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Can You Just Have God Without Jesus?
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It is common today to think about God (if one thinks about God at all) in terms of a “personal relationship”. One always hears about this notion within church walls and among Christian believers. But have you ever thought about someone having a “personal relationship” with God who is not a Christian? I haven’t, until today when I had a great conversation with a non-Christian friend.
Sure, I guess there is that whole “spiritual but not religious” crowd who likes to think they can experience God solely by, say, skiing or hiking or sky diving or whatever adrenaline rush people do nowadays. Apparently God is in the business of hanging out with adrenaline junkies. Instead of that “still, small voice” that the Bible presents God as having, God is your bro who shreds powder on a sick double black and loves to crank Greenday at the half pipe.
Doubt it….
But the “spiritual but not religious” crowd aside (for another day), I want to talk about people who are not Christians (or Muslims, or Jews) who have that personal relationship with God. In essence, pure monotheists. The idea of God as Creator, sustainer, most of the attributes, are not an intellectual hurdle. They are not deists, who believe in that Creator God but that God is not really involved in human activities. For the pure monotheist, God is everything and is involved in human activities. In fact, God is personally involved with each and every human—should they also desire that relationship.
But they’re not Christians. Or Muslims. Or Jews. Just monotheists.
Some might say that this is okay, that is in fact good. You get God, without the baggage of religion or Church or people. You get God low maintenance, essentially. Fair enough, I say. But here is my challenge to you. You believe in God. You talk to God. Do you listen to God? If so, what is God saying? How do you know what God wants for the world, aside from your own personal questions about life; what to do about your kids, your job, your husband.
I want to posit that if we want to truly listen to God, we should. We should find some sort of source, some kind of recording that has God telling us about Himself and His desires for His creation. Wouldn’t that be great? Well as a matter of fact, there is such a book—the Bible! And what you find in this Bible is a story. A story about God, primarily. But also a story about people, us. A story about God working in the lives of people, and really all people.
You find a story about God deciding to create. So He does. He creates everything, from every pebble to every person. His grandeur creation, people, then start to get this idea that they don’t need God. They don’t want God. So they rebel from God. But God is resilient. He knows we can’t live without Him, and really we don’t want to (if we’re to be honest). Us as the Creation has gone awry, rejecting our Creator. “I can do it all on my own!” says I.
But God perseveres with us, through the good times and the bad. He knows we can’t do it on our own, and it turns out He was right all along. Several thousand years go by with the story of one people (of many people that God loves), the Hebrews continuing on in the story. Sometimes they obey God and everything goes great. Other times, they try to go their own way; and things don’t go so well. “There has to be some sort of way to get out of this cycle!” say the Hebrews (and all of us).
So God decides to do something drastic, something daring, something completely different than what everyone expected God to do. He became one of us. He became human, in Jesus Christ, for the sake of humans. God didn’t have to do anything to save us from ourselves. He could have gone on His merry way and watched from the sidelines as we destroy each other and ourselves. But God isn’t like that. He loves us, and wants the best for us. So he became this man Jesus with one intention in mind—to save humanity from ourselves, from our own sin and rebellion (that’s all sin really is, rebellion). To bring back the Creation to the Creator.
As the story unfolds in the pages of the Bible, it turns out that He did! On what we now call Easter morning, Jesus accomplished the mission for why he was sent. He conquered the inevitability of humanity’s actions, death. He conquered death on our behalf, so that we don’t have to die and be separated from the love of God our Creator. For those who believe that Jesus is God, the story is made new, afresh. For those who do not, the story continues as it had since the first people decided they could do it their own way. They will continue to rebel. They will continue to replace their Creator with themselves (the Creation). They will continue to run away from God, not wanting to listen to what is best for their lives. Eventually, they will die and God will tell them that they had their chance, if only they would listen and let God be God, not you be God.
What are you going to do? Are you going to listen to God and learn about the story of God and people as written down in the Bible? Are you going to be a part of that story, or keep running and hiding? I would encourage you to take these questions very seriously. You have that choice to make. God has already made His choice and He desires you so much. It’s time for you to make your choice. To let God be God, or keep denying this fact and trying to go about it all your own way. Well, if we are to know history lest we are doomed to repeat it, we know what happened to those who tried to go about it all their own way, they failed. But we also know what happened to those who let God be God, they have life—TRUE life.
So wrapping up then, if you are a monotheist who thinks that their own personal relationship with God is good enough and you don’t need to be “religious” or take seriously the Bible; think about that again. You have a personal relationship with God, then listen to what God has said. And the most trustworthy and historically reliable source of what is written about God and people is the Bible.
I would encourage you to read the first three chapters of the first book in the Bible, Genesis (which means: beginning). Learn about God the Creator, His desire for relationship with the first people Adam and Eve. And then learn about how and why they chose to rebel from God and “do it their own way”. Then flip over to the book of Mark, and learn about this guy Jesus and who He is and what He came for. After that, flip on over to a book like Philippians, or Ephesians or 1 Corinthians to get an idea about “where I go from here”.
When you are comfortable, try to start back at Genesis chapter one again and this time read the whole Bible all the way through from beginning to end. You will get a better glimpse about who God is, and what we are like too when faced making that decision to let God be God, or not. I invite you on this journey to learn about God in these pages of the Bible; but most importantly to listen to God through the pages of the Bible. To be sure, He wants us to know an awful lot about Himself by reading the Bible and being with others who believe in God as we do…. Christians, and the community of the Church. Sure, some Christians aren’t the best people out there. Sure, some churches aren’t the best churches out there. But that’s the point! We are all people who are really quite messed up. But God is still at work with us and in our churches to make things all better. All we have to do, is listen.
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