Online Dialogues: The Inaccessible Christ, Personal Relationships, And The Suffering Servant's Plea

Only say the word and my soul shall be healed

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Earlier this week, I wrote a piece here about my ongoing difficulties with faith, and the search for a way to lead my family in the midst of my continued journey through the no-man’s-land of unbelief.

As I always do, I shared the post to a bunch of my social media accounts, to encourage people to read and comment.

In the Facebook thread on that post, a discussion ensued. Someone commented, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.”

I don’t know how to explain why this kind of pat response, however well meaning, irks me so. Perhaps it has something to do with that apocryphal axiom from Aquinas:

“To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”

The chasm between the believer and unbeliever is incomprehensibly vast. What one takes for granted, the other can scarcely comprehend. This is a truth that cuts both ways.

Irritated, I fired back:

Yes, equally inaccessible, inscrutable, unreachable, and unrelatable.

I cannot fathom how anyone thinks they can have a personal relationship with an aloof, wrathful, silent, intangible god.

“I cannot fathom how anyone thinks they can have a personal relationship with an aloof, wrathful, silent, intangible god.”

To me, this is an obvious problem.

If I can’t see, hear, touch, or perceive someone, how can I really know them personally, let alone love them?

There is a modern phenomenon, in our age of media, called a “parasocial relationship.” It’s that feeling you have when you feel like you know some celebrity or public figure who is not even aware of your existence, because you have seen them speak so often, or read their writing so much, that you feel like you get them. At the end of the day, though, it’s one-sided.

To me, even this is more than I have with God. Or to be more specific, Jesus. I don’t know what his face looks like, what his voice sounds like, how he laughs, his mannerisms, the interesting way he responds to complicated questions, or any of the things that make him who he is.

All I have are some dry texts that convey little about him that feels personal to me at all.

How can anyone claim to know or love a person whom you they never met, never spoken to on the phone, never exchanged correspondence, or had any kind of direct interaction with?

How is it that we convince ourselves such things are possible?

And yet, many believers, when confronted with this question, look at you like you have two heads. It seems that for them, this is a problem that has never even been considered.

To return to my snippy comment about the inaccessible Christ, one of my frequent interlocutors replied, “Yes, cuz the God of the Universe has to meet you on YOUR terms,” followed by an eye-rolling emoji.

I wanted to fire back a caustic reply of my own, but I decided against it.

Instead, I took a deep breath, and re-framed.

This is what I said instead: