Take It Personal: Part 1

Have you met God personally?

Intriguing question.

This isn't an exercise is evangelical lexical jargon, rather it is a call to examination.  One that I think the non-believer and the professing Christian are equally in need of taking up.

Despite what MJ's older brother says, please DO.

So, over the next five-ish posts I plan to dive into this subject: Have you met God personally? Have you made your faith personal?  Or does your faith rest on something other than Christ and Christ alone?

A couple of notes as we dive into this:

1. As with much of my thinking, this writing was sparked by something I heard Tim Keller say.  Keller is a pastor in New York City and I have an unabashed ministry man-crush on him.  So, though most of this is my original thoughts, if there's anything that seems particularly helpful or insightful, please go ahead and attribute it to Keller.

2. I am somewhat hesitant to address this topic because the focus on the individual and extensive use of the word "personal" risks furthering a worldview that is both false and selfish: narcissistic Western individualism.  So, hear me say this, "Yes, you are important, you are precious, and you are loved more than even your most narcissistic fantasies would suggest, but this world isn't about you.  Your decisions aren't supreme.  Jesus is not going to bow down to you, but one day you will to him."

So, with that out of the way.  Faith. We put our faith in things all the time.  I have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow (proven by the fact I have made plans for this week).  I have faith that our police force is functional (proven by the fact I don't speed past cop cars on the highway).  I have faith that some sort of right and wrong exists (proven by the fact I do not routinely kill or rob banks).

We all have faith.  We may put our faith in science or our own religiosity or in some type of utilitarian hedonism or in the Gospel or a thousand other things.  Everyone has faith in something.

We also put our faith in all kinds of surrogates.

I think Christians are the worst at this.  Christians (or it may be more apt to say "Christians") are suspect to say and confess faith in one thing (Christ), but in actuality place their faith in something else.  This false faith is seen in a number of realms that I plan to investigate: the group, the civil, the family, the intellectual, and the cultural.

All of these can serve as surrogates, but in reality, faith can only be legitimately and efficaciously be placed in a person.  The person of Jesus Christ.  Effective faith must be in this Person and must be personal or it is not real faith.

By personal, I mean that this faith is based on an individual decision that you made for yourself (not that someone else made for you) and that leads to a relationship with the person, Christ.

For any relationship to be real, however, the other person must be able to intrude on your life.  The marriage where the husband runs over his wife in every instance is not a real relationship. That’s not love, it’s a control idol.  The employer who abuses her workers isn’t in relationship with them, she has a power idol.  The wife or the workers will not be in a real relationship until each has the ability to intrude on the other’s life in some way (same for the husband and boss too).

In the same way, if I have met God personally He must be able to intrude upon my life.  There must be things I want to do but do not do because of that relationship.  There must be things I don't want to do, yet I do them because of that relationship.  

There must be things I’d like to think or believe that I don’t because God says, “Nope.”

If I’m in a true relationship with Him (and He is God!) He must have the ability to intrude on my life (and if He never intrudes on my life, that suggests I’m merely following a “god” of my own creation, not a true, righteous God, but rather a projection of my own desires).1

Further, if I think that I can have a relationship with God, but have to freedom to ignore His commands and pick and choose His attributes . . . that's not a real relationship, that's a god of my own creation as well.

(From Keller: Imagine if I met you and said, “I'd like to develop a relationship with you” and then next told you, "Oh, but I'd like to think of you as being domineering and controlling, OK?"  We would never expect or let another person treat us in that manner, yet we ask to do so with God.)

So, have you met God personally?  Is He allowed to intrude on your life?  Are there things you would prefer to do, that you won't do because He says so?  Are there things about Him that feel unsettling or tough to reason with, but you’ll believe them anyways?2

To be real, faith must be personal.  It must allow for intrusion.  And it leads to a lifelong change.

I hope that as we look into this, if you consider yourself a follower of Christ, you will be able to ask some real questions (Where is my hope? Where is my faith? What relationship, thing, or idea if I lost it would cause me to want to give up on life?) and consider “Is my faith personal?”

If you wouldn't consider yourself a follower of Christ, I'd ask you to consider those above questions, but also I would hope this could allow you to see a true view of Christianity.  One that isn't defined by a political party, a cultural moment, a family you’re born into, or having enough information, but that Christianity is about a Person.

Jesus Christ is alive.  He is God.  He is man.  He is asking us to seek Him right now.  Let's take it personally.

Two Notes: 1. You may ask, “If this is a real relationship, when am I allowed to intrude on God?”  I’m glad you asked, we’ll get to that, if not here, I’ll write a whole separate post on that.  2. This is not to discount the role of wrestling and struggling with God.  There is something beautiful about the honesty we see in the Psalms and other places in Scripture, where God’s people express their confusion, doubts, and despair, when we don’t understand God or are having trouble accepting something about Him or in His Word, part of having a relationship means we can come to him with our understanding (or lack thereof), doubts, troubles, and even counterarguments (Warning from experience: He always wins the fight).