Christianity is a personal Relationship with Jesus: part 2
I am taking a couple of weeks off for action, I need to know people are reading this blog please let me me hear from you. If you want this blog to continue.
I am specifically addressing the article by Chad Bird. [1] I do not know anything about brother Bird but I do know that he uses a set of flimsy arguments to defend his position. Let's examine them. I am not accusing him or his group of anything but he makes some strong statements I think his view on this subject is wrong,
Bird says:
Christianity is about a church relationship with Jesus.
I know this runs contrary to what many modern believers think. And even desire. In an age when we are more isolated than ever, when our worlds often shrink to the size of a phone screen, talk of community sounds like a radical departure from the norm.
It's also a veg and meaningless term because you are not having a relationship with Jesus if your relationship is limited by the group. You are actually just having a relationship with the leader of the group that's especially true in this age of shepherding and other authority heavy doctrines.
It is. But the norm of the Christian faith is not isolated believers, little islands of spirituality, but a continent of Christians banded together by the Spirit. We are baptized into one body, the body of Jesus. Our so-called personal relationship with Jesus is indeed with his person—his body of which all other believers are a part. Fingers don’t have a relationship with Jesus apart from the hand, the hand from the arm, the arm from the shoulder, and so on.
He tries to interpose the group in place of Jesus himself on the pretext that the chruch is Christ's body. There two problems here: (1) Bodies are made up of members Paul makes that clear,we are members (cells really) we have to start with out own relationship of recovery salvation and giving our lives to Christ before we are in they body so the personal relationships is fundamental to the group. (2) He is really speaking of the mystical body of Christ which is the collection of all of those who belong to Jesus, living and dead. But, we don't meet with them on Sunday. Our individual lives are bordered by man made groups called "churches" that ca be anything from regular boundary people to horrible cults but they usually tend to be ordinary people. When you start making the group the thing you become subject to a group dynamic and wind up usually serving the leader of the group, Bird is putting his own leadership above that of Christ in the lives of his members.
Even when we pray, we pray communally. Indeed, the only prayer Jesus taught us to pray begins, “Our Father,” not “My Father.” No one ever prays alone. We pray in Jesus, through the Spirit, to the Father, in a vast concert with all other believers. Me-and-Jesus prayers are impossible. There are only us-and-Jesus prayers—“us” being that innumerable throng of saints from the foundation of the world until now, whose unheard voices join ours in an ongoing prayer to our Father.
Of course no one prays alone we pray to and with God but Bird seems to be elevating his own leadership to a position where he takes the place of God in the life of the individual. He seems to think that the one from of relationship (membership in the group) outweighs individual relationship or is contradiction to it and is inane. We are not praying to the church, there is no passage that says our prayers pass trough the church or that they are heard by the church. It does say there is but one mediator between God and humanity and that is Jesus not the church or the minister or anyone else, (1 Tim 2:5). I already covered in part one the concept that prayer is individual and it is expected that we pray in private 1x1 with God.(Matthew 6:6) "But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." I find it extremely suspicious that Bird seems to be trying to debar private prayer.
When we read the Bible, we read communally. Think about it. The Bible you read—the book itself—is a communal product. Translated, printed, bound, and sold not by us personally but by others.We read, often unconsciously, with the voices of preachers, teachers, and parents from over the years guiding our knowledge, assumptions, and beliefs. And, ideally, we read the Scriptures with others. In groups, in classes, with an eye to the wisdom of the past and the voices of brothers and sisters studying it with us.No when I read the Bible I read it by myself. My books are not living people I use my Greek lexicons but they are not alive. The printer and the President of Zondervon never show up at my house for Bible study. I find it disturbing that he wants to prevent individuals from studying and thinking and praying on their own,
Above all, however, Jesus calls us into a living, active, worshiping community that regularly gathers around his gifts. We are washed into his body on the stream of baptism. We eat the communal meal of his body and blood. We sing together, pray together, confess together, grieve and heal and eventually die together. He gives us pastors. He gives us brothers and sisters in the faith. He gives us children to teach, elders to emulate, and even less-than-likable people to love as those for whom Christ died.That's all good but no reason why we can't also do other, The individual relationship is prerequisite for membership in the church. These are two sides of the normal Christian life they are not contradictions of each other.
Christianity is not a solo endeavor. Not a private relationship between Jesus and me. As the Lord formed Israel in the Old Testament as his people, forged together into a body by his covenant, so he has formed the church in the New Testament as his people, washed together into a body by baptism.Yes it is first and foremost a private relationship with one in winch we reach out to others and in which we play out that relationship in the company and solidarity of others who also know Jesus. These are not mutually exclusive.
Thank God it is this way. Heaven forbid that I should have a personal relationship with Jesus. For I know what would happen: I would end up, in my mind, reshaping my personal Jesus into a strikingly familiar image: the image of me.
As it is, Jesus is reshaping us into his image, in the church, surrounded by others, all of whom together, communally, are the one body of Christ.
No Jesus is not reshaping you the leader of your group is reshaping you into his image not Christ's you are not speeding time alone in prayer with God,you are not listening to the still small voice.
[1] Chad Bird, "Christianity is not about a personal relationship with Jesus," blo: Chad Bird (April 26, 2017)
Comments
We should respect our father so calling my fahter Daddy did not mean I didn't respect him.
circular reasoning and begging the question. never know when you;ve lost an argument,