Creating the Voice of Imaginary Jesus
The Jesus tulpa
We’ve all met people who claim to have a vibrant personal relationship with Jesus.
Even as a Christian, this was hard for me to understand. No matter how much I tried to talk to Jesus, I never heard anything back, and I envied those who did.
How was I supposed to have a relationship with silence? A love affair with an empty void? Was I doing it wrong? Not praying hard enough? Unworthy? Was I meant to stay in a “desert place” for years and years?
This total lack of interaction led me to doubt that Jesus existed and that he wanted to speak to me, love me, and guide me.
Once I left Christianity, the silence became easy to explain. Of course it’s hard to talk to a man who died 2000 years ago. He’s dead.
I still couldn’t explain why my Christian friends and leaders had seemed so sincere in describing their personal relationship with Jesus. As someone who no longer believed in God, what was I to think of these people? Were they crazy? Were they lying about it, just to trick others into believing? Was I wrong? What’s going on here?
Maybe it was hyperbole all along. Believers think about Jesus as a role model, a positive idea, a focal point for meditation. Is “relationship” being used loosely, in the same way…
