Conversations with God, part 6

The meaning and purpose of life

The whole reason God created us is so that God could experience herself through us. Our purpose in life, then, is to experience ourselves, and we do that by creating, deciding, and being Who We Really Are. Indeed, there is only one purpose in life, and it is stated in a few different ways.

There is only one purpose for all of life, and that is for you and all that lives to experience fullest glory (p.20).

The point of life is therefore to create—who and what you are, and then to experience that (p.104).

There can be only one purpose for relationships—and for all of life: to be and to decided Who You Really Are (p.122).

Given those three statements, you'd thing that life actually had some specific purpose, and according to God, "There is a divine purpose behind everything--and therefore a divine presence in everything" (p.60). But after finding out that God has a purpose in everything, and that the one purpose in life is for us to create and experience Who We Really Are, God turns around and says that life has no purpose at all. She says, "Not long ago you lived life as though it had no purpose. Now you know it has no purpose, save the one you give it" (p.157). This statement contradicts everything God said before. There's a divine purpose in everything, but life has no purpose except the one you give it. There can only be one purpose in life, but each person gives life whatever purpose he chooses.

Walsch's God can't even decide whether she cares what kind of lives we live. Near the beginning of the book, she says, "You are living your life the way you are living your life, and I have no preference in the matter. This is the grand illusion in which you have engaged: that God cares one way or the other what you do" (p.12). But then later, she says, "I desire for the whole life process to be an experience of constant joy, continuous creation, never-ending expansion, and total fulfillment in each moment of now" (p.65). Does God have a preference in the matter or not? Is there a divine purpose to life or not? We are given contradictory answers to both of these questions.

to be continued...

Part 7

Conversations with God, part 5

Does time exist?

One of the things that was created in the big bang was time. "As the elements raced forth, time was created, for a thing was first here, then it was there--and the period it took to get from here to there was measurable" (p.24). So time was created as a result of space and motion. But in the wacky world of Walsch, just because a thing was created doesn't mean it actually exists. Later in the book, God was assuring Walsch that all paths lead to God, and that it was just a matter of when a person would get there. Yet it turns out that "when" is a misnomer since time is an illusion. She says, "There is no such thing as an incorrect path--for on this journey you cannot 'not get' where you are going. It is simply a matter of speed—merely a question of when you will get there--yet even that is an illusion, for there is no 'when,' neither is there a 'before' or 'after.' There is only now; an eternal moment of always in which you are experiencing yourself" (p. 104). If it's true that time is only an illusion, then space and motion must also be illusions since that's what time is based on. But that means the whole external world is an illusion. If the whole universe is an illusion, then in what sense did God create it? Doesn't creation imply that it exists? But if it's an illusion, then God didn't create it after all. At most, God only created the illusion. (Who is having this illusion anyway?) The simple answer to all of this is that God contradicted herself, because in the beginning of the book there is every impression that the big bang was a real event which brought about a real physical world, and time is just as real. But now she's saying that time is not real but just an illusion.

to be continued...

Part 6

Conversations with God, part 4

The worldview of the book

In the beginning, before time began, God was all alone, being the only thing that existed. But it would be a mistake to say that God was merely All That Is, for God was not only All That Is, but was also All That Is Not (p.24). Since God was both All That Is and All That Is Not, she referred to herself as the Is Not-Is.

The problem with the view so far is that it treats non-existence as if it were existence. God was the only thing that existed, but God was made up of both that which existed and that which didn't exist. But how can you be made up of that which doesn't exist? That which doesn't exist doesn't make up anything!

Anyway, God knew herself cognitively, but she wanted to know herself experientially. She couldn't know herself experientially because for any experience to happen, there has to be such a thing as otherness. There has to be two things so that one thing can experience the other. So God created a distinction within herself so that "this" and "that" could experience each other (p.22-23). To create this distinction, God exploded into an infinite number of parts.

Since there are two parts of God—the IS, and the Is Not—each exploded into something quite different. Out of the Is came spirit beings—our souls. We are all the children of God in the sense that we came from God. Collectively, we are God. Out of the Is Not (i.e. non-existence) came the physical cosmos, and it exploded in the big bang (p.25). So the universe was created ex nihilo.

Another problem with this view is that it contradicts a view later expressed in the book. Since God is all that is and all that is not, we must all be a part of God. We make up the part that Is. Anything that exists must be part of God. The contradiction comes on page 197 when we find out that God, whom we thought was the summation of all things that exist, is actually part of something bigger. Just as we are children of God, so also is God the child of another. But if God is the child of another, then God can't be all that exists, just as I am not all that exists. I'm only part of all that exists, just as God would have to be only part of all that exists. But if God is only part of all that exists, then God can't be the summation of all that exists. We have here a contradiction.

Anyway, God had created both the physical and the spiritual worlds. The purpose of the physical world is to allow those in the spiritual world to know experientially, not just conceptually. We spirit children were made to enter the physical world for that purpose (p.27). When we became physical, we forgot who we were so that we could choose to be Who We Really Are. The process of remembering allows God to experience herself. Here, and in several other places, God uses several clever puns to get her point across. "Remembrance" takes on two meanings. On the one hand, to remember means to recall what was previously known. But to re-member is to join back together with the other parts of God. It is through remembering that we are able to re-member.

The question in my mind was this: Why would we want to? To be absorbed back into the cosmic oneness, in my mind, is no different than ceasing to exist as an individual.

to be continued...

Part 5

Conversations with God, part 3

Did God really speak to NDW?

There are a few possibilities about how this book came to be written: (1) God really did talk through Walsch, (2) Walsch believes God was talking through him when it was really him all along, (3) Walsch was knowingly pretending that God was talking through him, or (4) Satan or some other spiritual being besides God was talking through Walsch pretending to be God.

I don't think God or Satan was talking through Walsch, mostly because the book was too full of contradictions, and I would expect God or Satan to be a little more consistent. So either Walsch was deceived or he was deceiving. My impression is that Walsch was intentionally deceiving, and the reason I think that is because a lot of his questions seemed to be no more than set-ups for God to present some information. That is, they didn't seem like genuine questions. For example, God tells Walsch several times in the book that there's no such thing as right and wrong, good and bad, should and shouldn't, or do and don't. Then on page 72, Walsch asks God several questions about why certain things are immoral, like sex. Was Walsch not paying attention, or was this just a setup for what was to come?

Another reason I think Walsch was behind this books is because the one opportunity God had to give any evidence that the book was inspired by her, she turned down. God refused to say whether or not we will see irrevocable and indisputable evidence of extraterrestrial life in our lifetime (p.72). She was quite willing to tell us that there was extraterrestrial life, but she refused to make any future predictions. It seems to me that Walsch was just being careful not to say anything in the book that would be falsifiable.

to be continued...

Part 4

Conversations with God, part 2

How this book came to be written

According to the author, his life was full of disappointment, so one day he decided to write God a letter to express his anger and frustration. Just as he was about to toss his pen aside, his "hand remained poised over the paper," and then "God began talking with you. Through me" (p.1). The entire book turns out to be a dialogue between Walsch and God. He writes, "Before I knew it, I had begun a conversation...and I was not writing so much as taking dictation" (p.2). God was talking to Walsch through his own hand.

God wasn't just talking to Walsch, though. She was talking through Walsch to the rest of us. There seemed to be a sense of destiny in the way Walsch explained himself. He writes, "I want you to get into this dialogue as soon as you can, because what's really important here is not my story, but yours. It is your life story which brought you here. It is your personal experience to which this material has relevance. Otherwise you would not be here, with it, right now" (p.2). According to Walsch, then, I would not have been reading his book if the material in it did not have some relevance to my life. It all sounds as if I was meant to read it. [Maybe I was meant to read it so I could give it a good thorough critique!] Later in the book, God says, "there is no such thing as coincidence" (p.46), so it was no accident that I was reading his book. Whether it's true or not, such statements appeal to a person's need to feel important, and nothing satisfies that feeling more than the notion that God has a message meant especially for that person. It's all very seductive, and I found myself wanting to believe it. Was God really talking to me? Was little ole me really meant to read this? If I was meant to read it, then who am I to question it? It was meant for me, so it must be true. No wonder so many otherwise intelligent people have been impacted by this book. It appeals to their emotions, not their intellect.

On page 60, God said to Waslch, "You'll spend your whole life looking for God and not finding Her. Because you're looking for a Him," so throughout this review, I will be referring to God as "she" or "her" except where I lapse into habit and don't catch my own mistake. All of the italics in quotes are in the original unless otherwise indicated.

to be continued...

Part 3

Conversations with God, part 1

Since we're on the subject of the power of words, I thought I'd post a review I did of a New Age book a few years ago. In this book, written by Neale Donald Walsch, he claims that we all create our own reality by the power of our thoughts, words, and deeds. It's interesting that in Bill Gothard's book, he said God could've created the universe with his thoughts, but he chose to use words, and then in NDW's book, he claims that we can all create reality with both our thoughts and our words. Gothard's book wasn't half as crazy as Walsch's book, though, as you'll see if you decide to read this whole review.

This was a long review, so we'll be on this book at least for two weeks--maybe three, depending on how much of it I decide to post each day. That works out great for me, because I'm still too busy with school to do any writing for the blog. And here we go...

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How I came to read this book

I was having a discussion on a message board about the nature of truth, and the person I was talking with [who was a Unitarian Universalist in case you want to know] insisted that truth is relative, and that we each create our own reality. Since truth is relative, he argued, those who make absolute truth claims are flawed in their thinking. I pointed out what seemed to me to be a flaw in his own thinking, which is that if truth is relative, a person who makes an absolute truth claim can't be mistaken because the claim would be absolutely true for him. By saying that those who disagree with the claim that "truth is relative" are flawed in their thinking, he was assuming that his claim was absolutely true. He was contradicting himself, because the only way a person can be mistaken in their claim is if there is some objective truth. If truth is relative, then the claim itself is only true for the person who makes the claim, but the person I was talking to was working with the assumption that "truth is relative" is an absolute truth, since he argued that those who disagreed with it were flawed in their thinking. His claim was self-refuting. I tried to point out the flaw in his thinking, and that's when he directed me to this book. He told me I would just have to read it for myself.

The person who let me borrow this book [who was also a Unitarian Universalist] told me that I'd "need to suspend this everything-has-to-be-logically-consistent point of view," which for me was a red flag. If you have to abandon logical consistency in order to hear what an author is saying, then that ought to clue you in on the fact that the book is irrational nonsense. And having read the book, I have found that irrational nonsense is exactly what it is. I don't know when I've read a book so full of contradictions before. That's my major complaint about the book, so I'll spend some time in this review going over some of them. I don't think I'm being unfair in my criticism, either, because I'm using the same standards the author used to criticize other views. He criticizes Christianity for not allowing you to ask logical questions which challenge the Christian worldview (p.64), and he criticizes people in general who complain about 40,000 people dying of hunger each day while at the same time bringing 50,000 people a day into the world by saying, "It is a plan which totally lacks logic or reason" (p.49) Apparently, the author thinks there's some value in logic and reason, and since he holds other viewpoints to those standards, I think it's appropriate for me to hold Walsch's book to those same standards. Of course even here he's inconsistent. He writes, "Every heart which earnestly asks, Which is the path to God? is shown. Each is given a heartfelt truth. Come to Me along the path of your heart, not through a journey of your mind. You will never find Me in your mind. In order to truly know God, you have to be out of your mind" (p.94). So should we take a rational approach to religious subjects or not? Apparently, we shouldn't when we look at Walsch's religion, but we should when looking at every other religion. It's a double standard.

As I was reading the book, I was looking for statements or assumptions about the nature of truth and reality. There was certainly plenty in the book about us creating our own reality, but nothing at all explicit about the nature of truth—whether truth is relative or absolute. There were a few statements which vaguely implied that truth is relative (e.g. "If you want to know what's true for you about something, look to how you're feeling about it" p.3), but the vast majority of the book seemed to be working with the assumption that truth is objective and absolute (e.g. "That's the problem with truth. The truth is relentless. It won't leave you alone. It keeps creeping up on you from every side, showing you what's really so. That can be annoying" p.140). There was a particular worldview which was being expressed, and which the author obviously thought was true and that corresponded with reality. I did not get the impression that the author was merely expressing what was true from his point of view, because he even went so far as to say that those who disagree are wrong.

The author did use phrases such as "the world of the relative" and "the world of the absolute," but he did not appear to be talking about the nature of truth in those passages. The "world of the relative," according to the author, is the world in which we live. The "world of the absolute" is the world in which God lives. For anything to exist in the world of the relative, it must exist relative to its opposite. For example, for love to exist, fear must exist also, since fear is the opposite of love. There also seemed to be another sense in which this is the "world of the relative." When God says that he built relativity into the universe, I got the impression that he was talking about Einstein's general and special theories of relativity, neither of which have anything to do with the nature of truth.

to be continued...

Part 2

The Power of Crying Out (Can words really have supernatural power?) part 11

Considering the above observations about words and statements, here's a few questions to consider, and try to consider them under the assumption that words have power. Does it matter whether the word is spoken, written, or communicated in sign language? What if the word is mispronounced or misspelled? What if the person intends to say something but uses the wrong word? Is it his intention that matters or is it the word itself? What if a person repeats something he heard in another language without actually knowing what he's saying? Do the words still have power? What if some ancient long ago began to experiment with sounds and, by a fluke, happened to say a few English words before English was even invented? What if a person makes a statement where grammatically, it could mean any of three different things? Which meaning carries the power? What about a pun in which a statement can actually mean two different things at the same time? What if the statement a person makes is grammatically incorrect? What if a person intends to say one thing, but actually says something else because of a slip of the tongue or because they use the wrong words or use bad grammar? Is it what thte person actually says that has power or what the person intended to say that has power? What if a speech is recorded played over and over again? Does it have the same power coming out of a tape recorded as it does coming out of the original person't mouth?

It seems to me that when you really think about what a word is and what sentences are, that words cannot really have supernatural power. A written word is only a string of letters made with ink or something. It only has meaning insofar as everybody agrees to associate the string of letters with something in reality. A spoken word is nothing but a sound one makes with their mouth and their vocal chords. It only has meaning insofar as everybody agrees to associate that sound with some particular meaning. So words can't literally have supernatural power. Words are just conventions used to convey ideas between persons who agree by convention to what the words refer to. Remove the agreement, and the words are just meaningless sounds. If words did have meaning in and of themselves, then the sounds are the power regardless of whether anybody attributes meaning to the words at all. In that case, one could harness all the power of the universe by exhaustively learning every sound it's possible to make with the mouth. But then he'd be using some sounds that weren't really ordinary words in any language. If you follow this train of thought, you find that a person who harnesses the power of words will end up using "magic words" which are typically just sounds in some secret language which bring about effects by their use. That's magic. It's not Christian.

Well that's about all I have to say. I wonder if I should send Bill Gothard a copy of this? :-)

Your ole buddy,
Sam

The Power of Crying Out (What are words anyway?) part 10

That's about all I have to say about the book, but before I finish, I want to say a little more about the idea that words have power in and of themselves. I just want to bring up some issues that it raises that I think are worth thinking about. What is a word, anyway? It seems to me that a word is a token used to represent something else. For example, when I write the word "car" the word itself is not a car, but it signifies a car. The car is actually out in the parking lot. The fact that we call the thing in the parking lot a "car" is just a convention. In another language we might call it something else. Even in our own language, we have different words for it. We might call the same thing an "automobile." So both words represent the same reality.

How is it that the word "car" comes to actually correspond to the thing in the parking lot? Is there something about the word itself? When spoken, the word "car" is just a sound. It is only by convention that we have come to agree to associate the sound "car" with the thing in the parking lot. You can imagine a person who is just learning English and who intends to refer to a motorcycle, but can't think of the word "motorcycle" using the word "car" instead. If everybody began to refer to motorcycles as cars, it would be okay, but by convention, we have come to associate "car" with somethign else.

In different languages, several different sounds may be used to refer to the same thing. Through time, words take on different meanings because they are used in different ways. Words have no meaning in and of themselves. They only carry the meaning we intend when we use them.

When we make a statement, we string a bunch of words together in such a way that the statement has a meaning. Take this statement for example: The car is in the parking lot. What does that statement mean? Well it has a subject. It's about "the car." And the statement says something about "the car." It says that the car is "in" the parking lot. So what would it take for the statement to be true? For the statement to be true, it must correspond to reality. In other words, when I say, "The car is in the parking lot" the statement is true if and only if in reality the car actually is in the parking lot. So just like words, statements have meaning inasmuch as the statement corresponds to reality.

to be cotinued...
Part 11