The more wounded you are, the more you want a God who will rescue you but the more you need a God who stands with you as you do the work of returning to wholeness.Craig Bergland
Thirty-eight Thousand gods and Counting
Every religion and every subdivision of those religions purports to reveal God to us, and all of them fail. What they reveal instead are gods, middle managers at best, what the Hebrew scriptures called demiurges. I say this because, quite frankly, we imagine God should be our personal errand boy, taking care of this and…
Pollyanna Western Christianity
I have noticed something about western Christianity lately. Across all perspectives, from conservative through moderate to progressive, there is an assumption that we all live and always have lived perfect lives. They act as if we are all the family from Leave it to Beaver or from Cosby. Parents are always wonderful, they are never…
Complexity and Confusion
I had a bit of an epiphany the other day as I was walking the dog. I have a fair number of epiphanies walking Roxy. My epiphany came in the form of questions: Does the Divine have some sort of communicative disorder? Should we take up a collection for a special education teacher so that…
Let’s Be Honest About Religion
I know this is asking a lot, but I wonder if we might have an honest discussion about religion. This project will require laying aside our sacred cows for just a moment and electing to suspend knee-jerk reactions for a bit. I know those things are difficult for just about everyone, but the potential reward…
Nobody’s is Bigger
I am coming to see that no one religion can possibly hope to do an adequate job capturing God. Those that believe they can have washed God in some very hot water, indeed, and then thrown God in the dryer on the highest heat setting. How hot is that? That's hot enough to turn the…
There is a God…but not THAT one!
If we spend enough time in reflection and silence, and by "enough" I am speaking in terms of years rather than days, we will find that the popular understandings of God have little to do with God at all. Those understandings are perhaps a necessary foundation for the next step in the spiritual journey, but…
Searching for God
The biggest mistake we ever made was allowing people to convince us that (1) God was outside us, and (2) that they could tell us how to find where God was hiding. Of course, that's a wonderful racket if you can sustain it, and many people and institutions have done very well for themselves sustaining…
Plans and Rules
We make plans, and God laughs. We make rules about God, and She blows her drink out her nose...
Religion is not Truth
One name for God might be Truth, with a capital "T." Some people are mightily turned off by the term God, through no fault of their own and no fault of God's. Rather, they are turned off by the term God because of the behavior of those who claim to have discovered Truth through their…
Craig Bergland 