Conversations With God

There is a 3-part series of books where author Neale Donald Walsch sat down and had a conversation with God to share with the world.  Initially, most people would scoff at the idea that this man, who wasn't particularly godly in nature, had a conversation with God.  Neale Donald Walsch was not a pope, Joel Osteen, or Jesse Jackson.  He was just a regular guy, with regular problems who wrote a letter to God, and found his letter answering him back.

Based on the lack of religious connections, the books theoretically could have no real appeal to religious communities.  Based on the concept alone, non-zealots would think of Walsch as crazy, and zealots would think of him as blasphemous.  

I personally, being someone that is open to anything, find the concepts of the book interesting, and even inspiring.  In the book, God himself even acknowledges that most people will find it hard to believe that it is actually God speaking, but that is not the point.  The point is the information that is being passed down in the book.  

Several months ago, I rented "Oh, God!" which had a very similar concept.  I wasn't able to see the whole thing, because people in my house were being distracted, but I saw that John Denver was playing a regular guy, and God kept visiting him to spread his message.  Because I never saw the end, I don't know how and if people received that message.  

What I find ironic, is that the messages in the Conversations With God series is similar to the message in "Oh, God!" and in another movie about God coming down from heaven to spread his message to a common man, "Bruce Almighty".  Though I am not a Bible scholar, I find the images of God that is presented in those movies and in these books fit closely with the God that I always felt made the most sense.

The idea of a vengeful, jealous God, in my opinion, seemed to be a very human quality, and one of the worse human qualities at that.  A God that loves his people does not do things like play games with devil, using poor Job, to prove that His people love him.  That God didn't seem like the kind of God that would send babies to Hell because they haven't been baptisized, or send people to Hell who had struggled all of their lives for survival because a missionary group had not yet visited their village to educate them about Jesus Christ.  Maybe that's just my opinion, who knows. 

What I do know, is that I never had an image of God forced on me.  I have always been allowed to discover God in my own way, and the image of God presented to me in Conversations With God makes a lot of sense to me.  The topics of these blogs will present concepts that have discussed in the series, and my thoughts about them.