Chad Bird makes valuable points about community, but I believe he dramatically overstates his case. It is not ‘either…or’. As a practiser of Carmelite spirituality, I believe that encounter with God is both deeply communal and deeply personal. We are not some conglomerate entity. Each of us has an individual soul, and I believe that God cares for us in a deeply intimate, deeply personal, deeply individual way. In Teresa de Avila’s ‘Interior Castle’, we are presented with a model and an experience of a God who waits for us in the innermost and most intimate centre of the soul.… Read more »
David Emmott
7 years ago
I think a personal relationship with God is essential, and central to our Christian life. But surely the orthodox, Trinitarian (and liturgical) understanding is that we come to God the Father in and through the Son. So to talk about a personal relationship ‘with Jesus’ stops short. Doesn’t it? Or have I fallen into the opposite heresy?
Kate
7 years ago
Chad Bird makes me think of Paul Burrell as a contrast to the valet of the Prince of Wales who has no particular fame. Should a butler/valet have a deeply personal relationship with their principal? Should we, as servants of the Lord, have a deeply personal relationship with Jesus or is that overly presumptuous?
I had hoped Chad Bird was going to dwell on that question since I think it is complex and I am undecided where I stand. I was interested to see his thoughts. Instead he presumed an answer, which I thought was a shame.
Pam
7 years ago
I think we come to faith through a personal encounter with God. After that, church seems a logical progression. Equally as important as a relationship with other believers, is our relationship with those who do not call themselves ‘Christian’. Indeed, it’s possibly more a reflection of our spirituality to interact in a faith-filled way with non-churchgoers. For many people church is challenging and there may be more useful ways for them to show their love and commitment to God. Chad Bird’s ideas seem a little bit inflexible to me.
Chad would have us discount the life and activity of the great Christian mystics – if he really beieves that one does not need a ‘personal’ relationship with Jesus. The very presence of individual baptismal rites in the Church give testimony to this. We are baptized into Christ – not merely the local congregation. This, surely, is an intimatre personal relationship to Jesus.
Steve Lusk
7 years ago
Talk of a “personal relationship” with God always reminds me of Scott Cairns’ story of the visiting American who asked one the monks of Mount Athos if he had accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior. “No,” said the monk, with a smile. “I like to share him.”
That’s a neat story, Steve, thank you. But again, it’s not “either…or” is it? We may enjoy intensely personal relationships with God, and at the same time, know God shares love with everyone else as well. I admit I liked the monk’s riposte to what may have been a testing and challenging question, packed with US evangelical cultural assumptions. I just think it’s not one or the other. I think it needs to be both. Contemplative experience suggests that God invites us to share – to share even God’s own consciousness and awareness, which is absolutely astonishing. But as Father… Read more »
Janet Fife
7 years ago
I agree with Susannah that the personal and the communal are both essential to the Christian life. We have the examples of the saints, the mystics and others who developed a deep and intimate relationship with Jesus, the Holy Spirit and the Father. Biblical figures too experienced a personal relationship with God. Moses was called the Friend of God, Abraham was on arguing terms with God, the Psalms speak of a clearly personal relationship. Jeremiah, and especially his Lamentations, also talk of a personal relationship. And that’s just the Old Testament! If a Christian life without community were impossible, what… Read more »
Cynthia
7 years ago
It’s both/and.
David Emmott
7 years ago
Janet Fife: ‘If a Christian life without community were impossible, what would become of those of us who are ill and housebound? I have found that God can be very close to those who can no longer go to church or be active for him. ‘Nada te turbe, nada te espante, quien a Dios tiene, nada le falta…solo Dios basta.’ As St. Teresa of Avila said, ‘He who has God lacks nothing, God alone is enough.’ It’s a very superficial view of community to imply it excludes those who rarely see or meet other people in the flesh. Yes, ‘God… Read more »
Lou Poulain
7 years ago
I agree with Susannah Clark that it is not an “either / or” proposition. I would say this, as I resonate strongly with the article: In the US context of evangelicalism, there is a deficit because the tradition is not only non-liturgical, it is largely anti-liturgical. Speaking for myself as one rooted in the western catholic tradition, my spirituality is formed, shaped by and nurtured in common prayer, and the overlapping cycles of readings. My experience is that I see the entire enterprise in a much more communal way than my evangelical acquaintances do.
Janet Fife
7 years ago
‘It’s a very superficial view of community to imply it excludes those who rarely see or meet other people in the flesh. Yes, ‘God alone is enough’, but being in God means we are in God’s Church, the Body of Christ. Teresa suffered enough from her contemporaries in the institutional church, but in her solitude she knew she was united ‘with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.’ David Emmett, that’s a useful point. But I would draw a distinction between community and communion. Community I take to be a social and usually geographical relationship (in the broad… Read more »
Chad Bird makes valuable points about community, but I believe he dramatically overstates his case. It is not ‘either…or’. As a practiser of Carmelite spirituality, I believe that encounter with God is both deeply communal and deeply personal. We are not some conglomerate entity. Each of us has an individual soul, and I believe that God cares for us in a deeply intimate, deeply personal, deeply individual way. In Teresa de Avila’s ‘Interior Castle’, we are presented with a model and an experience of a God who waits for us in the innermost and most intimate centre of the soul.… Read more »
I think a personal relationship with God is essential, and central to our Christian life. But surely the orthodox, Trinitarian (and liturgical) understanding is that we come to God the Father in and through the Son. So to talk about a personal relationship ‘with Jesus’ stops short. Doesn’t it? Or have I fallen into the opposite heresy?
Chad Bird makes me think of Paul Burrell as a contrast to the valet of the Prince of Wales who has no particular fame. Should a butler/valet have a deeply personal relationship with their principal? Should we, as servants of the Lord, have a deeply personal relationship with Jesus or is that overly presumptuous?
I had hoped Chad Bird was going to dwell on that question since I think it is complex and I am undecided where I stand. I was interested to see his thoughts. Instead he presumed an answer, which I thought was a shame.
I think we come to faith through a personal encounter with God. After that, church seems a logical progression. Equally as important as a relationship with other believers, is our relationship with those who do not call themselves ‘Christian’. Indeed, it’s possibly more a reflection of our spirituality to interact in a faith-filled way with non-churchgoers. For many people church is challenging and there may be more useful ways for them to show their love and commitment to God. Chad Bird’s ideas seem a little bit inflexible to me.
Chad would have us discount the life and activity of the great Christian mystics – if he really beieves that one does not need a ‘personal’ relationship with Jesus. The very presence of individual baptismal rites in the Church give testimony to this. We are baptized into Christ – not merely the local congregation. This, surely, is an intimatre personal relationship to Jesus.
Talk of a “personal relationship” with God always reminds me of Scott Cairns’ story of the visiting American who asked one the monks of Mount Athos if he had accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior. “No,” said the monk, with a smile. “I like to share him.”
That’s a neat story, Steve, thank you. But again, it’s not “either…or” is it? We may enjoy intensely personal relationships with God, and at the same time, know God shares love with everyone else as well. I admit I liked the monk’s riposte to what may have been a testing and challenging question, packed with US evangelical cultural assumptions. I just think it’s not one or the other. I think it needs to be both. Contemplative experience suggests that God invites us to share – to share even God’s own consciousness and awareness, which is absolutely astonishing. But as Father… Read more »
I agree with Susannah that the personal and the communal are both essential to the Christian life. We have the examples of the saints, the mystics and others who developed a deep and intimate relationship with Jesus, the Holy Spirit and the Father. Biblical figures too experienced a personal relationship with God. Moses was called the Friend of God, Abraham was on arguing terms with God, the Psalms speak of a clearly personal relationship. Jeremiah, and especially his Lamentations, also talk of a personal relationship. And that’s just the Old Testament! If a Christian life without community were impossible, what… Read more »
It’s both/and.
Janet Fife: ‘If a Christian life without community were impossible, what would become of those of us who are ill and housebound? I have found that God can be very close to those who can no longer go to church or be active for him. ‘Nada te turbe, nada te espante, quien a Dios tiene, nada le falta…solo Dios basta.’ As St. Teresa of Avila said, ‘He who has God lacks nothing, God alone is enough.’ It’s a very superficial view of community to imply it excludes those who rarely see or meet other people in the flesh. Yes, ‘God… Read more »
I agree with Susannah Clark that it is not an “either / or” proposition. I would say this, as I resonate strongly with the article: In the US context of evangelicalism, there is a deficit because the tradition is not only non-liturgical, it is largely anti-liturgical. Speaking for myself as one rooted in the western catholic tradition, my spirituality is formed, shaped by and nurtured in common prayer, and the overlapping cycles of readings. My experience is that I see the entire enterprise in a much more communal way than my evangelical acquaintances do.
‘It’s a very superficial view of community to imply it excludes those who rarely see or meet other people in the flesh. Yes, ‘God alone is enough’, but being in God means we are in God’s Church, the Body of Christ. Teresa suffered enough from her contemporaries in the institutional church, but in her solitude she knew she was united ‘with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.’ David Emmett, that’s a useful point. But I would draw a distinction between community and communion. Community I take to be a social and usually geographical relationship (in the broad… Read more »