hearts as being identical to reading their minds. Personally, I dislike the idea that even my Heavenly Father reads my mind.

[Traveler]

I very much like what I believe the scripture implies about Christ - that he understand our heart.  Not the modern idea of heart to be our emotions but the ancient concept of our essence, core or soul.  I believe this to be very different than the thoughts of our minds.  For example I do not believe all the thoughts in our minds are uniquely ours.  That many thoughts originate outside of our essence or the core or soul of what we really are.  I believe that many thought are placed in our minds as temptations and come from Satan.

 

Sometimes thoughts in our minds are very much an embarrassment should others realize that such thought found a way into our minds.  Controlling our mind is not so much keeping out thoughts but dealing with the thoughts - whatever they be - to discard or embrace.  Note that Jesus said, "As a man thinks in their heart - so are they."   He did not say "As a man thinks in his mind so is he."

 

Knowing the thoughts of someone's mind is not so difficult because it is possible to put thoughts there.  That is in essence the trick of "mind reading".  But there are way to communicate beyond words - and this is not always a spiritual thing.  We call it body language and it is very much a part of our human communications.  In essence we do not lie but to ourselves - and such contradictions can easily be seen by others that have skills to read more subtle clues than our audible words. 

 

I do not believe that the thoughts of our hearts are so much a spiritual "trick" as some imply as it is an honest sensitivity to subtle clues prevalent in our "being".   It seems to me that those that are so convinced are easy targets for deceptions.  We should not confuse such things as gifts of the spirit.

Edited September 17, 2015 by Traveler

[pkstpaul]

Personally, I dislike the idea that even my Heavenly Father reads my mind.

 What's He doing when you pray?

[askandanswer]

I guess that what Jesus was doing was using the gift of discernment, as explained in the Guide to the Scriptures.

https://www.lds.org/scriptures/gs/discernment-gift-of.p2?lang=eng&letter=d

 

 

DISCERNMENT, GIFT OF

See also Gifts of the Spirit

To understand or know something through the power of the Spirit. The gift of discernment is one of the gifts of the Spirit. It includes perceiving the true character of people and the source and meaning of spiritual manifestations.

[Guest]

 What's He doing when you pray?

Well, I always kind of hoped He was listening, and paying attention to what I was opening to Him or sending to Him. 

[hagoth]

The Book of Mormon attests to this general principle too.

[Vort]

In computer software programming, there is the concept of an "interface". The idea is that I have some information of some sort in Part A of my program, and Part B needs to be able to get at that information. So I set up a sort of contract with Part A, wherein I agree or mandate that Part A will provide information in a certain, closely specified way. Part B can now ask Part A for the information, and Part A will provide it exactly as agreed. I don't guarantee how Part A will generate that information. No one knows; maybe Part A will go through a huge and complex formula to calculate it, or maybe Part A will simply read the information off of a database. That's my business. But Part A will provide the information in the format we have agreed on. Of that, everyone can be absolutely sure.

 

So, for example, when you ping your favorite stock site for the latest market information or a quote of the price of a share of XYZ Corporation, you don't know (or care) how the site is getting the information, how it's processing it, or anything like that. You care only that the information is accurate and that it is given to you in a form you can use.

 

I remember in the post-Apollo era of the 1970s, when I was a teenager, the US and the USSR decided to stage a political performance of sorts by having a US Apollo-type space capsule dock in low earth orbit with a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft. But of course, the docking mechanisms of each spacecraft were different, so a middle piece was needed, an adapter that fit the Apollo capsule on one end and the Soyuz spacecraft on the other. It was an interface that allowed communication between the two spacecraft, which would otherwise have been impossible or at least very difficult.

 

Our brains are private. Or maybe our brains actually are not private, but our spirits are private, which amounts to the same thing. I have for decades wondered in awe at the idea that you can have some idea in your brain, and then by flapping your lips and grunting, you can cause that same idea (or something very close to it) to arise in my mind!!! This is miraculous, even unbelievable. It is the miracle of language.

 

There is no way to transplant the idea from your brain directly into mine. There is no possible mechanism for that; on the cellular level, your brain is a completely different structure from my brain. Your synaptic connections between your neurons are utterly unique, certainly not the same as mine. The basic principles upon which your brain works are the same as mine, or very close, but the actual brains themselves bear only gross resemblance to each other. On the microscopic scale, they are unalike. Your idea exists in some combination of synaptic connections and firings, but you can't just go wire those same connections into my brain, because all the synapses are different.

 

So we need an interface, something to allow a translation between how your brain makes associations and how my brain does it. That interface is called "language". I believe there is also a spiritual language, which may or may not be spoken, but which serves the same purpose of bridging the gap between us. God knows this language perfectly, and we are struggling to learn it. So if it is impossible to "read minds", as I suspect it is, that doesn't mean it is impossible to "know thoughts". The two are not the same.

 

Hope that made some sense.

[clwnuke]

I believe that the communication is done via the Holy Spirit to our individual spirits. I speculate that spirit has the ability to cross boundaries of space and is not subject to time, so the Holy Spirit could have easily provided revelation to Christ on what others were thinking. That's why I think it is so important to be in "tune" with the Holy Spirit. It can provide access to all of God's wisdom.

 

Einstein referred to the property of Quantum Physics that allows infinite and instant communication of information as "spooky interaction at a distance". Once you've experienced the feeling of the Holy Spirit clearly revealing information to you, it stops being spooky and builds faith.

[Traveler]

I believe that the communication is done via the Holy Spirit to our individual spirits. I speculate that spirit has the ability to cross boundaries of space and is not subject to time, so the Holy Spirit could have easily provided revelation to Christ on what others were thinking. That's why I think it is so important to be in "tune" with the Holy Spirit. It can provide access to all of God's wisdom.

 

Einstein referred to the property of Quantum Physics that allows infinite and instant communication of information as "spooky interaction at a distance". Once you've experienced the feeling of the Holy Spirit clearly revealing information to you, it stops being spooky and builds faith.

 

You and I have not directly discussed subjects yet - and as a side note - have you considered the possibility that spirits are beings of intersecting but different dimension.  That they may view us (in part) as we would view a two dimensional being existing on a plain in our 3 dimensional existence.

Edited September 23, 2015 by Traveler

[spamlds]

Missionaries and bishops can probably tell you a little bit about discernment.  When I was on my mission, I was knocking on doors one day in a large French city.  We had a conversation with a guy who lived in a large walk-up apartment building.  He didn't let us in, but he kept talking to us through the door.  He kept challenging us with various questions about faith and why it isn't logical or scientific to believe. There was an edge of bitterness in his voice, but my companion didn't quite pick up on it.  All of a sudden, I knew (discerned) that this guy had been a former member of the Church.  

 

I asked him out of the blue, "So how long has it been since you left the Church?"  My companion's head snapped around in astonishment and the guy looked at me incredulous.  Sure enough, he admitted that he had been a member and had fallen away.  It had been many years since he had left the Church after having his faith damaged by some anti-Mormon literature.  I didn't "read" his mind, but I was given the "hunch" and I was bold enough to act on it.  

 

Personally, I think that Jesus operated like we do.  Although he was a member of the Godhead, he assumed mortality fully and he overcame the veil gradually.  His personal purity and obedience to his Father's commandments gave him access to unlimited spiritual gifts.  Those gifts came, like the do with us, as he had need of them. 

[Guest]

This is a purely semantic question.  So the answer is "depends on your definition".