American Sensibilities

Consider the well-meant evangelical exhortation to “invite Jesus into your heart.” I assume this imagery comes from Revelation 3:20 (“I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me”). But why, on the basis of one verse, has an entire theology and language of “personal accept­ance’’ of Jesus swamped the far more pervasive apostolic call to confess “Jesus is Lord”? The reason, I submit, is that it fits more comfortably with our American sensibilities. So long as I invite Jesus into my heart, I’m still in control of things and my personal freedom is in no way threatened.

…Donald W. McCullough in The Trivialization of God