Evangelical Narcissism
If no one has coined this term, I now have.
The problem with an emphasis on a "personal relationship with Jesus" is that 1. it's going to level the playing field until (2) it's eventually all about us. When the "relationship with Jesus" started, it was neither all about us or a level playing field. The relationship couldn't start if those two things were true--it could only start because the playing field between us and God was totally unlevel and because we realized it wasn't about us--at all.
I am sick of radio preachers and preachettes, "Bible teachers," and other sources of religious rhetoric telling us, indirectly, to spend so much time thinking about ourselves and our problems and our sins and our relationship and our ..... you name it.
A relationship with Jesus, which is a very lose way to talk about the life of the Christian believer, is a relationship that is closely and clearly defined in the New Testament, and these are teachings we should start heeding before we become as New Age as Eckhart Tolle or the rest of that crowd in our emphasis on the self.
The problem with an emphasis on a "personal relationship with Jesus" is that 1. it's going to level the playing field until (2) it's eventually all about us. When the "relationship with Jesus" started, it was neither all about us or a level playing field. The relationship couldn't start if those two things were true--it could only start because the playing field between us and God was totally unlevel and because we realized it wasn't about us--at all.
I am sick of radio preachers and preachettes, "Bible teachers," and other sources of religious rhetoric telling us, indirectly, to spend so much time thinking about ourselves and our problems and our sins and our relationship and our ..... you name it.
A relationship with Jesus, which is a very lose way to talk about the life of the Christian believer, is a relationship that is closely and clearly defined in the New Testament, and these are teachings we should start heeding before we become as New Age as Eckhart Tolle or the rest of that crowd in our emphasis on the self.
Comments