Intimacy without Familiarity: Religion's Version of Knowing God

By David Ryser

The dysfunction of the Church is that it has become a group of people who are in Christ living as though they were not, trying to get a group of people who are not in Christ to behave as though they were.  (Tim Speer)

A friend of mine recently sent me an article that, in part, is a shining example of the religious mindset when it comes to our relationship with God.  The main premise of the article is that the Church has been taken captive by a belief that “the Church” is defined as a building (with its attendant rituals and activities) rather than as a group of believers.  The author correctly observes that Jesus said He would build His Church, but we have attempted to build it for Him rather than simply to love Him and others.  In so doing, we have stolen the Church from Him.  And then we, in turn, allowed the enemy to steal the Church from us.  The author then exhorts us to turn back to God.

So far, so good.

But toward the end of the article, the author issues a warning/caveat/disclaimer that is all too common in religious writings.  What is this dire warning?  We are cautioned not to become too familiar with God lest we lose respect for Him as the all-powerful Creator of the universe.  In fact, the author claims to “see too many people who are too familiar with God.”  I find this to be an interesting claim because I don’t know anyone who is too familiar with God.  I know people who are not at all familiar with God.  These people are religious-minded people…both believers and unbelievers…who hold God at arm’s length and relate to Him as though they are on the outside of the relationship looking in.  And I know people who are familiar with God.  These people are passionate lovers of Jesus and are intimate with Him.  And they respect Him.

How can you have intimacy without familiarity?

Intimacy without familiarity is an absurd notion.  How absurd?  I dare you to apply this concept to your relationship with your spouse.  Go to your spouse and utter the following affectionate speech:  “I love you.  I love you like I love no other.  I love you passionately.  I want to be intimate with you…body and soul…so that we are one in every way.  But I don’t want to become too familiar with you for fear that I will lose respect for you.”

What?  Can you imagine how your spouse would react to this?  And is there any way you could envision that your spouse would react positively?

There is a reason this sort of drivel does not appear in romantic greeting cards.

The fact is, there is no genuine intimacy without familiarity.  And religious writers who suggest we can have intimacy with God…and then caution against familiarity with Him…are likely neither intimate nor familiar with God.  They’re merely religious.  Religion depends upon maintaining a distance in our relationship with God.  It has a vested interest in keeping us separated from God and relating to Him as though He was an abusive Father whom we must fear…and appease…in order to win His favor.

This kind of fear is central to the continued existence and success of religion.  And someone who is intimate and familiar with God is a threat to religion…and to the religious.

Jesus had this problem back in His day.  He modeled and taught an intimate…and familiar…relationship with His Father.  And religious people hated Him because of it.  They called Him a blasphemer because He called Himself the Son of God, thus making God His Father.  Jesus demonstrated the love, compassion, mercy, grace, and works of the Father.  He claimed to know the Father…in an intimate and familiar way…and religious people hated Him.

They hated Him enough to murder Him.

Is this religious spirit the same spirit that compels religious writers to caution believers against becoming too familiar with God?  I hope not.  I hope that this is merely a holdover from the religious training we’ve all received.  As we transition from religion to Jesus, it is not uncommon for us to retain religious notions and patterns of thought even as we are moving toward an ever-increasingly intimate relationship with God.  These fall away as we get nearer to Him, and it is unfair to judge too harshly someone who is in transition.

We lovers of Jesus are all in transition.

So it can be difficult to know if someone is in transition or merely a shrewd businessperson who sees an opportunity for gain in jumping aboard the loving-Jesus bandwagon.  The latter can discern what God is saying to His Church and see an opportunity to profit from the “loving Jesus fad” in some way.  So they preach and write about loving Jesus without really understanding what it is to live in intimacy with God.  They trumpet the need to be intimate with God, but are not comfortable about being familiar with Him.  So they admonish us to be intimate with God, but not to get too familiar with Him.

I am not without compassion for these people.  I was one.  I remember one day, as I was in the pulpit preaching, having the thought:  “Here I am speaking for God, and I don’t even know Him.”

This was not my happiest moment in the vocational ministry.

Jesus lived in intimate, and familiar, relationship with the Father.  And He respected the Father.  There is no hint that Jesus’ familiarity with His Father caused Him to disrespect His Father in any way.  The whole notion is ridiculous.  I don’t know anyone who is in an intimate relationship, even with another person, who is not also familiar with them.  And I know of no one who is in an intimate and familiar relationship with another person who does not highly respect that other person.

How could this be any less true of our relationship with God?

Toward the end of His ministry, Jesus revealed to His disciples that God was as much their Father as He was Jesus’ Father.  In His last conversation with His disciples, Jesus invited them into the same relationship that He had with the Father.  Not a similar relationship.  The same relationship.  The identical relationship that Jesus had enjoyed with the Father (and the Holy Spirit) from eternity past.  He prayed that His disciples…whom he now called His friends…would be one with God and with one another in the very same way that He and the Father were one.

Intimate?  Yes.  Familiar?  Absolutely.  Disrespectful?  Never.

It is a biblical and experiential…for some of us…fact that we have been invited into an intimate relationship with God.  As we grow in intimacy with Him, we also come to know Him more and to become more familiar with Him.  This intimacy and familiarity with God never causes us to be disrespectful toward Him. It is not disrespectful to God for us to enjoy Him as He enjoys us.

So we should not be made to fear intimacy and familiarity with God.  We were created for both.  We must not allow religious people to tell us that we should have intimacy with God without familiarity.  Intimacy without familiarity is not genuine love.  Intimacy without familiarity is the love of the prostitute and the gold-digger.

And I am neither.

Responses to this article are welcomed.  You may contact the author at drdave1545@yahoo.com