I'll Have The Curry.

As a young teenager, I was deeply shaped by what it meant to have a   “personal relationship with Jesus.” I heard it talked about all the time, in every sermon and every Bible study, in every youth group message. I learned that the way to know God was through a “quiet time” where one devoted themself to studying scripture, searching for the sin in their life, asking for forgiveness, and repeating daily. This pattern was engrained in my mind and became the only allowable way to know Jesus. There wasn’t a lot of room for creativity in discovering God because anything outside of the prescription felt sacrilegious, or had potential to lead me astray into something “evil.”   It’s interesting the deep impact those teachings had on me in those formative years. While seminary stretched my imagination for encountering God, I still found myself stuck in a loop of guilt for not doing a daily quiet time as I had learned in my primitive Christian formation in youth group. I clearly remem...