Divine Relationship

Soul Change

I read a Facebook post the other day that said Christianity isn’t a religion, it’s a relationship. I hadn’t thought about that aspect in a while. Then another friend asked everyone to post a brief account of how he or she came to God. Many had dramatic stories of being saved from destructive lives and set on healthier paths.

My story has little drama, though ironically, it began with my attempt to write a Christmas play for my church’s youth group. None of the kids liked the play and I withdrew a bit to pray and ask God to use it as He would. I had sincerely offered it as a gift to Him, not as a vehicle to win praise for myself. The play wasn’t used but I received the greatest gift in return, the Holy Spirit.

A Relationship with God

Explaining this relationship to someone who hasn’t experienced it can be difficult. You simply know God’s presence lies within you and will never leave you to cope alone. Not to say you can’t ignore or forget that presence for even long stretches of time. The bond requires attention to strengthen it, the same as any human relationship.

In having, feeling that bond, I can prove to myself the existence of God but cannot share more than personal thoughts and feelings on it. That’s why it’s called personal, an individual rather than a group experience, and unique in the pantheon of religions. I tried to explain it to a Muslim friend once, and she had no clue what I was talking about. The Jewish religion includes the Old Testament, where God’s spirit came upon people as needed to impart God’s instructions but wasn’t free to all as Jesus made possible in the New Testament.

To put my story in perspective, that night of my youth group meeting—my parents picked me up and on the ride home we had a fight. I can’t remember about what. I hid a smile. Externally, my life had changed little. Yet I knew everything had changed, no matter how long it took to show on the outside. Forty-five years later, God has never deserted me despite varying degrees of faith on my part, and I know when He has intervened to teach me something or help me in mostly but not always subtle ways. I have never doubted His existence.

When Views Clash

Being personal, that relationship can be guided by learned people, wise in the nature of God, but not dictated. One size does not fit all. I don’t believe the Bible is God’s infallible word. Fallible, prejudiced people wrote it, though I believe their relationship with God inspired the writers. I love to read it and learn a lot from it. God gave us free will so why would He take it away in the forming of the Bible? Personally, I suspect needing an infallible source outside of God for your beliefs shows fear and perhaps a lack of faith.

Certainly fear underlies the vitriolic anger I’ve seen many a self-professed Christian throw at challenges to their beliefs. Jesus had some angry outbursts at people but never simply because they disagreed with him. They were using God’s teachings for their own gain or deliberately leading others down the wrong path. Jesus’s was a righteous anger in concern for others.