Eugene Peterson on us dealing with God

When it comes to dealing with God, most of us spend considerable time trying our own hands at either being or making gods. Jesus blocks the way. Jesus is not a god of our own making and he is certainly not a god designed to win popularity contests.

Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, p. 36

Personal Relationship with Jesus

John Suk, former Banner editor wrote a good piece for Perspectives: http://www.perspectivesjournal.org/2005/11/essay-relationship.php

I'm glad Suk wrote that piece. I've long felt that this cliche "a personal relationship with Jesus" was unhelpful. I read Yancey's book and I get what the cliche is trying to say but really has some huge drawbacks as Suk pointed out. It's become Christian code talk for "yes I'm really really a Christian..."

I think it's also helpful to explore what really people seem to mean by it, beyond just saying "I'm serious about being a Christian" because it does get into the area spirituality in some important ways. (I'm currently reading Peterson's Spiritual Theology "Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places".

When hear someone say "personal relationship with Jesus" and it takes the form of "I pray and try to live my life in dialogue with Jesus" that's not generally such a bad thing. Peterson often talks about the role of imagination in the Christian life and it is important. Another annoying cliche "What Would Jesus Do" is essentially the same thing and it can be very helpful. We basically develop, consciously or not, an imaginative construct of who Jesus is in our mind and we relate to this construct as we go about our days. This is a very normal thing, something very much associated with conscience. Many of us can "hear" other significant people in our lives, often parents. In a situation you can easily imagine what your mother or father would say about such and such a thing or feel about such and such a thing. Same with spouses or even significant authors in our lives. We have the ability to "mind read", to have some awareness of the thoughts and perspectives of someone to the degree that we imagine that we could predict how they would respond or what they would say if presented with the situation we are involved in. We can in these situations often have an imaginary conversation with this person and in a way discuss it with them, arguing it back and forth. This I believe is a very common way that (I assume) most of us process things and work things out in our minds. We carry around with us between our ears a "great cloud of witnesses" that give us council on the decisions and situations we are faced with in our lives.

Pushing the cart with Ben

I find the parent/child metaphor still to be the most fruitful for understanding our relationship with God. Today I was shopping at Costco and I only had Ben with me. Ben is 5. Because my family is so large I usually get a flat and this time the wheels weren't up to snuf. I pushed that cart through the store with a few hundred pounds of groceries on it, with the sticky wheels and Ben was right in front of me with his hands on the bar pushing it too between my arms. He's huffing and puffing and talking about all of the work it was to push that cart but of course I was the one doing all the real work. Then the thought struck me, this is just like leading a church, but in this case I am Ben and God is me. Sometimes I push it forward when Ben isn't paying attention, yet he is oblivious to my pushing. Sometimes I'm steering and he's not sure he wants to go that way. Ben, however, usually thinks that he's doing the pushing when in fact I am. It also made me think about prayer. Ben's pushing is really like prayer. Often if he wants to go somewhere I'll indulge him as long as it is moving us in the general direction we need to go in.