Do You Know Jesus — or Just Know About Him?

Faith is not just an idea but a relationship — a lived encounter with the Person of Jesus Christ.

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“Do you know Jesus?”

I let the question hang in the air, my go-to whenever I walk with someone in discipleship.

A blank stare.

“…I mean, I guess?”

“You guess?” 

A smile.

“Let me ask you a different question. Do you know me?”

“Yes.”

“Do you ‘guess’ that you know me?”

“No.”

“Ok, then why do you guess that you know Jesus?”

“Hm. Well, I guess I know about Jesus, but I don’t know if I actually know him — not like I know you or someone else.”

“Ah. Do you believe that you can actually know Jesus?”

“I guess.”

“Dude! Come on! Do you or do you not?!”

A laugh.

“Yes.”

Mission accomplished. I’m a big believer that a crucial but often overlooked step in evangelization is helping someone realize the distinction between knowing about Jesus and knowing him personally. That distinction cuts to the heart of it all.

To use modern psychological terms (that have since been adopted into Christian circles), we need to help those we spiritually accompany distinguish between their God-concepts and God-images.

A God-concept is what someone intellectually knows about God, while a God-image is what someone knows through his or her experience of God. Another way of looking at these terms could be “religion” and “relationship.”

Oftentimes, people have a disconnect between the two.

At the risk of over-generalizing, many Catholics merely concern themselves with developing an accurate God-concept, while many Protestants simply concern themselves with having a strong God-image. Too often, followers of Christ neglect either their God-concept or their God-image, but both are necessary to be true disciples of Jesus.

The work of evangelization, therefore, is helping people develop accurate God-concepts as well as strong God-images that reflect those God-concepts.

When we evangelize, we have to concern ourselves with good theology and catechesis, but we can’t stop there.

We also have to concern ourselves with helping people develop a prayer life and frequent the sacraments.

God-concept and God-image. Both and.

So if someone we’re walking with has a disconnect between the two, how do we help that person bridge the gap? How do we help them develop a God-image that reflects their God-concept? Put another way, how do we help them not only know about Jesus but genuinely know him one-to-one, person-to-person?

One word: encounter.

Encounters bridge the gap between our God-images and our God-concepts. They align what we know with who we know.

Encounters are moments in which we relate to the Person of our religion.

When I worked with the National Eucharistic Congress, “encounter” was one of our main rally cries for the National Eucharistic Revival, and I love how we defined it: “an awakening to one’s sense of God.”

In many of his writings, Pope St. John Paul II alluded to a “sense of God,” an awareness that God is real, proximate and intimately involved with one’s life. Encounters are moments when we become acutely conscious of God’s reality and proximity in our lives. As followers of Jesus, we need to encounter him — and not just once. We need to consistently encounter him.

My natural follow-up to my go-to question of “Do you know Jesus?” is “Have you encountered him?”

Based on how the person I’m walking with answers that question, I try to empower them to seek out encounters — in the sacraments, in prayer and in fellowship.

Paragraph 1084 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “Christ now acts through the sacraments he instituted to communicate his grace.” Translation: Every time you receive a sacrament, you receive a guaranteed encounter with Christ — every time. Whenever you go to Confession, you encounter him through the priest. Whenever you receive the Eucharist, you receive his full presence. You encounter him in every sacrament, every time.

Paragraph 2558 of the Catechism sums up our relationship with Jesus as our prayer. When we enter into the sacred space of prayer, we put ourselves in a position to encounter Christ. When we sit in silence, we quiet ourselves so that we can hear him speak to us. At the very least, we quiet our minds to know that he is close and at work. Similarly, when we read Scripture, we engage with his living Word.

Paragraph 949 of the Catechism states, “Faith is a treasure of life which is enriched by being shared.” In other words, Christian fellowship helps lead people to encounter. Those who live from a place of encounter have the unique ability to help others do the same.

These three practices — frequenting the sacraments, developing a prayer life and fostering fellowship — help us encounter Jesus, thus helping our God-image sync up with what we know through the teachings of his Church.

This is why the earliest Christians “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). The apostles’ teaching gave them a clear God-concept, while fellowship, the breaking of bread (the Mass and sacraments), and prayer then allowed them to encounter Christ and receive a clear God-image. 

As evangelists, may we help others distinguish between what they know about God and how they personally know him. From there, may we lead them to encounter God, continuously feeding their minds as well as their hearts.