God the girlfriend

“You’re my escape/ From this messed up place/ Cuz you let me forget/ you numb my pain/ How can I tell you just all that you are/ What you do to me/ You’re better than drugs/ Addicted for life/ Feel you coming on so fast/ Feel you coming on to get me high”

Sounds like a perverted cross between Song of Solomon and a heroin dream, right? No…they’re the lyrics to a song by on of the largest “Christian rock” bands out there: Skillet. The song, for all the average kid in the average youth group can figure, is about how much the singer needs God… or a girl, or his next drug fix.

The problem is not simply in the music that we listen to, however, but it is now in the way we think. Recently, a friend of mine posted something about having a new girlfriend on Facebook. The comment was rather ambiguous, something to the effect of: “Whatshisface has a special someone now!” That by itself would not have bothered me at all, but it was one of the comments that followed the original post that worried me. A mutual friend of me and this guy (we’ll call him Bob) posts a reply saying: “OMG! Like… it’s Jesus isn’t it?”

Too often since the advent of Christian Contemporary Music (CCM) nominal Christians everywhere have started referring to God in the shallow and demeaning terms of drugs, ambiguous girlfriends and feel good kicks. Not very edifying terms to use when referring to the Almighty Creator of the universe. And now, even stronger Christians, secure in their faith and walk, are falling into this trap. We must stop.

If anything, the way we address the relationship we have with Jesus Christ should be the other way around. The Church is the bride of Christ; Christ is not the girlfriend of the individual Christian. He is not there to make you “feel good” and take away all your problems. This is by and large one of the huge and dangerous symptoms of charismatic theology: theology based on feelings. Feel good, you’re doing pretty well spiritually. Feel bad? Well, then you probably screwed up somewhere.

At the beginning of John 9, Jesus and His disciples come across a blind man who has been blind from birth. The Disciples immediate question is: “Who, sinned Lord, this man or his parents?” “Neither,” Jesus replies. "But this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”

Hard times are used for God’s glory, not always because we did something wrong. We are married to Christ, He is not here to make us feel good, or give us a pick me up or a temporary solution to temporary pain. He is here to provide salvation. He is here to save us. The end of the world is a wedding, and Christ is the one putting the ring on our figure. It’s not the other way around.