Real Discipleship And "My Jesus Syndrome"

Biblically, an idol is anything to which we give the adoration and submission that are due to God alone. The ancient world worshipped personal idols, such as Zeus and Athena. Our contemporary world struggles with more spiritual idols, idols that are more discreet and seductive, such as pleasure, money, and power.

Just as, in the early centuries after Christ, ancient peoples tried to retain their idolatry and impose it upon the gospel, leading to Christological heresies such as Docetism and Arianism, so contemporary peoples persist in their idolatry and seek to inflict it upon the gospel, leading to false gospels of hedonism, materialism, and utilitarianism. All these modern heresies contain grave misconceptions about discipleship and what it means to adore and submit to the living God.  

Whenever an idol—whatever it might be—becomes a template for discipleship, a false messiah is crowned, a perverse gospel is defended, and a deviant discipleship is created.

Such messiahs, gospels, and notions of discipleship are diametrically opposed to the Lord Jesus Christ, as he is known with surety from history and divine revelation, from his saving gospel, and from the way of discipleship that he offers to us. 

One expression of such idolatry is when people speak of “my Jesus.”

In this context, the term is not being used in a devotional way, to express affection to the Lord, but rather as an assertion of a self-created, self-defined Jesus. In this way, the expression “my Jesus” is similar in spirit to the popular term “my truth.”

In such a way, what sounds like devotion is actually rebellion against the real Jesus Christ of history and divine revelation. The fanciful claim of “my Jesus,” wrapped in relativism, egoism, and sentimentalism, asserts that simply because a person thinks, wants, or feels that the Lord Jesus should be a certain way, he therefore is. People with their personal Jesus presume to change the real, perfect identity of Jesus Christ and the unchanging truth of his teachings to suit their own preferences and likings.  

Real discipleship, however, means accepting Jesus Christ as he is truly known from history and divine revelation. Discipleship is dying to ourselves, and that includes dying to what we want the Lord Jesus to be or to teach. It means surrendering to Jesus Christ as “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6). This is the task, challenge, and arduous journey of real discipleship