Tag Archive - spirituality


My top book recommendations: Psychology/Self-help

May 10, 2012 in MISCELLANY with 0 Comments

Despite having a B.S. in Clinical Psychology and an M.A. in Counseling, I don’t read a lot of “straight” psychology books. Often they are boring and extremely theoretical. I tend to read practical psychology books, the kind that most others would find interesting in this category. A rare exception to this makes up my first choice today:

1. Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl. Frankl (a psychiatrist) and his family were imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp. In this challenging, galling, depressing, and yet extremely moving account, Frankl theorizes that people and circumstances can rob you of everything you have in the world except the thing that matters most , which is your ability to choose your attitude in any and every situation. This idea is now one of the foundations of modern psychotherapy. Even if you are not a frequent reader of books in this category, do yourself the favor of reading this one soon. You won’t regret it.

2. The Road Less Traveled, by M. Scott Peck. This gazillion seller contains one of the most thoughtful meldings of psychology and spirituality I have seen. Read it and you will understand yourself better and you will be better equipped to love those around you.

3. Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, by Peter Scazzero. This one may not be that interesting to my readers who are more secularly-minded, but it is fantastic with the idea of accepting responsibility for one’s emotional and spiritual growth and how growth happens.

Love Wins? Count On It!

May 9, 2011 in GODSTUFF with 9 Comments

Rob Bell's Love Wins book

Rob Bell's Love Wins book

What’s the Big Deal?

I just finished reading Rob Bell’s latest book, Love Wins. I did this because so many people have asked my opinion about it. Love Wins is the first Rob Bell book I have ever completed. His material normally is not challenging or enlightening to me on any level whatsoever. Love Wins was the same. However, people are not asking me if I find the material challenging or enlightening. They are asking me if I agree with it. And I can say, for the most part, yes I do. In fact I don’t see what the big deal is.

Shaping God

There’s something people really need to deal with that they often do not deal with. Christian people often refuse to deal with the fact that, as Bell stated, we shape our God and then our God shapes us. A huge number of Christians will tell you that at their church they just teach the Bible, not the “opinion of man,” as if the Bible and our opinion of it can truly be separated. That’s simply absurd. You pick up the Bible. You read it. You think about it, but you tend to think differently about certain things than I do. You see nuances I may not see, and miss ones I may catch. You read with different eyes, different understandings, and even different needs and a different heart.

This is what it means to say you shape your God. You read into the text the God you need to believe in. I know. I do too. We all do. The question is, who do you need God to be? In order for God to “save” you, bring you peace and joy, and assure you that you are safe in this universe, do you need to know beyond doubt that millions of other people have missed the boat and are burning in hell? If so, that’s the God that appeals to you. The thing that’s important is that we stop this shell-game of insisting that this or that opinion of the Bible and its meaning is completely drawn from the text itself and is therefore the authoritative version and any other opinions or ideas must therefore be not only wrong but heretical.

Questions

As far as I’m concerned, the very best thing about Love Wins is the number of questions it asks. If someone simply reads all these questions and then sits with them for a while, I think the truth will make itself clear. They will make Bell’s basic point appear necessary, which I believe it is if we are to really believe God is who we have always said God is.

In the meantime, why is this book controversial? Does Rob Bell ever once make the claim that he knows what happens to people after they die? Nope. Does he ever claim there is no such thing as hell or that no one is going there? Much the opposite. Does he ever claim that anyone other than the risen Christ is working to bring people to the knowledge of God? Never.

Objections and Responses

“But it leans toward universalism.” Definitely — at least compared to the “turn or burn” version of things. And still, leaning toward universalism and being a universalist are very different. “It’s terrible theology.” Well certainly it is for those who reject his ideas. C.S. Lewis would beg to differ. Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Seminary, defends the book. “It’s heresy.” So you say, but you didn’t even really read the book, apparently — after all, you still think Bell’s a universalist.  :-) “But millions of people in hell has been the established position of the church for two thousand years.” Yeah. They thought burning people alive was a good idea too. They’ve had a lot of bad ideas. They’ve been wrong a lot. Don’t be offended by that, it’s just facts.

It’s always funny to me how good Protestants will rail on Catholics like crazy for not really getting the whole God thing, but when Protestant B departs from strict orthodoxy, Protestant A will start saying how “the church has always believed…” (which must mean the Catholic Church since they were the only game in town for so long). Personally, I’m not in the least bit anti-Catholic, but the double-standard is funny. Which is it? Do the Catholics always get it or not? I think they’re like me. And like you. And like Rob Bell. Sometimes they are right, sometimes they are wrong. Hopefully they continue to pray for the wisdom and humility to know which is which.

Conclusion

I’m sure Rob Bell prays for the same. In the meantime, Love Wins said things that need to be said and I applaud Bell for his courage. Of course Love Wins. Isn’t God love? Doesn’t God win?

Rule for commenting on this post. You must have actually read the book.

Get Away from My God!

April 30, 2010 in GODSTUFF with 9 Comments

I came across this lovely post recently:

Plan worship only for people who can worship.

Many churches plan their worship services as though unbelievers can worship. But the Apostle Paul makes plain in 1 Corinthians 12:3 that “no one can say, “Jesus is Lord, except by the Holy Spirit.” Anyone can utter the words, of course, but unless the Holy Spirit indwells a person they cannot say such things as a sincere expression of true worship. In other words, those who do not know Jesus as Lord (and thus do not have the Holy Spirit) cannot worship God, so why design the worship of God for those incapable of worship? We plan evangelistic services and events for unbelievers; worship services are for believers.

via 10 More Ways to Improve Your Church Worship Service.

I cannot describe the way this post affected me.  Let’s just say we’ve heard things like this before:

  • “The Jews do not really  have feelings.  They are animals.  They are not like us. Therefore it is okay to kill them.”
  • “Animals do not really have feelings.  They are animals!  Their experience is different from ours.  Therefore it is okay to kill them, no matter how cruelly, and to act as if we have the God-given right to do so.”
  • “Black people are not fully human.  They do not really have feelings.  They are not like us.  Therefore it is okay to enslave them, to separate them from their families, and to treat them as the beasts we believe they are.”

Obviously the post I quoted is not in any way saying it’s okay to kill non-Christians.  That is not my point.  My point is that man’s inhumanity to man (and beasts) always begins with drawing the same kind of line they draw here.  ”Their experience is not like ours.”  ”They can’t really know and worship God.”  ”They are of a fundamentally different kind than we are.”  ”There are ‘them’ over there, and there are ‘us’ over here.”  Therefore, of course, we can either mistreat them, or at the very least consider them lower, lesser, and different from the rest of us.  They do not share in our experience of being human — or perhaps, better said, we do not share in THEIR experience of being human, sin-bound and secular as they are.

For those who can’t let this post rest without knowing what other way could there be to interpret the scripture above, this is easy.  God (the Holy Spirit) is the one who enables us to recognize God, as Jesus affirmed with Peter’s confession, and with Nicodemus’ recognition of him.  If a person recognizes or acknowledges God, it is because God allows himself to be seen.  A person can, like Nicodemus (John 3, for whoever cares), see God but not even realize what they are seeing.  In fact, no Christian has ever been alive on this planet who realized what they were seeing.  God has never been seen — not by anyone — even those who claim to see him.  So if a person who is not a Christian comes into church and seeks to worship God, then God is already stirring, already alive, already moving within that person.  And of course he would be, for God is doing this in all of us at all times.  [Heaven forbid that a person might actually be attempting to respond to God in a way that doesn't fit properly in the box.  That's definitely something we have to squash immediately!]

So if it is true that in God we live and move and have our being, then God is making himself known to everyone throughout the creation.  We do not get to say, “Those people over there cannot worship God.”  All we get to say is that God is mystery, and reveals himself to people in ways that he chooses.  The only way the post above makes sense is if a person has already decided a priori, that certain people cannot worship God (this happens through the building of a so-called “Biblical case” which, ironically, ends up at odds with the clear message of Christ).  But in Jesus we have the linchpin of the Christian faith, who:

  • Was not a Christian and had never heard of the term Christian.  It’s not even a huge leap to say Jesus would probably not have even cared for the term.
  • Was a full-blooded Jew.   His understanding of the world was shaped not by 20th century Christianity, but by ancient Judaism.
  • Never discussed the importance of knowing God through any version of what we now call “the sinner’s prayer.”  Jesus was definitely not an evangelical.
  • Habitually and wantonly forgave sins.  He forgave sins of people who were coming for physical healing, perhaps people who were often not even aware they needed forgiveness.  He didn’t even wait for people to ask.
  • Uttered the words, “The kingdom of heaven is within you.”  Those were his words, and yet when someone believes those words and repeats them out loud, the church gets weirded out and often charges a person with being New Age.

Of course non-Christians can worship God!  Of course someone who has not said “the sinner’s prayer” can know and be known by God.  Of course God is moving and active in every heart, every mind, every life.  And of course, if you are not a Christian and found the quoted post above offensive and/or hurtful, it’s not just in your head.  Something harmful has happened.  Someone has tried to tell you where God can and cannot make himself known and who is and is not in a position to “receive the signal” God is transmitting.  This is garbage, dear readers.  Don’t think for a minute that God is not as close to you — flawed, broken, imperfect you — as your own heartbeat, right now in the exact condition you are in.  That’s the message Jesus preached.  The only reason Jesus is still remembered today is because his message was different from what was common in his time.  It is sad to see how many ways we’ve gotten around what he said and gotten back to the very message he came to oppose.

No matter how much someone screams, “Get away from my God!” and no matter how many people are listening, fortunately God himself ignores this kind of language.  At least we know that’s true as God is embodied in Jesus.