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Would You Believe? Finding God Without Losing Your Mind
A hundred years ago, most people accepted without question what their priest or rabbi or imam taught them about God, but many people today, educated to think for themselves, find that the concepts of God taught by the world’s major religions either insult or contradict their intelligence. At the same time they find that having no faith has left a yawning spiritual void in their lives. In Would You Believe?, Tom Harpur deals with the tough questions raised today by real people, such as how to reconcile the presence of evil, pain and suffering with belief in a loving God.
The challenge we face, Harpur writes, is not to find a substitute but to rediscover God under the encrustation of ritual and doctrine that the various faiths have built up. We can go beyond all narrow-minded claims of being the only true religion, the only correct interpreter of God, he says, when we understand that all faiths are simply routes towards God that humans have been inspired to create. We can use our intelligence to believe in God, rather than deny it in order to swallow notions devised for a different people and a different time.
From the Hardcover edition.
The challenge we face, Harpur writes, is not to find a substitute but to rediscover God under the encrustation of ritual and doctrine that the various faiths have built up. We can go beyond all narrow-minded claims of being the only true religion, the only correct interpreter of God, he says, when we understand that all faiths are simply routes towards God that humans have been inspired to create. We can use our intelligence to believe in God, rather than deny it in order to swallow notions devised for a different people and a different time.
From the Hardcover edition.
240 pages, Paperback
First published March 30, 1996
3 people are currently reading
29 people want to read
About the author
Tom Harpur
34 books21 followersTom Harpur, columnist for the Toronto Star, Rhodes scholar, former Anglican priest, and professor of Greek and the New Testament, is an internationally renowned writer on religious and ethical issues. He is the author of ten bestselling books, including For Christ’s Sake and The Pagan Christ. He has hosted numerous radio and television programs, including Life After Death, a ten-part series based on his bestselling book of the same name.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 24, 2013
== Stimulating an open-ended religious approach ==
I love the subtitle of this book “Finding God without losing your mind.” It reminds me of the apt reference to going to a fundamentalistic church: “Check out your brain at the door” (or words to that effect). I also love the supplementary declaration on the cover: “A book for doubters, sceptics and wistful unbelievers”—WISTFUL, as in pensive, especially in a melancholy way.
I always enjoy reading Harpur. He doesn’t talk down to his readers, as from a lofty theological pedestal. No, much of his writing borders on stream-of-consciousness musing. His writing is not very structured and he does get off on tangents but then the reader feels much like he is sitting across the table, looking him/her in the eye, reflecting on some adjunctive topic which at that moment seems too important to leave out.
I kept this book on the shelf for a long time before reading it. Having been published in 1996 (but still available in print and Kindle) it is somewhat dated in parts because Harpur loves to involve current affairs and social trends in his books. But that doesn’t detract, in 2013, from its overall value to stimulate new thinking about God and religion and reflect on the ongoing conservative versus liberal Christianity positions. But this is not really a book about theology but more a guide for readers to establish an inner relationship with the Ultimate Reality (a.k.a. God) and discover the Light as also residing in one’s fellow human beings—and that it even exists in other religions and cultures. His approach to spirituality is not only ecumenical but essentially universal; he refers to it as “cosmic consciousness.”
Harpur is forthright in presenting up front in the first two chapters 1. Why I believe and 2. What I believe. In a chapter called “Fuzzy Faith” he highlights that the bivalent black-and-white perceptions of faith (or politics or science) does not well serve spiritual or social advancement. Reality and truth, on so many fronts, can be multifarious. So, instead of an “either-or” mentality we should be open to “both-and” multivalent viewpoints and possibilities. He refers to the fantastic advancements in technology as being demonstrative of open-ended thinking which include nuances of “greyness.”
At the end of this book Harpur entreats readers to develop a practice of goodness as demonstrative love. He says that to be effective true love is not passive and never merely sentimental—that it combines compassion, honest and active willing of the good of others, and a commitment to personal and public justice in word and deed. Further he elucidates on the power of forgiveness and the power of gratitude to be present in our daily lives. “Jesus never taught a creed; he lived and taught life itself. His basic axiom was that the sense of God’s power, presence and love that he intimately experienced was open to all….This awareness of being part of ‘the Kingdom of God’ and the knowledge that God lives in every person —‘the kingdom of heaven is within you’ —combined to produce his radical ethic of forgiveness and justice for all.” p 232 hrdcvr
I love the subtitle of this book “Finding God without losing your mind.” It reminds me of the apt reference to going to a fundamentalistic church: “Check out your brain at the door” (or words to that effect). I also love the supplementary declaration on the cover: “A book for doubters, sceptics and wistful unbelievers”—WISTFUL, as in pensive, especially in a melancholy way.
I always enjoy reading Harpur. He doesn’t talk down to his readers, as from a lofty theological pedestal. No, much of his writing borders on stream-of-consciousness musing. His writing is not very structured and he does get off on tangents but then the reader feels much like he is sitting across the table, looking him/her in the eye, reflecting on some adjunctive topic which at that moment seems too important to leave out.
I kept this book on the shelf for a long time before reading it. Having been published in 1996 (but still available in print and Kindle) it is somewhat dated in parts because Harpur loves to involve current affairs and social trends in his books. But that doesn’t detract, in 2013, from its overall value to stimulate new thinking about God and religion and reflect on the ongoing conservative versus liberal Christianity positions. But this is not really a book about theology but more a guide for readers to establish an inner relationship with the Ultimate Reality (a.k.a. God) and discover the Light as also residing in one’s fellow human beings—and that it even exists in other religions and cultures. His approach to spirituality is not only ecumenical but essentially universal; he refers to it as “cosmic consciousness.”
Harpur is forthright in presenting up front in the first two chapters 1. Why I believe and 2. What I believe. In a chapter called “Fuzzy Faith” he highlights that the bivalent black-and-white perceptions of faith (or politics or science) does not well serve spiritual or social advancement. Reality and truth, on so many fronts, can be multifarious. So, instead of an “either-or” mentality we should be open to “both-and” multivalent viewpoints and possibilities. He refers to the fantastic advancements in technology as being demonstrative of open-ended thinking which include nuances of “greyness.”
At the end of this book Harpur entreats readers to develop a practice of goodness as demonstrative love. He says that to be effective true love is not passive and never merely sentimental—that it combines compassion, honest and active willing of the good of others, and a commitment to personal and public justice in word and deed. Further he elucidates on the power of forgiveness and the power of gratitude to be present in our daily lives. “Jesus never taught a creed; he lived and taught life itself. His basic axiom was that the sense of God’s power, presence and love that he intimately experienced was open to all….This awareness of being part of ‘the Kingdom of God’ and the knowledge that God lives in every person —‘the kingdom of heaven is within you’ —combined to produce his radical ethic of forgiveness and justice for all.” p 232 hrdcvr
June 2, 2012
Started reading this in the hospital this week. It's amazing, relevant, and was timely for me. Nothing else I have read has predicted own questions and areas of interest so well. A fuller review is in the works...
January 18, 2008
A thoughtful examination of religious belief for those who do not accept the Bible as the literal word of God or the unquestioned authority of church hierarchies. From a Christian perspective.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews