More theological doodlings from Kim Fabricius
A “personal relationship with Jesus” – what’s that all about? If it’s equivalent to “faith in Jesus Christ”, fine. But it’s not, is it? It’s a shibboleth that inflates to an unmediated experience of walking and talking with an invisible person, of spending quality time together, and if it doesn’t work out, well, “Down, dooby do, down down”. In fact, with Luther and Barth, having a “personal relationship with Jesus” could be said to be the opposite of faith, a theologia gloriae, faith being unanchorable in psychology, not a feeling but a self-negation, sub specie crucis. The phrase itself is hardly biblical; indeed it is quite zeitgeisty, religious coinage in our being-in-a-relationship economy. Indeed, talking with people about their “personal relationship with Jesus”, I invariably conclude that they are in the realm of projection and fantasy. There. I guess that makes me a sad, if not bad, Christian.
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
Richard 05.06.12 at 5:16 pm
So Kim. How do you respond to those who say “Christianity is not a religion, it’s a relationship”?
[ducks]
Pam 05.06.12 at 10:43 pm
I walk into church and I sit down. I’m different (sometimes profoundly, sometimes a little less profoundly) from each and every person there and yet share a common humanity. Are we all going to respond the same way to a hymn, a Bible reading, a prayer, a sermon? Are we all going to go home to a loving relationship, a picture-perfect garden, a neat home?
I watched a program on ABC-TV2 last night called “Deliver Us From Evil”. About sex abuse victims in California (abuse occurred in 70s and 80s). The priest was moved from parish to parish, all within the same diocese, until finally in the early 2000’s he was brought to ‘justice’. This priest was interviewed (now living in Ireland) and what a chilling and sickening revelation that was. The victims were interviewed - broken people with no respect left for church (and quite possibly God). Tell me it’s not personal. I will not believe you.
Kim 05.07.12 at 7:51 am
I take it to be a duh that faith is “personal”. What else would it be, impersonal? It’s the conservative evangelical discourse of having a “personal relationship with Jesus“, and both the psychology it reveals and the agenda it hides, that I have in my sights here. As soon as one starts talking with someone who has this special relationship with Jesus, especially if they are young, its needs-based, even narcissistic character becomes clear, its Jesus light years from the person who stalks the pages of the New Testament, whom we know in Word, church, sacrament, and the least of his sisters and brothers. “Casper the friendly poltergeist” Robert Jenson pricelessly called him.
Kenneth Nicholas Chmiel 05.07.12 at 5:46 pm
@ Kim, yeah your Jesus seems a bit weak if he is confined to what you confine him to i.e. NT, Word, church, Sacrament, hurting people. Seems like if Jesus was a real person he could do whatever the hell he wants in order to get people to try and follow him. He could use the “needs” and the Narcissism if it were to ultimately drawl people to him. You wrote “It’s Jesus light years away from the NT” no kidding, it’s 2012 and the people in the NT are light years away from the Jesus who we need today. People change over time and Jesus isn’t such an asshole that he says put down your Ipads and become a first century Jew (whatever that means) before you can say you know me as a person.
Kim 05.07.12 at 10:10 pm
If you don’t know Jesus as a first-century Jew then you don’t know Jesus at all. That’s the flesh he took, and that’s the flesh in which he is risen and reigns.
Mark Byron 05.08.12 at 4:06 am
He’s a first century Jew who is also Creator of the universe and is on top of things. Having a knowledge of what was going down in the first century is helpful to better understand Him and His Gospel, but He’s an is rather than a was.
Kim 05.08.12 at 7:25 am
“The present is what the past is doing now.”
– Rowan Williams
Rob! 05.08.12 at 11:30 am
I think one can have a relationship with Jesus that is indeed personal and peculiar to one’s self but that is not quite the same as a ‘personal relationship’ with Jesus such as is promoted by some evangelicals and fundamentalists. I think their overly familiar, Jesus is my homeboy, bestest buddy, type of relationship is very much heading towards the “casper the friendly ghost’ type of thing Kim referred to earlier. He was a first Century Jew, he taught like a first Century Jew to first Century Jews in a first Century Jewish world with a first century Jewish worldview - but his preaching of a kingdom that was to/is now come was so far removed from what their worldview was (and often what ours is) is the revolutionary part of his message. But as Mark says he is also a was, and is, and is to come Jesus who is as relevant and as revolutionary today as he was then. Our empires might look different but there remains a fundamental difference between the Kingdom of God and the Empires of Man.
Rob!
Kenneth Nicholas Chmiel 05.08.12 at 8:45 pm
@ Kim, I wonder if those earlier anti-semitic Anglicans knew the Jewish Jesus? I wonder if the 4th century constructors of the Trinitarian confessions had the Jewish Jesus in mind. And what Jesus of Scripture are you talking about, seems to me the scholars have created quite a large numbers of Jesus’ from the NT. Seemingly similar to what those believers in ‘their own personal jesus’ are doing in that oh so backwood place of America, you know the easy target - the Good old USA, save me your depeche mode references and give me a break, and for god sake stop being so dramatic - obviously I took offense at your dismissal of what I believe at my core i.e. for 30 yrs Jesus has been the closest friend I have ever known. He does resemble the Jesus in the NT, but also vastly more. So “hey teacher leave them kids alone” as pink floyd would encourage you.
Richard 05.10.12 at 6:41 am
I’m more than a bit surprised by this comment thread. Kim’s tone is as robust as you’d expect, but I don’t think he is saying anything surprising or controversial in the extract I’ve quoted. Kenneth, what does it mean that “your” Jesus merely resembles the Jesus of the NT?
Kim 05.10.12 at 10:44 am
Here’s a little thought experiment for you: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, author of The Cost of Discipleship, actually warned his students at Fikenwalde about the dangers of having a “personal relationship with Jesus”, and in both his Ethics and his doodlings in prison repudiated the idea, popular then and now, that all we need to set the world to rights is more (what would now be called) “born-again Christians” and more widespread “Christian values”. Now why do you suppose he did that?
Kenneth Nicholas Chmiel 05.10.12 at 5:19 pm
The modern Jesus resembles the NT pictures of Jesus in that he is something like how the theologians who wrote the NT portray him, i.e. he does similar things for those who follow him, informs his disciples how to see the world and how to treat people in the world, and how to be obedient in trying to bring about the kingdom, which his resurrection began. The “something similar” is the emotional aspect of being human, this is pretty individualized and interior, the NT tries to get at it through story, but what was peter feeling when he looked at jesus after he turned his back on him, what was he feeling when walking with jesus around Israel - who knows, so when kim says that Jesus cannot be someones own personal Jesus, I say this seems to fly in the face of how people work. e.g. say a heroin addict like my father who after 25 yrs of addiction has a jesus experience, where as he sits in a jail cell and he sees jesus taking his pain and he senses jesus telling him he can be clean from drugs if he follows him, I would say that person would think they had a personal Jesus, one who cares and comes to them at the hardest time in their life. This happened in the Las Vegas in the 1990’s and not in the pages of the NT only, so I would say this Jesus, that came to my father in the 90’s was similar to the the kind of person that stalks the pages of the NT, but even more real and individualized, since he addressed my father in his need and if I believe my father, still addresses him, which he says is usually when he is on the toilet early in the mornings (I’m not being crass, it is true). This seems like my fathers own personal Jesus. I just don’t know what KIM is really getting at, he seems keen on dismissing peoples interior relation to a personal God (which can only be their own personal Jesus since they are individuals, with their own particular oddities and jesus deals with the reality of where they are at, not some generic idea of humanity, but with real, in time, humans with needs) for a way of life i.e. confessions creeds, sacraments, etc, this is fine if it leads to life with god.
@ Kim “You must be born from above to enter the Kingdom” I get that it isn’t just having a self crafted Jesus and an experience with this “Jesus,” it is vastly More, it is living out the kingdom now, because it is a reality due to the resurrection of Jesus, but you should allow for two people to cultivate a personal love relationship with each other according to the way which works best for them, not how others say it needs to be. To tell people that they never really had jesus meet them and speak to them seems to be pretty unverifiable, but also pretty weird.
Kim 05.10.12 at 10:20 pm
Interestingly, Kenneth, I was a junkie when Christ exploded into my life in Surrey in 1977, blowing me into faith, church, and ministry. Interior, exterior — he’s certainly a pain in the posterior. Be he loves me, and I love him.
Kenneth Nicholas Chmiel 05.11.12 at 6:08 pm
@ Kim what you just wrote seriously made me happy, peace
Kim 05.11.12 at 8:54 pm
I’m glad too.
Pax,
Kim