I confess that there are few things that confuse me more than the word personal. It’s like when someone says “It’s not personal” immediately after saying something incredibly hurtful and often malicious, and then excuses it all by saying, “It’s not personal.” It sure feels personal to me.
The word personal can mean something about me or not. It can mean a possession, as in “my personal hair dryer.” It can mean compact, as in a “personal computer.” It can mean something shared on an intimate level, as in “that’s personal information.” It can denote something related to one’s body, as in “personal hygiene.” It can refer to human interest, as in the “personal column” of a newspaper. It can mean a living being rather than an abstraction, as in a personal god. That’s where we get into theology.
The last understanding is particularly curious to me as a Christian. I grew up in the South and it was drilled into my head that salvation depended on accepting Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior. I think they meant in the sense of a living being, but it sure sounded a lot to me like a personal possession. And those who were trying to teach me that often acted accordingly.
This is the startling thing I’ve learned. When it comes to God in a Christian sense, it really isn’t personal. It is relational. The important point is not really so much that God is, although that’s not insignificant. The important point is that God is inherently relational. God makes no sense at all except in the sense of the act of loving. After all, “We have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them” (1 Jn. 4:16, which was one of the Sunday readings just a few weeks ago). It’s all about relationship. All. God is, but without relationship, God is not, or at least irrelevant.
I know that sounds like a heretical thing to say, and it wouldn’t be the first time. It is the whole point, though, of Trinity Sunday, the only Sunday in the church year devoted to a doctrine rather than an event or a story. The Trinity is a uniquely Christian doctrine and what it means is that God exists foundationally in relationship, the community of Father, Son, and Spirit, each linked to the others by love. The three together in relationship are God. Together. The fullness of God can only be experienced in relationship. And that relationship we call love.
It is no accident that Trinity Sunday comes after Pentecost. If it didn’t, it would be all to easy to understand the point as being something personal, particularly the Son or the Spirit, that Jesus is my personal Lord and Savior. That’s not what Christianity teaches. The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Separately they are personal. Together they are God.
Agape,
+Stacy
Bishop Stacy Sauls
Founder and President