I was reading a piece by a person who described herself as being a person who all she ever wanted was to collapse and receive care from another, but there was no one who would or could fill that role for her. In order to fill that void, she said she created an “imaginary Jesus,” but all she really wanted was a real person to fill that role and into whose arms she could collapse. She learned to be that person for other people from her experiences, but didn't have that real person herself.
There is something about this that just breaks my heart, and leaves me pensive. Like many of those who commented on the post, I understood what she was saying as far as creating an “imaginary Jesus” to interact with and draw strength from. What breaks my heart most is that this is what most Christians, especially within American Christianity, are taught to do whether they realize it or not. What sinks my heart is that it should be unnecessary, because the very real Jesus Christ is already at hand and present if only Christians were actually taught to interact with Him through the union with Him which is already theirs. Especially within a group of His disciples, He should be easy to see and hear. There should be neither reason nor need to create an imaginary version of Him.
The whole point and goal of being a disciple of Jesus Christ is manifesting Jesus Christ within yourself to others. It's to follow Him so that, just as He submitted Himself to the Father and remained within the Father, so also the disciple is to submit to His Spirit with whom the disciple has been joined and remain within Jesus Christ. "If you have seen Me you have seen the Father." For the actual disciple it must be equally true that, "If you have seen me, you have seen Jesus Christ. You have seen Him and heard His words, because they aren't mine, but Christ's who is within me."
One of the things I have come to realize is that the vast majority of churches and Christians are really little more than personality cults, or, at times, just plain cults. They have Jesus’ face and name slapped on them. They adhere to more or less traditional orthodox Christian belief and practice. They’re adamant about holding firm to the Scriptures. But when it comes right down to it, they’re all about what theologies and interpretations of the Scriptures you’re supposed to accept and defend if you want to “be saved,” and they or their “mother church” are usually the only arbiter of what those are supposed to be. Practice is either secondary, an afterthought, or actively worked and preached against as “works based salvation” (in total contradiction of what Jesus and His Apostles taught by the way). They have no real concept of what it means to actually be a disciple of Jesus Christ, or what that is supposed to look like largely because those who are teaching them, quite sincerely by the way, don't understand what it means to be a disciple, but are immersed in doctrines and theologies which have nothing to do with actually being a disciple. It’s all about what you believe instead of what you are. It’s all about what’s in your doctrinal statement instead of what the source of your behaviors and responses is.
With Jesus Himself, His every word and action were motivated by a sincere, deep looking compassion and empathy towards every person who came into contact with Him. He made you feel as though you were the only person He was talking to, whether you were in a crowd of hundreds, or one on one. You could tell Him anything, and when you cried, He cried with you His empathy was so strong. This is what He taught His disciples to be, and empowered them to be through union with His death, burial, and resurrection.
To be a disciple is to imitate Jesus Christ in everything. No disciple will ever surpass his teacher, but every disciple completely trained will be like his teacher. He very much was the arms which you could fall into, and His disciples were expected to be the same if they were truly following Him. As John wrote, "The person who claims to remain in Him is himself obligated to walk just as that One walked." And as Justin Martyr wrote, "Let that person not be called a Christian who does not live as He taught, even though he professes with the lips the teachings of Christ."
People are unwittingly taught to create an imaginary friend with what they're taught about Jesus Christ, and this is a tragedy of epic proportions, because the disciple of Jesus Christ is already intertwined with the very real and manifest Jesus Himself who is always right here and right now. It's the promulgation of the drawing or the shadow, when the solid reality is already available because they don't know and haven't been taught any better.
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