Anthropomorphism

I have this friend, Josh. I’ve known him since I was a teenager, and through the years we got close enough that we decided to move in together. “Not like that” he would say at this point. He was always a little insecure about being considered gay. And part of that I can understand, since it’s against his religion and all.

You see, Josh is a Christian, and I’m… well, not. He’s kind of a peculiar one though since he drinks and smokes and has occasional one night stands with random women. But he feels super guilty about it afterwards, which strangely also makes him feel better at the same time. It all seems rather counter-productive to me, since it seems like focusing so much on feeling bad about things just makes those things even more taboo and thus all the more attractive to him, and the cycle continues.

I don’t really understand everything about Josh, but maybe that’s why he’s always been such an interesting friend. Living with him hasn’t always been fun. Especially when he comes home at 3 AM sobbing about banging some black chick at a frat party he happened to crash. (He also has some subtly questionable views on race, but that’s another story I guess.)

So one day, Josh and I were lounging around on the couch playing Super Mario Brothers 3 on my SNES emulator. (The one included as part of Super Mario All Stars, but that’s probably not a terribly pertinent detail.)

Thinking about the paradox that is my friend, I decided to broach a subject we usually avoid. So I casually remarked to him: “Y’know, bro, you’re about the most religious person I know, and yet… not. Like I never see you go to church and you have these… habits. Yet I know you say you’re a Christian and you talk about God all the time.”

“See, that’s the thing man. It’s not about religion. It’s about relationship.” He said this last word with special relish and reverence, as though it were some profound revelation.

“Oh really? Relationship with whom?” I asked in reply.

He paused and looked at me incredulously for a moment. And then he turned back to the screen, but his eyes passed through it as he gazed out onto some mystical vista. With wide eyes and a somewhat slack jaw, he replied with all somber sobriety: “With my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

I turned to look at him, and couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at his reply. His wide eyes remain fixed on some point in space beyond the television imagining God knows what. His head bobbed slightly in quiet affirmation of his own statement.

I turned back to the TV, took a sip of my beer, and shrugged. “So how long have you two been a thing?”

“Dude!” he exclaimed immediately, whipping his face to mine and furrowing his brow with disapproval.

“Well…?”

“C’mon, man, it’s not like that.”

“Okay… so what is it like?”

“He saved me, man. I was in this really dark place. I was spiraling out of control, headed straight into the abyss. I didn’t even know how bad I was drowning when he pulled me out.”

“So… you met at a pool?”

“Okay, just forget it.”

With a shrug I turned my attention back to the game and unpaused it. It wasn’t half a minute before my friend broke the silence--or the relative peace and quiet at least.

“You wouldn’t have recognized me before, man. I was a completely different person.”

I paused the game with a sigh--Mario midjump and clad in a tanooki suit. My friend sat with his arms folded now, biting his lower lip in quiet contemplation with some strange twinge of anxiety or discomfort that was hard to pinpoint.

“Okay, and…?”

“He changed me. From the inside out. And he’s still changing me, man. That’s why I say it’s about relationship. A real personal relationship with Christ. It’s not about going to church or following a bunch of rules.”

“Alright, so what is it about?”

“Relationship. Just like I said. It’s about accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Inviting Him into your heart. It’s about love, man.”

“Sounds pretty warm.”

“Yeah, it is. It’s, like, the closest relationship you can have, y’know?”

“So… how long have you two been together?”

“Gah! Pssh! Never mind, man!”

“Hey! No, seriously… I mean, if this is such a close relationship and all, surely you remember when you two met and all.”

“Whatever, dude. You just wanna mock, so whatever.”

“Hey hey hey…” I said and tapped him on the shoulder. With all the gentle respect I could muster, I looked in his eyes. “Seriously.”

He kept as quiet as a lamb and just examined me from the corner of his eyes. (I guess the kids nowadays would say he was giving me “that side eye.”)

I continued “Really, man. I didn’t mean to mock. I mean--well, I know the pool thing was a bit facetious. Sorry. I know you were employing some kind of metaphor or whatever. But… I mean, you’re the one calling this a relationship, right? So, tell me about it. You told me all about Janet before. So, yeah, seriously… tell me about this thing with Jesus.”

After a long pause, my friend started hesitatingly, “Well… as you might recall my father was a pastor and I was raised around the Church from an early age. You could say I was saved when I was about five--”

“Five? When you were five years old?”

“Yeah, why?” my friend replied, somewhat defensively.

“Well, you said you were in a dark place and you were drowning. I mean, now literal drowning makes more sense. I mean, at five years old, I doubt you were snorting coke off a hooker’s--”

“No! No no no,” my friend interrupted, “I was talking about years later.”

“So you weren’t… saved… when you were five?”

“No, I was. Essentially. I mean, earlier--”

“Earlier than five?”

“No! Earlier, what I was talking about earlier. That was later.”

“You lost me.”

“Okay, so When I was five I was… saved--but, I went astray. Later in life I got lost.”

“That makes two of us, I guess…” I muttered, but he ignored the remark and continued.

“See, I remember distinctly walking in this park with my father when he explained the whole thing to me--how to get saved. And I prayed with him, and I was sincere. And I think from that moment I was saved, but… you know, like, later in life things changed. And the Lord never abandoned me, but I abandoned him. I got lost in the world and jaded. I even thought of myself as an atheist for a while, but deep down I always knew the truth. And then when I came back to Christ, with my heart blackened and dirty, he cleansed me. He changed my life--even when I didn’t want it changed. He was there. He set my feet back on the path, gently, quietly. Miserable sinner that I was--and am!--and yet he took care of me…”

I could only think to nod in reply, trying patiently to listen. But in truth, it was a little hard to tell what the hell he was talking about. I didn’t grow up “around the Church” like him. In fact, Josh was probably about the first religious friend--Christian or otherwise--I can ever really recall having. So when he used terms like being “saved” I had the vague impression he didn’t mean literally from some life-threatening peril, but rather some kind of conversion experience.

What that experience was precisely, I wasn’t sure. I talked to an LDS missionary once who talked about a “stirring in the bosom” but Josh was adamant that Mormons weren’t “real” Christians, so I really didn’t know if the “bosom” thing had any overlap at all. As I recall, the “bosom” thing was about their book anyways. I think I only remembered it because the missionaries had the same feeling in their voice when they talked about the experience as my friend did when he talked about “being saved.”

He also liked to talk about his “heart” a lot. And while I generally got the metaphor, it was largely one with which I encountered in pop songs and sappy greeting cards--both of which I mostly avoided. Roughly speaking, his “heart” could mean everything from his deepest desires and how he thought of himself as a person, to some random mood that urged him to feed ducks at a pond. And that’s all well enough. I suppose that’s roughly how people use the term in general, but there was also this vague “spiritual” dimension to the whole thing that meant some chance inclination to buy a homeless person a snickers bar was really the work of some magic joojoo.

So, after a moment, my friend continued, “So you see, for me, it’s not about religion. I mean, I haven’t set foot in a church for several years now. It’s about relationship, y’know?”

“Okay, so… you’ve been in this relationship since you were five?”

“Mm, yeah. For sure, why?”

“Just making sure I understand. And you left the relationship at some point, but then came back to it?”

“Uh, right, sure. I mean, I left God, but he never left me.”

“I thought we were talking about Jesus.”

“Yes.”

“But you said God…”

“Right, Jesus IS God. A lot of people don’t really get that, but it’s true.”

“I might be one of them. I thought Jesus was God’s Son or something.”

“Right, exactly. And like father, like son. They share the same nature.”

“Who does?”

“God and Christ.”

“I thought you said Christ--err Jesus--IS God.”

“Yes. Right. Well, I mean like, God the Father.”

“Again, I thought Jesus is the Son.”

“Yeah, exactly. See, like there’s God the Father, and then there’s the Son. And they’re both God.”

“You lost me again.”

“Okay, look. Here…” At that, Josh pulled out his phone and fiddled with it a bit. After half a minute, he turned the screen to me. “See?”

It was a kind of a diagram. It was a triangular pattern of interconnected circles. Three circles on the perimeter labeled “The Father,” “The Son,” and “The Holy Spirit.” The lines connecting them to each other were all labeled “is not” and then there was this fourth circle in the center that was marked “God” and the lines connecting it to the other three all read “is.”

I scratched my head for a bit, but after a little puzzling, I replied “Okay, I think I get it.”

He nodded and smiled, as I sat stroking my chin a little.

Then I asked “So which one are you in a relationship with again?”

“Well… it depends.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I mean, sometimes I pray to the Father. Sometimes I pray to Christ. It’s just--”

“And sometimes to the Spirit?”

“Oh, well… I mean, that’s a really interesting one. Like, uh--well…”

“In any case, each time you’re really just praying to the same person then, eh?”

“What? No, no. That’s Modalism, see. There’s three persons, but one God.”

I looked back at the chart, but I didn’t see “person” mentioned anywhere. And now I was confused again, but also intrigued. I’ve always liked Math, and the whole thing was starting to seem like some abstract geometric proof and I got wrapped up in that. Let’s see, if each length of the triangle has a unit of one, then the total perimeter would be 3, but the square area--or should this whole thing be cubed? One to the power of three would be one, is that where he’s going with this? Josh continued smiling quietly as I perused the chart, and then I came back to the moment.

“Okay, okay, so wait… is your relationship with God or Jesus?”

“But Jesus is G--”

“Right, right. I mean… like, Jesus is just one person, right?”

“Yes, although he has two natures.”

“What?”

“God and Man. It’s called the hyperstatic… no, the, uh hippo stasis? The uh--”

“Okay, okay. But in the mean time, when you say your relationship is with God, you mean Jesus.”

“Well… not just Jesus. Like I said, I also pray to the Father. And as far as the Spirit, I don’t pray to, uh, Him, so much. But… he does give me the words to say at times. And in some ways my relationship with the Spirit is the most direct, y’know? But, uh, yeah. I relate to them all, I guess you’d say.”

I felt like I might be getting a slight headache at this point, but after a moment of squinting I continued, “Okay, so just tell me about Jesus for now.”

“Yeah. Okay, uh, well Jesus was born about 2000 years ago in a town called Beth--”

“Pretty sure I’ve heard this story before.”

He sighed. “What do you want to hear then? You asked me to tell you about Jesus.”

“I mean tell me about him in this relationship of yours. What’s he like? Any hobbies or interests? Likes or dislikes? What do you two talk about?”

“Dude, c’mon, you know it’s not like that.”

“I do? Look, you’re the one who was emphasizing how it’s about a relationship. ‘A personal relationship with Christ.’ That’s what you said. Well, these are the perfectly legitimate questions you ask in and about relationships.”

“Well… okay. So, like, Jesus is a builder. He’s really creative.”

“Oh yeah? What does he make?”

“The world for one. And when He ascended to Heaven, He said ‘I go my way to make a place for you. In my Father’s house are many mansions.'”

“Mansions? Inside of a house? What?”

“Well, I’m kinda quoting from the King James, and in Elizabethan English ‘mansion’ means, like, ‘dwelling’ and ‘house’ there--”

“Okay, so you’re just quoting from the Bible again. Is there anything Jesus has told you about Himself that isn’t in the Bible already?”

He let out a long sigh. At this point he was visibly irritated. I sipped my beer and waited. After half a minute he answered “So, a lot of people raise this objection. That ‘Okay, so if you have a relationship with God how does he talk to you?’ and they just assume that He doesn’t or whatever. But He does. You just have to know how to listen, okay?”

“Alright, so how do you listen?”

“I’ll give you an example… This one time I was in this relationship with a girl up in Illinois. It was kind of difficult at times, but I really liked this chick, y’know? And she had some things going for her, but things were tough. So one night, I prayed to God, and I asked Him to open up His word to me. Because the thing about the Bible is it isn’t just some old dusty tome. ‘The word is alive and sharper than a two-edged sword.’ So I prayed for advice, and with my eyes still closed I opened my Bible and as soon as I opened my eyes they fell on the words ‘Destruction comes out of the north.’ It was like Second Chronicles or something, I forget--but I’ll never forget those words: Destruction comes out of the north. And so I broke up with her the next day.”

“Wait… are you talking about Aubrey?”

He simply nodded solemnly. And so I continued…

“Dude, she called you a ‘f*****g c**t’ all the time! I was telling you for weeks to break up with that toxic harpy!”

“Well--”

“She used to call you a b***h whenever she answered the phone!”

“Now that was meant affectionately.”

“Whatever, dude. The point is she was no good for you. Anybody could see that.”

“Well, my point is that the Lord speak to me through His Word. And I listened. And that’s how it works. Sometimes it’s a pretty direct message like that. Other times it’s this strong feeling you get, or something in your environment will remind you of something--maybe something you read in His Word. Know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I think I know what you mean. And you know what else I think…? I think this is the weirdest f*****g relationship you’ve ever been in, man. And that’s including that one weird chick who was into diapers.”

“You thought Christine was weird…?”

“Dude…” I said with a glare. (He was legitimately confused, which was in turn a little astounding to me. The chick had a playpen and a changing table and everything.) “Anyways, this is even weirder than that.”

No response. Out of the corner of my eye I could see he seemed a little distracted but I continued anyhow: “You have this relationship with a person who’s part of some kind of a literal love triangle. And the whole Father and Son thing seems a little--well, I’m not going to even go there. The point is Jesus ‘ascended’ somewhere in the universe or on another dimension of reality or whatever, and so this is super long distance at best. You communicate magically with your thoughts, but the only word you get back is in obscure bits of text in an ancient book, or some rustling of leaves, or some random unaccounted-for feeling that you think was maybe inspired from the divine, or God knows what. And you don’t know who in the love triangle is actually talking back to you and you can’t really be sure if any one of them is actually saying anything at all.

“I might not know much about religion, but I have learned a thing or two about relationships. Regardless of the kind--friendship, family, lover, whatever--the strength of a given relationship always comes down to three things: proximity, intensity, and frequency. The first metric I already discussed. Super long distance. And the second two can really only be established at all on your end.

“This is not normal, Bro. I would say it’s downright unhealthy. Normal people that care about you don’t solely communicate with you so ambiguously that you can’t be entirely sure that they’ve communicated anything at all. They don’t incessantly redirect you to read their book. That’s what narcissists and disgruntled nerds on IRC do with strangers. It’s like ‘God’ or Jesus or whomever is telling you to RTFM all the time. And from what I know of the Bible it sure seems a lot more confusing than even the most badly written man page--at least if you’re approaching it like some kind of all-encompassing guide to life that you can consult like a Magic 8 Ball. I mean, f**k, at least the 8 ball has more contextually appropriate responses.

“Honestly, if you call this whole thing a personal relationship, it sure seems like an immensely one-sided one…”

At that point in the midst of the ensuing silence, I realized Josh was thoroughly distracted to the point that he likely hadn’t heard a thing I said. “Josh?” I said with a sigh.

“Huh? Just a second, I got this big long text from Aubrey. I’m kinda thinking about replying…”

“Jesus Christ…”