For years, Christians have innocently reduced Jesus Christ to a personal pal or best friend. This theology is sometimes called the “Me and My Jesus” mentality. It is comforting to know that Christians believe in a personal God, but how far can we take that image? A good example of this was in the movie Dogma. In the movie, the Catholic Church roles out a new image of “The Buddy Christ”. In some ways irreverent, but yet funny, the scene from Dogma calls out to us Christians, who can talk about Christ as if we go out to Starbucks with him everyday.
True, scripture points to an individual believer’s confession as Jesus as Lord as the normal mode of salvation, but do we also forget that Revelation presents Jesus as the eternal Judge? Do we forget that God is eternal, divine, Master, Creator of the universe, the Alpha and Omega, the God of all things seen and unseen? Do we dare approach God with concept of reducing The Almighty to our friend?
John Suk, a professor of homiletics at Asian Theological Seminary in Manila, Philippines gives a great non-western perspective on the “Me and My Jesus” mentality. In 2005, Suk wrote an essay entitled, “A Personal Relationship with Jesus?” in Perspectives (A journal from the Reformed perspective). Suk gives some great thoughts about how to approach the personal relationship with God issue. Here are a few highlights:
Philip Yancey says… in his Reaching for the Invisible God (Zondervan, 2000): “getting to know God” is a lot like getting to know a person. You spend time together, whether happy or sad. You laugh together. You weep together. You fight and argue, then reconcile (108). But as Evangelicals, we also confess that Jesus is not physically present on earth. So how does one have a personal relationship with someone you can’t talk to, share a glass of wine with, or even email?
Suk identifies where we received this language:
In both conservative and liberal denominations, the language of conversion has been replaced by the language of personal relationship. The language of personal relationship fits with secularity; the traditional language of conversion, of trading faiths through a dying to self, does not.
So you are asking, “What’s the big deal?” Read this:
Ultimately, the phrase “a personal relationship with Jesus,” is not found in the Bible. Thus, there is no sustained systematic theological reflection on what the phrase must or most likely means. In fact, people experience the personal presence of God–if that is what they are really experiencing–in a wide variety of idiosyncratic and highly personal ways. Publicly, however, when people say they have a personal relationship with Jesus, it sounds like they are saying they have a relationship characterized by face-time, by talk-time, by touching, by all the things–and especially the intimacy–we usually associate with having a personal relationship with another human being.
I can see where Suk is coming from. From the outsider perspective, this personal language talk seems really crazy. Phases like, “Spend time with Jesus”, “I had a conversation with God”, and “The Lord told me…” Even within churches, when the personal Jesus theology is taken too far it can actually hurt people:
As a result, using the language of personal relationship is bound to lead to all sorts of confusion. As a pastor I met more than a few people who experienced doubt, or perhaps anger, because they didn’t experience Jesus the way their Christian friends claimed to. Not having felt his presence, or listened to his voice… they begin to feel like they don’t have what others have. If they continue going to church they may even begin to feel like frauds, because the very frequency and off-hand familiarity with which so many Evangelicals speak of such a relationship creates social pressure to conform, to nod, “yes, I know what you mean,” and to act as if such a relationship is their reality too.
I think we have lost a little bit of the King James Version of God. You know, the “Thou art” sense. The holy other. The respect. The mystery. “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling”. We Western Christians sometimes want to explain God away into a box when it comes to things like death, tragedy, and suffering. But, when we cannot explain something away we then pull out the “Mystery of God” card.
We need a balanced understanding of God. We need to balance the mystery with the personal. There is nothing “wrong” with personally relating to God or speaking in personal terms with God, but when we only focus on the personal it can become problematic. We Christians need to go beyond the overly familiar language of God and start looking at some biblical ways of talking about God. Try reading the Psalms because the Psalms are very personal thoughts that deal with a very Holy God. The Psalmist presented a great picture of our relationship with God: The Divine, shepherd, Creator of the world and everything in it, providential, respected, and feared. And yet, Yahweh loves us.
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