We are living in a religious culture that is always talking of "being close to Jesus" or "having a personal relationship with Jesus." So often people talk as if Jesus is always sitting on their shoulder. This has always concerned or frustrated me a bit because I didn't really "feel" the way a lot of these people claimed to feel. The following article does a much better job than I could ever do at expressing my thoughts and frustrations. John Suk articulates well an accurate view of the Christian faith. I realize this may step on the toes of some, but I strongly believe it is a topic worth figuring out. Many are turned off because of our mushy Jesus talk and to some extant I understand the hang-up.

The following is a short excerpt from the article:

Ultimately, Witten argues, the language of religious conversion, the language of sin, repentance, of principalities and powers has been traded in for something else. Now in both conservative and liberal denominations, the language of conversion has been replaced by the language of personal relationship.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.

One cannot fail but recall David Wells' warning:

There is an irony in all of this that appears to be entirely lost on those at the heart of it. They labor under the illusion that the God they make in the image of the self becomes more real as he more nearly comes to resemble the self, to accommodate its needs and desires. The truth is quite the opposite. It is ridiculous to assert that God could become more real by abandoning his own character in an effort to identify more completely with ours. And yet the illusion has proved compelling to a whole generation. (God in the Wasteland, Eerdmans, 1994, 100-101)

Is this possible? Do many Christians have a personal relationship not so much with Jesus, or God, but with something in their heads, with something that they're comfortable with, a social construction driven by their need to go easy on themselves? I'm sure this is not the intention. I'm sure that the presence of the Spirit that testifies to the truth prevents many Christians who use the language of personal relationship from falling prey to its worst temptations. Still, given the repeated and serious warnings against idolatry all through the Bible, we ought to be very, very careful when it comes to imagining the God we say we're in a personal relationship with.

Click the link below to read the full article:

http://www.rca.org/page.aspx?pid=3070

Jordan Tong