Idolatry
There is an old mindless cliché that goes: “Christianity is not a religion, but a personal relationship with God.” We’ve all heard this garbage at one point or another. This is often used by Evangelical Protestants but it has slipped into Catholicism in recent years. What are my thoughts on this? I think that this is absolutely false and heretical.
When we define God, we have to define Him using scripture and tradition. We need to define Him with the Old and New Testaments, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church and the Ecumenical Councils. That is the only way to define God. If we don’t define Him this way and have our own “personal relationship” with Him, we make God in our image and He becomes whatever we want Him to be, not what He truly is. God becomes an idol that we worship.
A good example is Demi Lovato. She claims to have her own personal relationship with God. In an article on cambio.com in November 2013 she talks about this. The article can be found here: http://www.cambio.com/2013/11/22/demis-new-image-neon-lights-was-my-grown-up-sexy-video/
In the last paragraph, we read:
A lot has changed for Demi in the past few years, but one thing remains the same–her faith. “My faith is really interesting,” she told us. “I think over the past few years it’s become less about religion for me and more about my personal relationship with God. I believe in gay marriage, I believe in equality. I think there’s a lot of hypocrisy with religion.” But, “I just found that you can have your own relationship with God, and I still have a lot of faith.”
Less about big bad hypocritical religion and more about her personal relationship. There’s the problem. Religion is the bad guy because it doesn’t allow her to believe in homosexual “marriage” whereas the idol she worships allows her to do so. In these “personal relationships” we get to customize our own idol and make Him whatever we want Him to be. If she followed the Christian religion, which she truly despises deep down, she wouldn’t be allowed to do that.
Many people who have sound theology who believe in the “personal relationship” don’t know the dangers of it. They believe that if they drop the “personal relationship” and go to religion, that destroys the uniqueness of Christianity. They believe Christianity to be a relationship with the true God and all of the other false religions of the world to be religions of old and stale rituals. This is false. Christianity is not unique because it’s a personal relationship with God, but because it is true. The false gods of the nations are idols.
Christ established a Church with rituals such as the Eucharist and Baptism. You’ll never find Him or any other Biblical writers promoting a personal relationship with God. It’s not part of the Christian faith. The second that we say it’s a personal relationship, we put ourselves in danger of making Him into an idol; customizing Him to meet our own personal needs. It’s very dangerous. Stick with the true religion that Christ established and ditch the “personal relationship” which is extremely dangerous to the soul.
Fiddle-faddle! This post must have left St. Teresa of Ávila spinning in her grave. Did St. Mary Magdalene, St. Peter, Zacchaeus, the disciples on the way to Emmaus, and the woman at the well have no personal relationship with Christ? They most certainly did, and does that make them heretics?
The above piece is wanting in distinctions since it leaves no room for both, a personal relationship with God AND, religion. The dichotomous personal relationship VERSUS religion is overtly reductionistic and does not do justice to those who cultivate a friendship with Christ in truth (cf. St. Therese of Lisieux, among others).