In 1989, Martin Gore wrote "Personal Jesus". People hear that song in different ways. The way I heard it sung first by a gravel-voiced local guy was as an ironic challenge: everybody makes Jesus over into a personal servant of their own needs and narcissisms, personally answerable to them, and them alone--"on-call 24/7."
Reach out and touch faith
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who's there
The recent heartaches and splintering in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, largely residing here in Minnesota, over whether some congregations could or should ordain and hire gay or lesbian/homosexual pastors, tastes of the same dark irony. The fights have put me in the mood to start "my own personal denomination," just as a lot of others seem to think they should. Let us all indulge in spiritual Balkanization.
Anyone who wanted to join my own personal denomination would agree--with me. Whatever I think will be the way it should be. Whatever I ask for shall be granted. I will happily commingle my preferences with divine inspiration. Like the "Sheila-ism" first reported by sociologists of a couple of decades ago, where "Sheila" just picked and chose from a variety of belief systems whatever she wanted for her own "personal faith", our own personal denominations could do the same thing, allowing either a conservative, progressive or "other" God-and-Jesus to authorize it. We could excommunicate anyone who didn't agree with me/we. It would all be so much more convenient than needing to pray with, reason with, relate to, and differ from, real sisters and brothers.
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