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Some Hard Questions about God for Thanksgiving

November 20th, 2008 | reading, writing

“You don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus?” my wife asks.

“How can I!” I say. “I’ve never seen Jesus. I’m not talking about some kind of metaphysical conversion experience. I’m not talking about Jesus in others, least of these kind of stuff.”

“Then what are you talking about?”

It’s not a real conversation. Its staged. Part of a one hour drama I helped write for our church’s Thanksgiving outreach. We’re performing it this Saturday, and we’re in crunch time. Drama people know what I mean. God help me remember my lines. [UPDATE: We remembered our lines. The performance was fun. Here's the script if you're interested.]

Whenever a movie, story, play, or essay takes us to the really dark places, the author runs the danger of leading the audience to despair. Even if you are a despairing person, depressing art isn’t usually good for sales. Oh, make it artsy enough and the critics may adore you. But critics don’t pay the bills.

I’m not trying to pay any bills with our little church drama, but I still don’t want to offer the audience “God Next Door: a story of despair.” Especially because our tagline is “God Next Door: a story of hope.” Gotta keep the truth in advertising, you know?

But I have to admit that I ask some pretty hard questions.

  • What does it mean to relate to God? (I have enough trouble relating to my family relations.)
  • What role does the institutional church in that process? (Raise your hand if you are a fan of institutions! Anyone?)
  • What do we do with the ugly way the church acts sometimes? (There’s a skit where the church and Jesus are getting married. And the church is acting like an insanely rude and disrespectful bride. It’s painful.)
  • What do we do with the meaningless church language we sometimes use? (Like that tricky metaphor of having “a personal relationship with Jesus.” Come on, folks. What does that mean exactly?)
  • And of course, the really hard question: What would it look like if the Trinity played a game of Monopoly? (The Father has philosophical problems with the Chance cards, but he’s perfectly happy to make Jesus pay $1100 when his iron lands on Park Place with three houses.)

The whole week is beginning to remind me of a book Mike Morrell sent me to look at recently for The Ooze. I’m talking about Dave Zimmerman’s book Deliver Us from Me-Ville. Partly, my mind goes there because Dave starts the book with a funny story about getting conceited over his excellent portrayal of Peter’s humility in a church play.

Taking pride in pretending to be humble. That’s the sort of hypocrisy we Christians excel at.

Dave even laughs it off at one point. “What kind of nuanced nincompoop would have the sheer moxie to write a whole book on self-absorption? … I recognized from the beginning of this process, the absurdity of declaring myself an expert on narcissism…”

I’m no expert, but I enjoy Dave’s blog… and I certainly have my own moments of self-absorption. And I wonder about these personal relationships we talk about. I love having strong personal relationships with folks. Though I can count the deep relationships of my life on one hand.

I’d love to put God there, but I don’t know how. For me a relationship is about listening. I sit with my dad in a coffee shop and we talk about poetry. I talk, he listens. He talks, I listen. We listen to each other.

But my relationship with God always feels like a series of disconnected monologues. God writes the Bible. Two thousand years later I send up some lame prayers from time to time. I know it is more complicated than that–but I learned how to pray in Me-Ville.

Viewing 22 Comments

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    Definitely some hard questions in there, Marcus, and I'm thankful our God is big enough to handle them. Sometimes I sit back and look out our faith and think about how strange it really is. I mean, we have a "relationship" with someone we can't see, can't hear, can't touch, and we talk to him, sing to him, write about him. We have strange rituals (eating his body and drinking his blood?). And yet, I know that the hope I experience is tangible. His love is palpable. His peace really does transcend. . .I look forward to heaven when this life all makes more sense.

    I've heard of that book and will have to add it to my wish list.
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    Funny that you mention God being "big enough." Someone else made the music
    decisions for the songs that are sung between skits, but I asked them to
    seriously consider using Chris Rice's song "Big Enough." It's always been a
    favorite.
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    I prescribe 1 hour, coffee, and N.T. Wright's Surprised By Hope.
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    Sounds like a good plan for next week.
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    You asked "what does it mean to relate to God?" which I've been struggling with, in a different way. I recently wrote to myself during church right after musical worship "What does it mean to LOVE God, and how can I love a God I don't fully understand?" and it relates to your question of what a personal relationship with Jesus is. and many many many other "churchy" words. I think "personal relationship with Jesus" is a weird expression... to get personal with Jesus, you're also personal with God, and that's all through the Holy Spirit. That's who is in the coffeeshop with you listening and talking back. If you sit down to "spend time with the Lord" you can ask the Holy Spirit to be with you, because He's already inside waiting for it. And that's the only way to understand a tiny bit of God, and Jesus, and understanding them really helps to figure out how to love God and relate to God.
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    So true, Melissa. Good to hear from you again. There's another line in the
    play where someone says, "I don't know how to have a relationship with a
    ghost." It's tricky, you know? We use this language to make God real, but it
    sometimes it works against us.
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    M--

    Your comment on language really struck me. Its almost like we speak in code, a secret language no one else understands. Then, when we present the gospel, we don't know how to do it in real-talk. WE almost need to hand them a cipher book!
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    The cipher book would be for us, not others. We can't expect to help people
    if we require them to learn our language first. Instead, we have to learn
    THEIR language. In the US this can be particularly tricky because so many
    people claim Christianity. It seems like we're always starting with damage
    control.
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    "Having a personal relationship with God." Yeh, I often feel guilt (good Baptist boy that I am) over that metaphor. I can "measure" the growth in my relationships with people, but it's not that simple with God. It's a little distressing. But one good thing about the metaphor: it pushes me to not just know ABOUT God, but to know God better. It's what Paul says in Phil. 3: "to know Christ and the power of His resurrection..." Still trying to figure it all out...
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    Funny that you mention that verse, Blake. Here's where I've landed for now.
    A personal relationship with Jesus means this, "I want to know Christ and
    the power of his rising, share in his suffering and conform to his death."
    My personal relationship begins when I share in his sufferings... whatever
    that means. : )
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    Thanks for Dave's blog link. His new book title made me laugh and I had to go see what else he has to say.
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    Yeah, I've never personally been able to make myself use that expression, "personal relationship with God." Intuitively, I "know" (believe/hope) with all that is in me that God is there, that he listens to me, and that sometimes he "does something" inside me that moves me to act in a certain way, or "strangely warms" me inside that I "know" (believe/hope) to be the movings of the holy, the Spirit, that I take to be "communications" to me. But personal? Well, only in the concocted definition of person we've come up with via our trinitarian attempt to make a model for wrapping our minds around the fullness and incomprehensible mystery that is God. I hope that doesn't sound irreverent, but we're all being honest here, it sounds like. It's just that, for me at least, I can't claim any immediacy of satisfying two-way dialogue like would be expected/assumed for any other personal relationship I've had. Whatever it is that occurs between God and his creatures, personal relationship fails to adequately describe it. Of course, most any words we would choose would fall short, so I guess we return to where we started, don't we, at a loss for adequate words, though no shortage of attempted ones, eh? :)
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    I love your honesty. I always try to remember that the easiest cover for having no relationship with God and no idea how to have one is to claim a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and then stand there looking smug. "I said it. I called it. So I have it. So leave me along."

    I'd much rather talk to someone who has a sense of the Holiness of God and is rightly afraid and uncertain.
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    My seven-year-old and I had a conversation about this today while visiting another church. She saw a sign that said 'Seek, and you will find.' She says to me, "I keep looking but I don't see Him, Mom. Why is that?" I explained to her that God really is there, and that we can trust that He really is there, if we can't see Him or hear Him talking back to us. ... I think we cheapen this Thing we have with God, when we boil it down to a "personal relationship." As if you can define this mystery by using terms created expressly for human relationships. God is so much bigger than any of it. He's not a "boyfriend" with whom we have a "personal relationship." He's God.
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    Coming to faith in Christ via the particular path I did, I always cringed at the phrases that got tossed around (still do, in some quarters) - "Have YOU been saved? Do YOU know Jesus as your personal Lord and Saviour?" Those two, especially when strung together like that, strike me as the worst possible way to attract someone's attention.

    The relationship I have with God today is a far cry from what it once was, just as the life I've been given back to live anew is a far cry from what it once was. Childhood? Indoctrination to Catholicism via the guilt and shame model. Adolescence? I could almost feel God's presence telling me something was wrong in what I understood about Him - but instead of drawing closer, asking questions, reading Scripture, I found another way to deal - addiction.

    In adulthood (late 20's), I was reaching the end of my rope and the end of my life was in view (in my eyes as well as those of others). Without going into all the details, I found my way to AA. After being in that fellowship for around three months or so, there was a young man who was always telling me in a teasing manner, "Rick - Jesus loves you!", knowing that I would react with anger and obscenity. I didn't want to hear about Jesus... but at the same time, I had to admit to myself that I'd never once really considered who He was, any of the claims He'd made, and what any of that might mean to me. Over the course of the next few months, the more work I put into working the Steps, I realized that God (as I didn't understand Him) was doing something for me that I could not possibly have done on my own, and that perhaps it was time I learned more about Him. A friend offered me a copy of "Mere Christianity." I read it slowly, treasuring what I was reading. I picked up a Bible, started out asking other believers in the fellowship what it was like for them, this new life I was beginning to experience.

    Fast forward to today. If you want to know what I believe, watch what I do, listen to what I say. Will I stumble? Yep. Will I fall? Likely. Will I ever forget again who loves me, saved me from myself, and has work for me to do? Not likely. I'll not use the phrase "have a personal relationship" - if my life isn't reflecting the relationship I'm in, then it's a hollow phrase. I don't have to have all the answers today - if God wants to use me to speak into someone's life, I'm here. Thanks for being here - y'all are family today, and that is an important relationship that can be seen.
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    I enjoyed this. I often think we are only called to lease out our hearts for the Spirit to live in, so HE can have that personal relationship with Christ as HE lives in our heart. The tenancy period will be long enough that we will find ourselves caught up in eternity and we will then receive the payment, which is eternal life. Apart from that, how really can mortal and definite beings have a personal relationship with an immortal and infinite Spirit?
    Well, its just like Mark to provoke this kind of debate. I enjoy it.
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    Christianity, as defined in the Bible, is a personal life with Christ. It is the Christ-life lived in us. It does not make sense to our natural or human mind-set because it was not meant to by God. However, like the other things of God, the Holy Spirit has a way of revealing them to us. And like Peter, a seasoned sea-man, venturing to walk on the waters and believing he could because Jesus told him to do so, we just believe what the Holy Spirit reveals and its reality to us from a completely new mindset. Funny indeed! But the Bible again forwarned us the things of God are foolishness to man. The plates are before us - God's wisdom or human wisdon. God will give us grace to accept His. So, indeed, the Christian life is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. The Bible defines it so. To become a Christian is to be made a new creature IN CHRIST, to be bapized INTO CHRIST, and for CHRIST TO LIVE IN US. How much more personal can you get with someone? What more, it's a walk by faith not by sight.
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    Thanks for all of the great comments everyone. After a weekend of exhaustion
    and performance (with mixed results, but overall not bad), here's where I
    landed.

    A personal relationship is a metaphor--like every metaphor we find in the
    Bible its imperfect.

    David says God is a strong tower. Well, of course, that's only one aspect of
    God. Talking about a personal relationship with God is an implied metaphor
    that he is a very close friend or family member--but even that metaphor is
    just an approximation.

    So what does it mean to have a personal relationship? All I can do is say
    with Paul, "I *want* to know Christ... and the power of his rising, sharing
    in his suffering and conforming to his death. I'll pour out my life, to be
    filled with the Spirit. Joy follows suffering and life follows death."

    A personal relationship is when I share someone's suffering. A personal
    relationship with God is when I share his suffering by pouring out my life
    as he did.

    That's where I'm at for now. If only I could figure out what it means to
    share in God's suffering...
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    Marcus,

    Some of that - to me, at least - is obvious. Do you not grieve for every story about a baby being born, then dumped into a trashcan like yesterday's leftovers? Or for the kids whose lives are cut short by war?

    I named two real examples that have to cause God suffering - Christ saw it all from the cross (that's the one I still have a hard time wrapping my pea brain around) 2000+ years ago, and sees it today.

    Just my .02; your mileage may vary...