Intimacy and Lordship.

Darwin expresses frustration with the "Jesus is my Pal" attitude:

One of the elements of modern (often Evangelical, but sometimes Catholic) spirituality that I find most foreign is when people talk about Christ as being "my best friend." It seems an even more familiar form of the relationship suggested by hopeful missionaries, "Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?"

It's possible to err in either direction on these things, and I make no representation that I am a perfect Christian, but I don't think of myself having a "personal relationship" with Christ, certainly in a "best friends" kind of way.

The ways in which I would normally envision Christ are not guy-next-door, my-buddy-the-savior kind of images. Christ the King, enthroned in eternal splendor into union with whom all Christians wish to enter for life everlasting. Christ Crucified, pouring out his blood for the sins of the whole world. Christ Risen, triumphing over the reign of death which had doomed humanity since the Fall. Christ in the Eucharist, kneeling before the glittering monstrance in which the Body of Christ forms the center of a sunburst of golden rays, with the crucifix above and the tabernacle behind. 

I have a reaction to that sort of thing that's pretty similar to Darwin's, but I don't think he's got the right idea of what that "best friend/personal relationship" thing is really trying to express.

I think the "personal relationship with Jesus Christ" -- a phrasing that is really foreign to Catholics -- is  best understood as an attempt to express two things:

1.  The perfect knowledge Jesus Christ has of each individual.    A one-way sort of knowledge.  That He knows me better than anyone else knows me, including myself.   

2.  The intention Jesus Christ has to save each individual -- that Jesus Christ didn't just die to save everybody, He died to save me.   

Not being of the Protestant persuasion, I naturally prefer to emphasize -- when I think of salvation --  a more corporate, Church-centered, we're-all-in-the-barque-of-Peter-together view.   But the individualistic view is also a true way of looking at salvation. And I am pretty sure the "personal relationship with Jesus" thing is an expression of it.

The problem with the "best friend" imagery associated with belief in such a personal relationship isn't its intimacy, it's that it implies an equality that isn't there.  I am not Christ's equal; but "friendship" implies symmetry.  And yet it's hard to find a modern archetype of a relationship to point to which expresses the vast asymmetry and the tight intimacy at the same time.   We are divorced from an idea of the relationship between a man and his Lord and Master as an intimate one. If we can envision a relationship like this that is as intimate or more intimate than the best of friends, we will be getting back on track.

Comments

[RecollectedStephanie]

Brother of the firstborn Heir. (or sister - but since in Christ there is no male nor female, it doesn't really make sense to differentiate.) That's the holy miracle of it - that the Heir and the firstborn is also able to make us heirs. Intimacy of common inheritance - knowledge of how we got it.

[Bethany]

I am a Protestant but I tend to agree with you in that being "best friends" describes an intimate relationship with Christ inaccurately. Modern worship songs tend to do this quite frequently. They reduce a relationship with Christ to an emotional level instead of hitting on the "intimacy and lordship."

[Chris Tyler]

I feel the same way. It expresses a casualness to the relationship that I find unsettling. And yet, to play devil's advocate, Christ himself said (pardon the KJV) "Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you." (John 15:14).