Is your “personal relationship” with God destroying your spiritual vitality?

The other day Bruce Ellingson (an elder at my church) explained to me his understanding of the origins of the term "personal relationship" with God. He believed that the term was a response to theological liberalism from the first half of the 20th century. The issue as he explained it was that the liberal church of the early 1900's was creeping towards a universalism (the belief that all people will be justified through Jesus). The evangelical/fundamentalists countered this belief by saying that a person must believe that Jesus Christ died for them personally. In other words, by using the term "personal relationship" they were implying that a person must actually understand Christ's death and resurrection in a real way. They must have personal faith and exhibit personal repentance. The phrase seems to have been popularized by 20th century evangelists like Billy Graham and others.

Well that sounds good to me but 80 years later; What does the term "personal relationship" with Jesus mean today? I never use the term because I sense a poverty in it. My mentor once said that he believed that when people use the term "personal relationship" today, they are thinking they are somehow doing what is right merely because they use the term. They somehow believe that using the term is the proper way to witness Christ to people because that is what they have been taught. Their belief, as he understands it, is that the use of the term "personal relationship" will awaken people to a need for Christ they never knew existed. In other words, they use it without any regards for its origin, implications, or propensity for misuse.

In 1948 a great writer named Richard Weaver wrote a book entitled Ideas Have Consequences (can't figure out how to underline). In the introduction Weaver points out the philosophy's of 19th and 20th century destroyed the intellectual vitality of the western world. He identified philosophy's like nominalism (no truth independent of man), materialism (only what is seen is real), psychological behavioralism, had left man in a state of "abysmality". One of his conclusions was that 20th century man was "in the deep and dark abysm, and he has nothing with which to raise himself. His life is practice without theory." Weaver described 20th century man as one who had a practice but no underlying theory to uphold him. He groped around for words and behaviors but nothing gave meaning to what he had done.

The same could be said about the church's practice today. We have our catch phrases like "personal relationship" and I am convinced that we are following a practice that has no current theoretical underpinning. We're wasting words but we believe that we are saying something poignant, life changing, and meaningful.
In part 2 I'd like examine the consequences that the idea of "personal relationship" with God has had on us and how we are spiritually poorer because of it.