With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God

I was recently introduced to a book that, for me, is very challenging.  I find myself reading the book and saying, "Yeah, that's right.  That's the way I think too".  So for my regular Sunday morning sermon, I am going to provide some excerpts from the book, With: Re imagining the Way You Relate to God by Skye Jethani. 

"...traditional religion, LIFE UNDER GOD, has failed to deliver us from fear.  Making matters worse, many of those driven to appease God and stridently follow what they believe are his commands have inflicted incalculable harm.  They have used fear, guilt, and sometimes violence to force others to live under their religion's heavy yoke.  This led atheist Christopher Hitchens to argue that the world would be a more peaceful and equitable place without belief in God. And he's not the only one.
In 1971, John Lennon released the song "Imagine".  In the lyrics Lennon calls himself a "dreamer", who imagines a world without nations and without religion.  Without these, he says, there would be "nothing to kill or die for."  Once ideas about heaven, hell, and God are removed, it becomes possible to "imagine all the people living life in peace."

Many people would like to believe that the problems plaguing our world could be solved if we simply put divisive ideas behind us, religion being chief among them, and then work toward a more harmonious future.  This is what John Lennon sang about in "Imagine".  It is also an apt definition of the LIFE OVER GOD posture-humanity living without God and free from the fearful superstition of religion.  But this view ignores two critical things-human nature and history.

But removing religious motivation does nothing to diminish our human capacity for evil....Therefore, if we remove religion, that particular motivation for conflict may be gone, but people will surely find some other reason to fight and kill each other.

Some of the most oppressive regimes of the twentieth century were constructed on the philosophical foundations of secular atheism.  Precise numbers are difficult to determine, but in Stalin's Soviet Union, some estimate twenty million people were killed.  Mao's Cultural Revolution in China resulted in sixty-five million deaths.  And the Khmer Rouge decimated an entire generation, two million people, in Cambodia's killing fields just a few decades ago.  The oppression continues in North Korea where at least two million have been killed.

Many of the criticisms of LIFE UNDER GOD are justified, but LIFE OVER GOD fares no better.  Secular humanism has no record of removing fear, fostering peace, or leading to a more just and verdant world.  Advocates of atheism may dream of a better world without religion, but their solution forces us out of the frying pan and into the fire.

I hope these excerpts give you some idea of what the book, With, is about and I hope that you will be challenged enough to purchase the book for yourself. 

Good Sunday Morning!!!!