The young girl, perhaps in her mid-20’s, was recounting her joy in Christianity and her faith. “I just love Christianity so much because I have a personal relationship with Jesus,” she said. Un-huh. I don’t think so. You can’t have a relationship with people you don’t know.
My answer to all of this kind of clap-trap has been that if you are over seven years old and have an invisible friend, you need serious medication or long term therapy. Or perhaps you need an extended bed-and-breakfast stay in a nearby mental institution.
Look up relation and relationship in the dictionary. Most definitions of relationship refer to a connection with kin, or family, along with friends. Relations can refer to relations between countries or various other tribes in our far flung society. It does not mean a relationship with a questionable or non-existent deity such as Ganesh, (also known as Ganesha, the Hindu elephant deity), Zeus, Jupiter, Ra, Isis, or, oh yeah, Jesus. It can’t happen.
A relationship is a two-way street, with conversational intercourse going in both directions. Of course, some of those with this unilaterally decided “relationship with Jesus” may also claim that God or Jesus talks to them and gives them direction in life. No, he, she or it doesn’t.
No one talks to you in your head other than yourself. You are talking to yourself and crediting God or Jesus with the other end of the conversation. The big question and snag here is how many times this non-existent God or Jesus agrees with the person in whose head they reside.
If God agrees with you rather than you – with difficulty - having to agree with God, would that not make you wonder a little about the nonsense of this whole religion thing? Would you not wonder why others are not hearing the same thing from God that you are hearing?
Would you think that they have the wrong God in their head while you have the right God in your head? Or would you think that their God is right and that your God is wrong? Would you wonder why God created this mental and religious Gordian knot? Would you wonder how to untangle or untie this knot of conflicting views?
The big question is why you would think you have a relationship with a being that you can’t prove to anyone. I have relations and relationships with family and friends. Relationships with friends, both local and long distance, are a two-way street whereby I can contact them and they can contact me.
We can call, write, e-mail, text (if I knew how to do it) and – if any of us would or would know how – contact each other through the Internet social media sites. But they are real.
Try saying that Jesus and your personal relationship with him is real, and do it with a straight face to a reasonable, thinking scientifically logical person. Go on – try it. I dare you.
Such thinking of a personal relationship with a questionable 2,000-year-old deity or god figure is, I would think, job security for various medical workers such as psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals.
The sad thing is that such a young girl, and others both younger and older, would welcome, accept and believe in what they call a relationship with someone that you can’t see, know little about, can’t talk to you, can’t call you on the phone, can’t e-mail or do anything to prove their existence.
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