CAN YOU HAVE A RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD?
Relationship is a summary word.
Mutual awareness – Both parties know the other exists.
Communication – Some form of two-way interaction or exchange.
Emotional connection – Shared feelings like love, trust, affection, etc.
Shared experience – Spending time together, doing things together.
Reciprocity – Give-and-take; each contributes something.
Trust and reliability – Belief that the other will be there or act with integrity.
Growth over time – The relationship deepens or changes with time and effort.
Boundaries and respect – Recognizing each other’s identity and limits.
Understanding – Knowing the other person’s thoughts, feelings, and values.
Little of this describes a relationship with God. More of that later.
If God exists and is love, then He is best known by what He does. But we only glimpse a tiny fraction of His actions—and even then, we're never entirely sure what we've seen. He is infinite; we are finite. The comparison isn't even fair—it's like an ant brushing against the trunk of an elephant. So how can we honestly claim to have a relationship with Him?
In most human relationships, mutual understanding, communication, and equality are essential. But when people speak of a "relationship" with God, they often mean something different—not a mutual partnership of equals, but a relationship defined by disparity.
So we cannot reach up to him and he has to reach down. The only way an ant can know the elephant is if the elephant comes low enough to be seen, touched, known.
The believer may say,
"The closer I get to God, the less I understand Him."
Faith, in this view, isn’t about certainty—it’s about trust. Not trust that I understand everything, but trust that God is who He says He is, even when I can’t see clearly.
I am told that I can honestly claim to have a relationship with God, only under two conditions:
I don’t define the relationship on my terms. I don’t pretend it’s equal or fully understandable.
I acknowledge that any knowledge I have is partial, filtered, and often mysterious.
If I speak of a relationship with God while holding these in tension—acknowledging mystery, maintaining humility, and avoiding spiritual arrogance—then it might not be a lie or a boast. It could be a real relationship—just not the kind I am used to having.
WHY I CANNOT ASK OTHERS TO ACCEPT MY RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD
Because we inevitably project our notions and wishes unto persons who we want to cherish but do not know.
Because it is not relationship in any meaningful way
Because it is a boast that I am able to let God reach down and respond adequately. The ant would need to be incredible if he could understand the elephant coming down to his size as it were.
Because we know the elephant can't really do it. The ant is mistaking its own notions for glimpses and connections. A reducing God is replacing himself with shadows.
Because if God were able to meet us on our level, we are effectively - not literally - making him our equal and he is making us his equal.
Because there is a thin line between God supposedly coming down to meet you at your infinitely small and low level and you trying to make him come down. If that is what you are doing, your imagination has taken over.
Because big claims need big arguments and evidences - to claim you know this great God sufficiently is one such big claim as is your claim that he treasured you so much that he humbled himself to meet you.
Because no two people agree on what God coming down to them to meet them means.
Because the claim to be having a relationship might be a lie. It is hard to accept such an odd and huge claim as correct or honest.
The saying, "The closer I get to God, the less I understand Him" is mumbo-jumbo. If God is so infinitely different, loving and powerful you should not understand him close or not. The statement sounds like a boast - like fake humility. It exalts confusion or lack of clarity as a spiritual virtue. It is linked to how God lets evil happen supposedly. It is a defense mechanism and dangerously shuts down questions and doubts. Is this humility—or is it an excuse to avoid hard questions? Both? People will lean from one to the other - continually changing. So somebody using the saying is bragging - in that light.
Worse - the saying is in the heart of every believer. Even if it is not verbalised - it is the attitude underpinning faith.
FINALLY
Religion is based on people claiming to have a relationship with the divine and impressing others who join them. We have found this to be illicit. T he top offender here seems to have been Jesus Christ himself!