My Relationships with Roxanne and Jesus

Let me take you back to eighth grade. Middle school. Ah, those were the days. I was quite a different person back in 8th grade. Inside and out. Straight A's, Academic Decathlon team, 8th grade Science Award. Yeah, that was me. To top it all off, I wore glasses. When you are in middle school and smart and you wear glasses, for some reason you get the label of being a nerd. (I guess being a Star Trek fan was a factor as well.) I was also really skinny. I'm not a huge guy now by any means, but I was like a skeleton back then.

There was this girl in my homeroom. Let's call her Roxanne. Roxanne was great. Smart, funny, pretty, nice, & popular. If you were a boy in the eighth grade, you had a thing for Roxanne. She was just it. Roxanne and I were friends. Not best friends or anything. But because she was a nice girl, she would always talk to me. I had liked girls before Roxanne. Like the girl named Michelle in 1st grade. We would squirt glue on each other. That's how you get a girl's attention in 1st grade, you squirt Elmer's in her eye. Then there was Stacy in 5th grade. She had blonde poofy hair that for some reason I found attractive.

But Roxanne was different for me. I mean, I was in 8th grade so I was practically a grown man and all. There was a Valentine's Day dance coming up and I wanted to ask her to go with me to it. So I made of list of things I had to do so she would go with me. 1. Talk to her. 2. Make her laugh. 3. Wear a gallon of my dad's cologne every day. 4. Buy her the new Boyz II Men cd. I did everything on my list. So I asked her if she wanted to go to the dance, to which she replied, "We are such good friends; I think we should just stay friends." Which really means, "Are you serious? No, I'm too cool for you." My first endeavor into the world of relationships had been crushed by the notorious Friend Zone. I still have bitter feelings toward the Friend Zone.

So what did I do wrong with Roxanne? I did everything on my list. I followed every step exactly. Maybe that was my problem.

I have a relationship with Christ. I'm not dating Christ or anything like that. He's married to the Church. It's hard to explain my relationship with Him. I mean, it's hard to put into words any relationship. Relationships are just something you have to experience, are they not? The definition of relationship, an emotional or other connection between people, really doesn't do that great of a job explaining relationships. As Christians, we like to use the word Evangelism when explaining how we invite others to have a relationship with Christ.

Evangelism is a funny word. You go to most Protestant churches and you will find the phrase, "...to evangelize the lost" in their mission statement. Of course we have all heard of the "Evangelical Church." Basically the term is based on the emphasis of sharing the story of Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection with a non-believer. Witnessing to the 'lost.'

Sometimes the word 'evangelize' bothers me though. Sometimes the word makes me think of negative things. Sometimes when I think of the word 'evanglize', I think of a check list of things you have to do to become a Christian. In our society, we like our steps and our rules. We like guidelines and things we can check off. Sometimes I think the whole idea of 'evangelizing the lost' has been hijacked by a bunch of people who have turned it into some kind of process. Step A. Read this verse. Step B. Say this prayer. Step C. Get dunked underwater by the pastor. It makes it seems so rigid and so cold.

And when telling someone about Christ, evangelizing, I need to ask myself what I am really doing. Am I giving some person a list of steps they have to follow or am I inviting them into a relationship. As I learned with Roxanne, there are no steps in relationships. (You were wondering how I was going to tie that in.) It's not some systematic process. I have met people before who said the knew Jesus was God and they knew His whole story, but they just weren't ready to follow Him yet. The could check off everything on the list, but didn't want to become a Christian. This means it's not just some system. Becoming a Christian is entering into a relationship. Presenting the Gospel of Christ as some sort of list of steps or a type of process to follow is pretty much something a Pharisee would do. And we know that Jesus' way was different from what the Pharisees were doing.

I have never found in the Bible the list of steps you have to take to become a Christian. My Bible doesn't have any checklists in it at all. So where did the "How to Become a Christian" process come from? I don't know. I do know that what I have with Him is a relationship. And like any relationship, there are no checklists...it's simply all about the journey together.