In the Throne Room
A Personal Relationship... But With the King
The Tension
Protestants that I debate always emphasize the Christian life as a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. So much do they reduce the Faith to this catchphrase that Catholics often feel compelled to disagree or at least deemphasize this point.
Now we’re right to criticize how oversimplified and reductionistic the idea sometimes becomes. We’re also right to point out that very few who throw around the phrase even know what they mean by it. On the charismatic end of the spectrum, “personal relationship” could just as much mean a drug induced feeling as much as a real movement of the Holy Spirit and an upswell of faith and charity.
But (mostly Evangelical) Protestant Christians are right that a personal relationship with our Lord and Savior is important. The problem, however, in both their simplistic view of the Christian life as much as in our heavily critical Catholic near-fear of the subject, is that most of us aren’t ready for a personal relationship with Christ, and truly, never can be.
The simplistic “it’s me and Jesus walking” that inspires so many Protestant discussions and K-LOVE Christian songs is in tension with another catchphrase that we all know and which is being thrown around for ulterior motives a lot recently: “Christ is King".
I don’t disagree, Christ is King. But neither Protestants, nor most of us, really stop all to often to see how these two premises integrate. Christian faith is about a personal relationship with our Savior Jesus Christ, yes. And Christ is King.
Who Can Be the King’s Friend?
But who can have a personal relationship with the king? His family, yes, and of course we use this metaphor as well: being baptized is being made part of the family of God. His courtiers and officials, to a degree, yet these all too often are perfunctory, official, and diplomatic. The king as king is elevated above all in his kingdom. Friendship as friendship implies a certain equality, a dignity, a shared good and a shared life that is opposed to hierarchy and distinction.
We would not expect words like friendship or kingship to work perfectly when applied to God, but these two ideas, a personal relationship with Christ and His kingship remind us that any relationship we can have with Christ occurs as a free gift. We cannot merit His friendship and yet God created the world and redeemed us to give us the friendship that is entering into the perfect love and friendship of the Trinity.
As such, friendship with Christ, at the very least, ought to be treated with a certain dignity. We are elevated by baptism and grace to a relationship, but at the same moment we are commoners, debased, little, and as nothing before Him. Our friendship with Christ cannot be merely of the supplicatory “Jesus take the wheel” stereotype of Josh Turner’s “Me and God.” (Cringe warning ahead)
Mutual (Giving) Love
So if our friendship with God is not merely our receiving thing (raises, good parking at the mall, AR15s, and tax breaks from him), as Aristotle’s definition of friendship in the Nicomachean Ethics argues, our friendship with Him is more about both parties giving than their receiving from the other:
But it [friendship] seems to lie in loving rather than in being loved … Now since friendship depends more on loving, and it is those who love their friends that are praised, loving seems to be the characteristic virtue of friends, so that it is only those in whom this is found in due measure that are lasting friends, and only their friendship that endures.1
What does it mean then to be a friend of Christ? To love what He loves, to will what He wills, therefore to love God above all and to love what God loves. In C.S. Lewis’s terminology from his book The Four Loves our relationship with Christ needs not only “need love” but outwardly directed “gift love.”
The simplistic Protestant idea of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ falls short on this point. It’s not that Christ can’t have a personal relationship with all of us at once. It’s just that we can’t separate our personal relationships with Christ from His kingship. Since Christ is King, who can have a relationship with the king by his own merit?
The King’s Court
Well, none of us, of course. You're probably not ready for a personal relationship yet. You’ll never be. We only can have one by grace. To be a friend of Jesus Christ, to enter the presence of God is to enter the throne room. The only way to be ready is the ways that Christ offers us to approach Him, to let Him transform us to begin living like a member of His court.
One way this begins is by loving His court, developing relationships with His Mother, his courtiers the Saints, etc. You're probably not ready for a personal relationship yet. You’ll never be. The only way to be ready is the ways that Christ offers us to approach Him, to let Him transform us to begin living like a member of His court.
In a kingdom, one rising in stature, dignity, and patriotism would not be a personal friend of the king without being first a friend of the king’s friends, his court, his officials, and his mother. Similarly, our friendship with Christ, as it is not merited by us, should not be our only spiritual friendship. We must first of all, love, truly love God with our whole soul, heart, mind, and strength, and love all the court of God’s heavenly kingdom, the angels, Saints, Christ’s mother, all the other friends of God, etc. To do so, means accepting the graces necessary to love all that God loves and living like a member of the king’s court, loving what and whom He loves.
Other than praise and adoration which adds nothing to His greatness, we can give nothing directly to God. But one way to love God and grow in friendship with Him in Christ is to love the King’s court, developing relationships with His Mother, his courtiers the Saints, etc. It also means remembering that we have to be part of the visible Body that is the Church. We are not saved alone as the suffusion of “me and God”, really the ideology and heresy of Americanism often tells us, but only by being joined to Christ’s body, saved with the rest of our friends and brethren.2
Of course none of us can ever be perfect at any of this either. The Byzantine/Orthodox doctrine of theosis, really something that all Christians believe in under the more general concept of deification and growth in charity is a lifelong process only brought to its conclusion in the beatific vision in Heaven. None of us are ever a perfect friend of the King here on Earth. We ought never to forget that. Christ draws us into a relationship and makes us ever more perfect as long as we stay in that friendship, but we must always treat it with dignified thanksgiving. Neither of course does this mean a Christian life composed merely of stultified, robotic, merely fearful repetition is the means to a relationship. Protestants are also right to warn of the dangers of repetitive prayer if it is merely vain repetition.3
The balance as with all things, is charity, letting Christ’s charity suffuse us and to flow through us. St. Therese of Lisieux’s childlike yet beautiful love of God (I know its a cliche but it’s right) offers us also one of the best examples of balancing a personal relationship with Christ with respectful subservience to Christ’s kingship.
But where can the dignified prayer of someone with a personal relationship with Christ best be found?
Well in the king’s throne room of course. And even more so in being united to the King’s body in Holy Communion. It means treating Holy Communion not as a perfunctory fill up or obligation, but as a unique, special act of love, which means treating the Eucharist with more respect than even many faithful Catholics are accustomed:
While Protestants get the ideas right here, they are often opposed to putting them together, missing out on the ability to fully respect Christ’s kingship and to have the fullest personal relationship with Him by neglecting the Eucharist and all the implications of Christ’s kingship (His court).
We Catholics often don’t think about it, and our error here is one of forgetfulness, complacency, and of lukewarmness. We have all the pieces. We just forget that we need to put them together.
Enter the presence, the physical presence of the King, your friend, and let him make you a better friend. Receive Him. And since the faith is not something we accomplish all by ourselves, but together with the rest of the King’s friends, have a personal relationship with the King’s court.
Yes you need a personal relationship, but don’t forget that Christ is King!
Christ is King. Glorify Him.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Translated by W. D. Ross. The Internet Classics Archive: https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.8.viii.html, Bk. 8. Ch. 8.
Communal liturgical prayer ought to be part of our prayer life:
Our repetitive prayers, the Rosary, the Jesus Prayer, etc. ought always to be means to the more personal, often silent prayer of personal relationship. But Protestant hymns can just as much be vain repetition as the Hail Mary or Our Father. The real problem here is intention. Are you praying to get a certain number of reps in or are you praying because you’re talking with someone you love?
thank you for this! I've also found that the "just me and God" mentality is individualistic, and treats the body of Christ like you're the only member of it. Of course, this is such a distinctly American mindset.
Winner.