Do you describe yourself as spiritual but not religious? Whether young or old, church connected or not, are you spiritually restless for an authentic faith life but do not find conventional religious teachings pertinent to you? This accessible guide to a meaningful spiritual life is a salve for your soul. It reinterprets traditional religious teachings central to the Christian faith - God, Jesus, faith, prayer, morality and more - in ways that connect with people who have outgrown the beliefs and devotional practices that once made sense to them.
This accessible guide to a meaningful spiritual life is a salve for your soul. It reinterprets traditional religious teachings central to the Christian faith God, Jesus, faith, prayer, morality and more in ways that connect with people who have outgrown the beliefs and devotional practices that once made sense to them. It helps you find new ways to understand and relate to traditional, narrowly defined Christian truths that honor their full spiritual power and scope, and opens your mind and heart to the full impact of Christian teachings.
In this spiritual self-help memoir, a former Roman Catholic monk recounts his journey away from religion toward his own personal spirituality. After spending eight years in a monastery, Joseph Dispenza walked away from his life as a monk—and the religion of his youth—in search of a different kind of spiritual path. Outside the confines of organized religion, Dispenza was able to create a spiritual life that gives direction and meaning to all he does and all he is. God on Your Own is a book for anyone who has left (or is thinking of leaving) organized religion but wants to continue on a spiritual path. Dispenza, a noted author and retreat leader, provides a spiritual road map for those who want to make the transition from conventional religion toward a richer and more satisfying direct relationship with the Source, without rules, dogmas, or doctrines. Throughout the book, Dispenza offers wise, compassionate guidance, speaking as one seeker to another. He has made this journey himself, gleaning spiritual truth from across traditions and practices.
"Beyond Religion" is a stirring call to move beyond religion for the guidance to improve human life on individual, community, and global levels--including a guided meditation practice for cultivating key human values.
The renowned Christian preacher and New York Times bestselling author of An Altar in the World recounts her moving discoveries of finding the sacred in unexpected places while teaching world religions to undergraduates in Baptist-saturated rural Georgia, revealing how God delights in confounding our expectations. Christians are taught that God is everywhere--a tenet that is central to Barbara Brown Taylor's life and faith. In Holy Envy, she continues her spiritual journey, contemplating the myriad ways she encountered God while exploring other faiths with her students in the classroom, and on field trips to diverse places of worship. Both she and her students ponder how the knowledge and insights they have gained raise important questions about belief, and explore how different practices relate to their own faith. Inspired by this intellectual and spiritual quest, Barbara turns once again to the Bible for guidance, to see what secrets lay buried there. Throughout Holy Envy, Barbara weaves together stories from her classroom with reflections on how her own spiritual journey has been challenged and renewed by connecting with people of other traditions--and by meeting God in them. At the heart of her odyssey is her trust that it is God who pushes her beyond her comfortable boundaries and calls us to "disown" our privatised versions of the divine--a change that ultimately deepens her relationship with both the world and with God, and ours.
As more people find themselves questioning or actually leaving religions of their youth and adult life, Beyond Religion provides answers and guidance for moving ahead on one's own more personal spiritual path - either still within institutionalized religion or beyond any singular religious belief.
"'Science Mike' draws on his personal experience to tell the unlikely story of how science led him back to faith. Among other revelations, we learn what brain scans reveal about what happens when we pray, how fundamentalism affects the psyche, and how God is revealed not only in scripture, but in the night sky, in subatomic particles, and in us"--Dust jacket flap.
Science vs. Religion shows that the scientific discoveries of the past 150 years prove God exists beyond a reasonable doubt. Our universe is carefully designed to allow life and human development. The universe started with a "Big Bang," the beginning of space and time. There is no 'before' before the Bang, and science does not know what caused it. Darwin's Theory of Evolution appears to do away with God, but there is enormous controversy among Darwin scientists as to how evolution works. Other scientists raise critical objections. Darwinism is not proven. Scientists don't know how life got started, because living matter, even single-celled forms, have been found to be extremely complex. This book proposes, for those who have faith in God and for those who have chosen not to accept God on faith, if they study scientific discoveries they will find overwhelming evidence of the Hand of God.
Answering the many "spiritual" questions left unaddressed by such popular historical bestsellers as A History of God and God: A Biography, renowned author Marcus Borg reveals how to embrace an authentic contemporary faith that reconciles God with science, critical thinking and religious pluralism. How to have faith––how to even think about God––without having to stifle modern rationality is one of the most vital challenges facing contemporary religion. In providing a much–needed solution to the problem of how to have a fully authentic yet fully contemporary understanding of God, Borg––author of the bestselling Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time––traces his personal journey. He leads readers from the all–powerful and authoritarian God of his (and their) childhood and traditional faith to an equally powerful but dynamic image of God that is relevant to contemporary seekers and more biblical and spiritually authentic. Borg shows how the modern crisis of faith is itself rooted in delusion––misinterpretation of biblical texts and of God's true nature––and challenges readers to a new way of thinking about God. He opens a practical discussion about how to base a relationship with the divine both immanent and transcendant, here and now, always and everywhere. Arguing that the authentic Judeo–Christian tradition is that God's being includes the whole world, Borg persuasively shows how this understanding accounts for the whole variety of human religious experience. Ultimately, he introduces readers to a way of thinking about God who is "right here" all around them, rather than distant and remote. This understanding is more intellectually and spiritually satisfying and allows readers to reclaim a stronger sense of God's presence.
Engaging narrative and provocative content come together in this mind-stretching and heart-challenging journey. Come with Kelly Monroe Kullberg on an intellectual road trip as The Veritas Forum explores the deepest questions of the university world and the culture at large. Discover that Veritas transcends philosophy or religion and instead brings us to true life.
