To me, in particular
“What does it avail me that this birth, the birth of Christ, the Son of God in eternity, is always happening if it does not happen in me?”
- St. Augustine
If Augustine asked this almost 2,000 years ago, the average bear in the pew today is asking it to an even higher degree.
Abstractions just won’t do. Especially in our day and age, where our level of psychological self-awareness is so extremely heightened. We need to know where the rubber meets the road. If the preacher says that we’re “redeemed in Christ” from the pulpit, it doesn’t do me any good if I feel alienated, anxiety-ridden, or cast into outer darkness. We need to know and experience Christ moving in our lives, energizing, healing, making, unmaking, and leading us to greater awareness, compassion, and vitality.
We need God to be done to us in particular.
Not just thrown at us in general.