A Personal Relationship with Jesus?

Recently a good friend of mine asked me a great question. He is a person of considerable spiritual depth and commitment to Christ, yet he has never been part of Evangelicalism. And he asked: 

What do [Evangelicals] mean by accepting Jesus as one’s “personal” Lord? Or having a “personal” relationship with Jesus? Like do they mean some sort of "warming-of-the-heart" kind of experience? Or is it some rejection of [the idea that Christ must be] mediated through the Church as an institution?

As someone who came to faith in Christ in the Evangelical world of the early 1990's, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt I have a "personal relationship with Christ" which began when I "accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior". I have a definite time when Jesus became real to me, and I can pinpoint when I prayed a "sinner's prayer" to receive Jesus. And I have "witnessed" to thousands of people the lifesaving power of Jesus, known in his death and resurrection. I have shared the "four spiritual laws". I have asked people "who is on the throne" of their life. So, I began my response as follows:

Let's take the most charitable  interpretation of "personal relationship with Jesus" and "accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior". I would say I strongly identify with both statements, and I believe in evangelizing people with the Good News of Jesus, even though I am no longer "Evangelical™". For me, and for those around me in the 1990's at places like Pine Cove Camp, and Kanakuk, and Campus Crusade for Christ, and Navigators, it meant something like this:

It is one thing to believe certain facts about someone, versus experiencing them personally and existentially. For instance, there are lots of facts about your spouse or parent that are publicly available: Their name and family members. Their work history and address. It is even possible to interview people who know them and find out what kind of friend, parent, spouse, child, worker, and volunteer, they are. Perhaps we could go on their social media and find out any number of opinions and likes and dislikes they have. We could know all ABOUT them, without KNOWING them. We could have all those facts as objects of belief, without experiencing them personally. But for you, as their spouse or child, there is a vividness and clarity and existential power to these facts that no one else has access to. You have a personal relationship with them in a way that is unique and vibrant.

So also: It is possible to hold a number of true beliefs about Jesus-- facts about the Gospels, theological assertions from the Creeds-- and yet not have a personally felt, existentially vibrant personal experience of him. Or perhaps a better term for it would be mystical experience. There is an objective sense that the doctrines about Christ are true, and then a subjectively experienced sense that they are true FOR ME. Yes, Jesus is Savior of the world. But he is also Savior OF ME. Jesus is Lord of Creation. But he is also MY Lord. 

Or put another way: The inner "still small voice" is not JUST my conscience, or the rattling around of certain ethical norms and principles. It is an instrument that the Spirit of Jesus is operating through to call me into a deeper relationship with Christ, and a deeper imitation of Christ. It is Jesus speaking to me and through me in a way that is not simply my own inner voice, but also not completely his voice either. It is some amalgam of Christ and myself, in which it is really hard to figure out where I end and Christ begins. In the words of Paul: "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me." (Galatians 2.19-20)

I do NOT think this experience is unique to Evangelicals. It happens in various religious cultures with different kinds of cultural baggage and language attached to it. The Catholic contemplation of Christ or the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The Orthodox gift of tears. The Pentecostal baptism in the Holy Spirit. The Methodist warming of the heart. I would even say the same reality happens in other Spiritual Paths, as the Cosmic Christ allows himself to be grasped and experienced implicitly by those who do not know Jesus explicitly. But most Evangelicals, of course, would reject this. 

Now, let me be honest about the least charitable interpretation: For many Evangelicals, they do not actually have this experience of Jesus. Maybe they have had a rather powerful emotional release during some kind of worship service or revival. They have shed some tears and had some hugs and the social pressure has swept them along, so they went up and parroted off a sinners prayer: "Lord Jesus, I am a sinner, and you have saved me by your blood. I accept you as my Lord and Savior. Amen."

They do not have intimate knowledge of Jesus as a personally felt reality. They have a lingo they have parroted in a utilitarian way to effect the assurance that they will not go to hell, and they are "saved". This lingo includes all the right code words and phrases to tell other Evangelicals they are "one of them". But there is no real inner life underneath all the external signs. Which is, ironically, precisely the same as the Evangelical critique of formal versions of the Christian Religion, such as Catholics and Orthodox and Lutherans and Episcopalians.

And then, there is an even deeper level of the corruption of Evangelical language. As Evangelicals have gained political power, these once powerful descriptors of spiritual experience have become merely political code words. Shibboleths to indicate who is "in" and who is "out" of their political group. These code words went from indicating personal experience, to indicating local group membership, to now indicating worldly political power. In gaining the world, they have lost their souls. And this is the main reason I no longer call myself an Evangelical, even though I frequently evangelize and teach people the life-transforming Good News of the Risen Lord Jesus.

To do this, I have developed different kinds of language to get at the same spiritual reality: When I was first in the Episcopal Church, and working with Diocesan Youth, we developed our own terminology: "When did Jesus become real to you?" "How have you felt the Spirit of Jesus at work in you?" I think these can be good ways of getting to the same mystical experience without all the Evangelical baggage. Although, I suppose if this way of talking about Spirituality became wildly popular, it would then degrade into cliche catch phrases as well!

My mature theology of spiritual experience runs like this: I think Life in Christ is a series of continual conversions, as the objective ideas and ideals of Christ are subjectively appropriated into all areas of life and human experience. There is a set of intellectual conversions, in which we come to accept certain things as true and accurate. God is real. Christ is God incarnate. He rose from the dead. His Spirit is at work in the world. Et cetera. But then there is also a set of subjective existential conversions. Christ is MY Lord. Christ is MY Savior. Christ is MY comforter when distressed. Christ is MY Hope. Christ is working through THIS situation, then through THAT situation to bring about life and love. 

I also would add this: The experience of God-forsakenness and the anguish over the absence of God is absolutely essential as well. God’s presence felt in God’s absence. This is crucial to the cruciform life of taking up one’s cross and following Christ. I think this is part of what Jesus is getting at when he says that those who are "poor in spirit" are blessed. When we realize we lack God, when we are grieved by God's absence, when we viscerally feel our need for God, we are perhaps experiencing God most vividly. Jesus incarnates this when he cries out on the cross the words of Psalm 22: "My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?"

Life in Christ is not one conversion, but many. It is not one straight trajectory, but the interweaving of a dance. We dance between intellectual acceptance and heartfelt embrace, between the vivid awareness of God's distance, and the astounding assurance of God's nearness. In this dance of continual conversion and ever deeper experience, we are invited into the heart of the Triune God, that we may share in God's Divine Life through the mediation of Jesus Christ in the transformative power of the Holy Spirit. Call it by whatever names and metaphors you want: But it is the very purpose for which we were made.