I've been wrestling lately with what it means to have a relationship with God. That is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot, and I find myself constantly trying flesh out what that means and looks like. I'm curious, though, if maybe that phrase is a poor one , an inadequate one, and does more to confuse, rather than support, our pursuit of God. Because don't we all have a relationship to God as His creation? Do prayers float off to space, unheard, if they fall from the lips of someone "without a relationship with Jesus"? Or is it just semantics? Have we fallen into a trap of using a kind of religious language, "Christian sentences" if you will, of explaining our faith that cheapens or distorts what's really going on? Or, am I being too hard on the phrase, missing the idea that perhaps "You need a relationship with Jesus" is just a new way of saying, "Unless you are born again, you can't enter into the kingdom"? I'm cautious to say that analogy works, because one is scripture and the other is a fairly modern idiosyncrasy of Western Christianity that I can't objectively understand, because I've grown up with this language all around me.
Any thoughts, readers?
No comments:
Post a Comment