A Personal Relationship With Jesus?

“We need to be willing to risk embarrassment, ask silly questions, surround ourselves with people who don’t know what we’re talking about. We need to leave behind the safety of our expertise.”  Jonah Lehrer, “Imagine: How Creativity Works”      random quote of the day...

These are simply speculations…informal, unguided postulations about the nature of “A personal relationship with Jesus”.

If one could have a personal relationship with God/Jesus/Holy Spirit (or maybe just a Holy Trinitarian threesome), how are we to know that it was a relationship with them and not simply the individual’s thoughts bouncing around inside their brains? It appears to me that we cannot falsify this claim that one can have a personal relationship with God. More clearly, in what circumstances do we know that it was the individual being influenced by a psychological expression or disorder and not “Jesus” or vice versa? How can we differentiate between these experiences?

Today I’m going to suggest that a “Personal relationship with God” is really the individual’s mind as it reflects upon the various views and philosophical positions of their faith and the decisions they make in response to it.

A personal relationship with God always requires 2 components: a faith structure (religion) and a mind. The unique expression of the individuals mind as it considers the sundry elements of their faith is the “personal relationship” part. The fact that an individual will usually weave in their own personal preferences to synchronize with their faith seems to underscore the fact that the Christian religion is based on an individual’s preferences and emotional style rather than on reason---or even a strict adherence to dogma. There is great flexibility in the Christian faith.  This is evidenced by the diversity of denominations—and all of these denominations probably appeal to slightly differing mind-sets along a conservative (mind?) continuum.

I think that the “Personal Relationship with God” strategy endorsed by a large number of Christian theists is really just an emotional proposal that coaxes over individuals’ who have no interest in science, reasoning or empirical evidence. Instead of bringing up factual claims about one’s faith, how Biblical doctrines are verifiable or how living the Christian life offers a distinct advantage (are divorce rates really lower?) they latch on to this easy, unfalsifiable strategy of   “A personal relationship with Christ”.

If one is going to fully believe that they have a relationship with an invisible entity who offers advice and direction throughout the day, who guides them in their every decision while others starve to death, who unfolds a plan for their life path… well, there should actually be stricter, higher standards of evidence for the existence of this entity.

Someone might suggest “Whether or not an idea is falsifiable cannot be employed in a variety of daily life circumstances so therefore it shouldn’t be used in the case of a personal relationship with God”.  Um, this is a God we’re talking about. This is the ultimate Creator Being who, from it, came everything else. Thus, the evidence for God should be overwhelming and the criteria to determine the existence of God should be crystal clear, not full of convolutions in logic. There shouldn’t be hundreds upon hundreds of unanswered questions or attempts from both the Biblical text and its followers to suppress and demonize questions and honest inquiry.

Ideas that are extraordinary always require more consideration of the evidence and more subjugation to higher standards of criticism—not less.