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Setting God Free: Moving Beyond the Caricature We've Created in Our Own Image
Setting God Free is the bestselling book by Father Seán ÓLaoire that helps readers understand who “God” is.
How do we know what we know?How do we decide what is true?While agnostics are still deciding whether God exists, atheists subscribe to a system of beliefs that claim God does not exist. Many traditionally religious people appear to have abandoned common sense and accept somebody else’s farfetched image of God. Chances are that your beliefs are none of these things. They are likely more complex, nuanced, evolved, and evolving.If you’re Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, maybe you’ve secretly doubted your ability to will yourself to “love the Lord your God with all your mind, with all your heart, and with all your strength” as an act of obedience. Perhaps your religious roots lie outside the Abrahamic storyline, or they’re less defined in terms of tradition. It doesn’t matter where you’ve come from or where you’re going; we all face the same challenges as we attempt to understand who “God” is and how we’re supposed to love someone or something we can’t see. In Setting God Free, Seán ÓLaoire explores “the difficult passages” of the Bible, giving readers access to a sound logic built not only on scripture, but also on science, psychology, spirituality, and personal experience. Set God free to do what God does love.
How do we know what we know?How do we decide what is true?While agnostics are still deciding whether God exists, atheists subscribe to a system of beliefs that claim God does not exist. Many traditionally religious people appear to have abandoned common sense and accept somebody else’s farfetched image of God. Chances are that your beliefs are none of these things. They are likely more complex, nuanced, evolved, and evolving.If you’re Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, maybe you’ve secretly doubted your ability to will yourself to “love the Lord your God with all your mind, with all your heart, and with all your strength” as an act of obedience. Perhaps your religious roots lie outside the Abrahamic storyline, or they’re less defined in terms of tradition. It doesn’t matter where you’ve come from or where you’re going; we all face the same challenges as we attempt to understand who “God” is and how we’re supposed to love someone or something we can’t see. In Setting God Free, Seán ÓLaoire explores “the difficult passages” of the Bible, giving readers access to a sound logic built not only on scripture, but also on science, psychology, spirituality, and personal experience. Set God free to do what God does love.
- GenresSpirituality
400 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 6, 2021
92 people are currently reading
92 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 8, 2023
I seem to have a way with fathers-in-law. My own is a very devout Catholic (luckily for me, I am too, though not nearly as good as he is), and through him I enjoy access to a bunch of wonderful, lesser-known books by Catholic theologians, mystics and the like. It would be an understatement to say my close relationship with him has been one instrumental influence in my own faith journey.
Very recently, I met the father of my brother's fiancé - another Catholic, but this time from India, who practices in a traditional sense, but is also deeply interested in the mystical side of all religions. We had a good conversation with each other and found ourselves fairly like-minded. A nice enough experience, given I have always felt like the weird and awkward black sheep of my brothers that no one - including them - can relate to. But also, on a purely material level, it means more books!
And so, I was very kindly given this one for free - a book by someone I had never heard of before. To be honest, I was wary at first as it only took a cursory glance at the backflap to notice he refers to God as "Her", is an ex-Catholic priest with little fondness for organised religion (these supposedly more enlightened breed who turn their noses up at those who do find meaning as part of a religious community with common beliefs), he enjoys dropping phrases from other religions with a zest to match Justin Trudeau, and he wants to more-or-less abolish the scary and mean Old Testament as a Holy Scripture.
Not the sort of stuff I usually go for, as along with progressive Christians who think Jesus was nothing more than a woke activist centuries before his time, no spark of the divine about him at all, I have little liking for those who posit their own gardens, heads, meditative space or the great outdoors as the only church they aren't above muddying the doormat into. Call me a stiff traditionalist, but I often can't stand these people - especially when they display their own fundamentalist streak in patronising those who are religious as entirely non-questioning and dogmatic to the core. It's like if you're a girl who likes boxing and car stuff, you can't be a female; if you don't agree with every point of doctrine the Church teaches, you oughtn't bother with going.
But that's my rant over.
Gradually, I came to really enjoy and appreciate this book. I did not want to admit it to myself for a while. To start with, while reading the first section - which is the longest and most enjoyable - in which O'Laoire basically dismantles the entire Five Books of Moses (Torah to the Jews) through a hypothetical court case - I derived a guilty level of amusement. He basically takes what Ricky Gervais did with the Creation and Flood stories, but then proceeds to lambast Yahweh - as the scriptures portray Him - all the way from Creation to entry into the Holy Land, and the brutal slaughter of untold thousands of pagans.
I think because on a deeper level, I disagreed with his conclusions, I was able to just have a good laugh, and indeed agree with many of his critiques of Yahweh as the Hebrews (and, let's be fair, most Christians) have portrayed him in the Bible. The fact of the matter is that the Old Testament - though a brilliant and profoundly important distillation of Hebrew history, myth and wisdom - is a hard read for anyone that is unfamiliar with the lesser-known biblical stories. You know, the ones you don't hear on Sunday morning at church, with all the rape and murder, dehumanisation of most women, questionable family morals, and unrighteous heroes.
The first time I tried to read the Bible, when I was in my early twenties, I almost couldn't make it past the story of Abraham and Isaac, so appalled was I that the God of love was putting a loving father and son through that ordeal. In the end I was able to cope with this, only to hit an impenetrable brick wall with the unmatchable instructional detail of Leviticus. Those parts of the Bible put James Joyce to shame.
So, while I did really enjoy most of this book, and certainly appreciated the humour and the evident love and warmth that radiates from the guy, it ceased to really stick at my own beliefs, and my love for the Bible, once I got where he was coming from, and could therefore respect his opinions and his arguments, whilst disagreeing with the foundational elements of his biblical commentary.
Very recently, I met the father of my brother's fiancé - another Catholic, but this time from India, who practices in a traditional sense, but is also deeply interested in the mystical side of all religions. We had a good conversation with each other and found ourselves fairly like-minded. A nice enough experience, given I have always felt like the weird and awkward black sheep of my brothers that no one - including them - can relate to. But also, on a purely material level, it means more books!
And so, I was very kindly given this one for free - a book by someone I had never heard of before. To be honest, I was wary at first as it only took a cursory glance at the backflap to notice he refers to God as "Her", is an ex-Catholic priest with little fondness for organised religion (these supposedly more enlightened breed who turn their noses up at those who do find meaning as part of a religious community with common beliefs), he enjoys dropping phrases from other religions with a zest to match Justin Trudeau, and he wants to more-or-less abolish the scary and mean Old Testament as a Holy Scripture.
Not the sort of stuff I usually go for, as along with progressive Christians who think Jesus was nothing more than a woke activist centuries before his time, no spark of the divine about him at all, I have little liking for those who posit their own gardens, heads, meditative space or the great outdoors as the only church they aren't above muddying the doormat into. Call me a stiff traditionalist, but I often can't stand these people - especially when they display their own fundamentalist streak in patronising those who are religious as entirely non-questioning and dogmatic to the core. It's like if you're a girl who likes boxing and car stuff, you can't be a female; if you don't agree with every point of doctrine the Church teaches, you oughtn't bother with going.
But that's my rant over.
Gradually, I came to really enjoy and appreciate this book. I did not want to admit it to myself for a while. To start with, while reading the first section - which is the longest and most enjoyable - in which O'Laoire basically dismantles the entire Five Books of Moses (Torah to the Jews) through a hypothetical court case - I derived a guilty level of amusement. He basically takes what Ricky Gervais did with the Creation and Flood stories, but then proceeds to lambast Yahweh - as the scriptures portray Him - all the way from Creation to entry into the Holy Land, and the brutal slaughter of untold thousands of pagans.
I think because on a deeper level, I disagreed with his conclusions, I was able to just have a good laugh, and indeed agree with many of his critiques of Yahweh as the Hebrews (and, let's be fair, most Christians) have portrayed him in the Bible. The fact of the matter is that the Old Testament - though a brilliant and profoundly important distillation of Hebrew history, myth and wisdom - is a hard read for anyone that is unfamiliar with the lesser-known biblical stories. You know, the ones you don't hear on Sunday morning at church, with all the rape and murder, dehumanisation of most women, questionable family morals, and unrighteous heroes.
The first time I tried to read the Bible, when I was in my early twenties, I almost couldn't make it past the story of Abraham and Isaac, so appalled was I that the God of love was putting a loving father and son through that ordeal. In the end I was able to cope with this, only to hit an impenetrable brick wall with the unmatchable instructional detail of Leviticus. Those parts of the Bible put James Joyce to shame.
So, while I did really enjoy most of this book, and certainly appreciated the humour and the evident love and warmth that radiates from the guy, it ceased to really stick at my own beliefs, and my love for the Bible, once I got where he was coming from, and could therefore respect his opinions and his arguments, whilst disagreeing with the foundational elements of his biblical commentary.
June 29, 2022
An illuminating read
In this eye opening and thought provoking book, Father Sean OLaoire, a priest, psychologist and mystic, intends and achieves the monumental task of setting God free from all the projections we have been carrying throughout our spiritual lives.
He utilizes a unique construct... putting God, spirituality and science on trial. Read on, contemplate the evidence and draw your own conclusions.
As a Catholic seeking a deeper understanding of God and my faith, I concluded that God is pure and unadulterated LOVE, not the old man in the sky intent on punishing his creation I grew up to fear. Well done. Highly recommend.
In this eye opening and thought provoking book, Father Sean OLaoire, a priest, psychologist and mystic, intends and achieves the monumental task of setting God free from all the projections we have been carrying throughout our spiritual lives.
He utilizes a unique construct... putting God, spirituality and science on trial. Read on, contemplate the evidence and draw your own conclusions.
As a Catholic seeking a deeper understanding of God and my faith, I concluded that God is pure and unadulterated LOVE, not the old man in the sky intent on punishing his creation I grew up to fear. Well done. Highly recommend.
June 8, 2024
This is one of those books that changes the way you think about the world, life, and (in this particular case) the Bible. The book really gets going in the middle section, where Fr Olaoire presents a fictional court case of Yahweh and Moses being put on trial for crimes against humanity. This book asks questions about the Bible (specifically the violent books of Moses) that most people are reluctant to ask and comes up with answers that people would be even more reluctant to say. My only real criticism of the book (other than disagreeing with some of the scientific assertions) is it wasn't presented entirely as a fictional court case story.
May 24, 2023
Unexpected surpise
I didn't expect.Hindu philosophy from.a Catholic priest! The author is deeply knowledgeable about all.types of mysticism and I learned more about love and mysticism in this one book than in the hundreds of books on the subject I've already read. May be a bit esoteric for.the layman.
I didn't expect.Hindu philosophy from.a Catholic priest! The author is deeply knowledgeable about all.types of mysticism and I learned more about love and mysticism in this one book than in the hundreds of books on the subject I've already read. May be a bit esoteric for.the layman.
March 9, 2023
I love how Neville delivers his knowledge using the scriptures as they were intended, with out the man's manipulation.
It has changed my perspective about these two words "I AM" I have become more conscious of my wording and my inner talk when using them.
It has changed my perspective about these two words "I AM" I have become more conscious of my wording and my inner talk when using them.
September 1, 2023
This is one of those books you have to read at least 2 times. The writer is not afraid to shake religion up a bit in order to get to the underlying truth.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews