I am busy reading Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell, and this theme has jumped out at me on a  number of occasions during his book, and now, being bored with all the ladies in my life sleeping, I read this amazing piece of writing by Louis Brittz, and this is exactly the way I am starting to feel about this issue…

In our generation words have become so liquid. It’s as if we don’t care whether the words we use communicate what we are trying to say. We’d say something remotely close to what we mean and end it off with “.…oh, you know what I mean” and the listener ends up saying “Oh I can see where you’re going with that.”. This isn’t clear, good or understandable communication. And, as we also love saying: “What’s the big deal anyway?”

The big deal is that the Gospel of Jesus and all the related Good News is a long string of words. Very important words. Words that carry life in them and give birth to spiritual sight. When the Jesus of the Gospels transforms us into his witnesses, it’s mainly words that we use to describe his role in our lives. What we say and how we say it becomes the oyster that harbors the pearl of the Gospel. It determines whether the ultimate truth comes across with a ring of truth to it. Do you agree?

Then I need to make a seemingly radical statement at the risk of being kicked out of the church:

It’s O.K. if you don’t have a relationship with Jesus.

Now, please don’t burn me at the stake. I know I’m probably the only evangelical Christian you’ve heard these words from – ever! – but be broadminded and allow me to explain.

To have a relationship with Christ has become the most important element of Christianity in our culture. It’s the rule of thumb-test, and the preceding question to almost all evangelistic appeals has for many years been: “Do you have a relationship with Jesus? Do you know Jesus, or only know about Him? Do you have religion, or do you have a relationship?”

These are great sound bytes and they spice up our sermons, driving our point home with force. But what is our point if we speak in vague, abstract terminology that Jesus himself never used? Why do we call people to something that is totally undefined, thus constantly being redefined and actually indefinable? Is this the best we can do as communicators of the Gospel? How is it that “a relationship with Jesus” has become the most common descriptor of the essence of Christianity, but nobody knows just what the heck it means to have one. Oh, every one thinks they know, and the thought of not having one or not understanding it is a most embarrassing one.

But in reality defining our relationship with Christ is impossible, and calling it a relationship is confusing to all who aren’t believers of the Gospel. They don’t know what we are trying to say, because we don’t know ourselves. The sooner we realize this and start using words responsibly, the sooner we’ll communicate the Truth as clearly as Jesus and Paul did. Isn’t that our ambition?

Do we care that Jesus never said that we could and should have a relationship with him? That it doesn’t appear in the Bible at all? And yet, how many times haven’t we felt miserable because of our failing, struggling, non-developing relationship with Him? How often have you felt a failure because you didn’t know how to keep this relationship going and growing – didn’t understand what was expected of you in it? How is it that the fantasy of every Christian is something that isn’t the reality of even one?

Relationship is the wrong word for this thing we have with God and it matters that it’s the wrong word! Here’s why:

We all have a concept of what a relationship is because we have parents, friends, teachers, brothers and sisters, husbands, wives, children and role models. We are in these and other relationships and – we have no choice – these institutions form our concept of what the word relationship means. Thinking that we can redefine our concept of the content of it is like thinking we can change our idea of what water, wine or bread is. We can’t (not without being brainwashed) and I’m really grateful that Jesus doesn’t require it of us. He does require us to redefine other abstract words, such as life, truth and love. Being a Christian means that we redefine and relearn the meaning of these words – but we know we must because Jesus preached about these words and connected himself to their definition. The word “relationship” doesn’t feature, and I’m not surprised. Jesus didn’t come to complicate things.

Perhaps you feel that having a relationship with Christ doesn’t require you to redefine the word. That would mean you draw from a lifetime of experiences in relationships with different people to know what exactly it is you have going with God. And it becomes confusing: Should your reference be parent, friend, teacher, brother or bride? Jesus is all these things, but which should be the main focus of this relationship? What’s more, Jesus is truth, life, living bread, morning star, advocate, path maker, forgiver of sins and judge there of. HOW are you to have a relationship with Him in this capacity…especially since this description doesn’t come close to defining Him?

The problem with having a relationship with someone is that you need to have a picture of that person in mind. Doing that with Jesus is very hard, but at times gloriously possible. In incredible revelations the Lord allows us glimpses of himself and these glimpses are so wonderful that we want to attach ourselves to them. But they are not a fraction of his being, and we only restrict and imprison God if these pictures of him become the focus of a relationship with Him. If some one is far too enormous, radiant and holy for my mind to comprehend, how can I have a clear enough image of that person so as to have a relationship with him?

The next problem with having a relationship with Jesus is that a healthy relationship depends on communication. Now, good and well to say that God gave us his Word, reveals himself to us in many other ways and that we in turn speak to him in prayer. But this communication falls far short of what the word “relationship” would call to mind. There can be these huge lapses in time between our prayers and God’s answers to them. And even bigger lapses from revelation to revelation on a personal level – those times when we honestly say that God ‘spoke’ to us. Mostly He leaves us to live life with the specifics and parameters given in his Word, which was given for all mankind – hardly a personal note passed between those entwined in relationship.

Please don’t think I’m saying communication between us and God is unimportant or meaningless. I’m just calling you to honesty about not reading things into this communication that God never intended to put there. We can be so in love with our way of thinking about holy things that the truth later doesn’t seem to matter…

Then there’s the problem that we don’t know or understand God at all. Again such a radical statement that I feel unsaved (another one of those words…) for writing it, but it’s so true. We’re always saying and singing about how we know Jesus, but we know pitifully little of him. We have a couple of accounts of his 33 years on earth, but He is the Living Word who has been present since the conception of this earth and reigns now on the right hand of the Father. Who is your connection to: The Jesus who walked the earth for 33 years, or the risen, spiritual Christ at the Fathers right hand?? And what do we know of the Christ who sits on the throne? What qualifies us to say that we know him? That He allows us glimpses of his time on earth, enough to understand the way He made for us and how to carry his message to the world, hardly gives us the right to arrogantly proclaim that we know Jesus. No wonder people who understand how unfathomable Christ must be, laugh us off. We can be so arrogantly unintelligent sometimes. Or has the word “know” also become bereft of meaning?

As for understanding God, all I can say is – we would be so lucky. He is the Creator of a world of which He is the Savior and also the Judge. He is our Brother but also our Bridegroom, our Father but also our Friend. Who can explain the character of God? Who can safely say that he or she has a grasp on how God’s mind works? No one. Not Freud, Nietzsche, Luther, Einstein, Billy Graham or me. We come to God accepting that we can never know or understand him even partially, because to do so would mean to be gods ourselves – holy and infinite in wisdom. We have no hope to be, and God will for ever remain a great puzzle to us. A wonderful Mystery of whose love we can be sure, on whose character we can depend and whose great dream for this world we can buy into. But his heart, mind and psyche are not ours to know or understand in this world. Because He is – well, God. If you disagree, maybe you should ask the Lord where He is from and what his favorite color is. If He tells you then I’m writing rubbish.

Also, in a relationship that works, surely there is some form of equality. Such as between brothers or partners in marriage. Because of this equality each partner has a measure of control. You can see how this isn’t the case with us and Jesus. Yes, we are his bride and his brothers and I’m fully “grace-awakened” to our standing before God. But we are also his disciples, his instruments, his hands and feet, his servants. We are in a covenant with him because He made it with us and signed the contract with his own godly blood. We brought nothing to the table and we still bring nothing. We are receivers, who gratefully take the pardon offered. But even as we come boldly to the throne of grace as the Lord invites us to, we know that He who is on that throne is the Savior and we are the saved, is the Giver and we are the takers, is the Life and we are the dead that He came for. If I dare look Jesus in the eye, it’s only because I haven’t taken a hard look at my own heart for a while. There’s no morsel of equality here…

…but there are secrets here, and secrets are the death sting of a relationship, aren’t they? You can argue that we’re not supposed to have secrets from God. Also that we can’t really have any, because He knows our hearts as if they were his own. But that isn’t the point. The point is that God holds out on us and there’s no way we can make him tell. He has many secrets and it’s his right, because He is God and we are not. A relationship gives you the right to demand openness from the other party involved so that the foundation of the bond can remain firm. But God feels no obligation to share his past operations or future plans with us because the bond between us lies in a connection wrought by a covenant sealed in the blood of his Son. We share our deepest thoughts, fears, sins and desires with him not because of a relationship that behooves honesty, but because we have no choice. He has given us his nature and we empty our hearts to him because the very nature of God in our hearts compels us to. It’s not a soothing thought perhaps, but the deep connection we feel to God in these times of soul bearing has little to do with us. It’s the Spirit in us drawing us to the Father. We are just so privileged to be the vehicles and the spectators of this wonderful amalgamation of God the Spirit with God the Father through God the Son. What joy to be right in the centre of this event!

Am I saying that there’s no relationship between us and God? That’s not my intention. We should realize that God chose to stand in several relationships with us. As mentioned before, He is Father, Friend, Counselor, Savior, Creator of life and the one who takes it away…and so, so much more. I can think of at least thirty different relationships that God chose to be in with me and then I’m not scraping the surface. They are all between God and me, and the individual content of each connection He has established between us differ so much that in a lifetime I couldn’t get my mind around the core of the nature of these relationships. Suffice to say that God has various relationships with me to which I respond. This response (the core of which is giving my life to him) is called Christianity, because Jesus Christ sealed the covenant. He made the way for it. He was quite clear that He came so that we could come to the Father through him. The relationships the Father wanted to establish with us was on the mind of Jesus. No relationship with Jesus himself was ever at stake.

So here we are. Connected to God and acutely aware of that connection. This connection is sealed in a covenant given and upheld by God through Jesus. Our awareness and celebration of it is through the Spirit in us. Is it a sin to call it a relationship with Jesus? Surely not! I don’t think the Lord minds us calling it that. I’m sure He listens beyond the words we use and hears our hearts in any case.

But it’s still incorrect. It strips the incredible connection that God forged between us of its mystery. The fact that we’ve pasted a vague, descriptive word onto something wonderfully shaded between God and ourselves has caused thousands of unthinking people not to delve into the depths of it, not to try to discover its many colors. We called it a relationship, and because that’s what we believed it is, we had to define it. Welcome to confusion. Instead we should have realized long ago that it’s a bond so mysterious in its nature, with so many different shapes and nuances that it’s a goldmine of infinite depth. We are to be the delvers, the miners of this treasure and we should know that we’ll never quite hold it in our hands. That in this world we’ll only see it glimmer in a bouquet of radiant colors and every time we look into it and find only mystery, we’ll know one thing for sure: It is there! And that is what God wants us to know.

I have often heard Christians say that they were saved on this and this date, that they now know Jesus and have a wonderful relationship with him. I am so glad for the salvation of these people, but my heart mourns their needless spiritual poverty. When did we become such an unthinking generation? Or has our arrogance just blinded us completely?

Do you still wonder why I have such a problem with us using the phrase? Haven’t I admitted that I don’t think God himself has much of a problem with it…?

It’s just that it’s such a glowing example of how we turn sound bytes into theology without thinking them through. It’s the virus of our generation and it infects the kind of Gospel we are handing down to our children. We are teaching people that we can use any words we choose to describe and define the new covenant God has birthed us into. And when they think about it and realize that they don’t understand a word of what we were saying – then they realize that our words don’t mean anything. They stop listening because we’ve stopped thinking.

Christianity is a realization of a mysterious connection between God and us, wrought by a covenant that came into fulfillment through the cross and empty grave of Christ. Think about every one of those words and start digging into their meaning. It should take you at least a lifetime.

Do NOT explain it away. It came much too expensive for us to give it such callous treatment.