I would like to share a few quotes from my new book, The Bible Beyond Religion, with you. My hope is that they spark your curiosity. Allow your mind to wander and ponder! And don’t hesitate to share your thoughts in the comment section below. Thank you.

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The poet Matthew Arnold, a century and a half ago in the poem “Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse,” was caught “wandering between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born.” We are fortunate to be living in the birthing time. A new world is emerging, and happy are we to be part of it.

What came to an end, as I have in previous books gone to some lengths to explain, was the two thousand years when Christianity provided the thought containers and the spiritual connection and nourishment for the Western world. However, as the poet and essayist Mary Jean Irion says, “something cosmic in the human mind was and is gone.” The Christian era is over….

Our abilities have evolved to the point where the fate of the earth is in our hands. We have moved from the age of the supernatural to the age of the scientific/material/psychological. We have moved from Heaven to Earth. (p 3-4)

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Isaiah 55 … rings with invitation, affirmation and hope. It is, in my mind, the high point of the First Testament. “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come buy wine and milk without money and without price. (p 94)

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In the long haul, if we manage to survive for the long haul, Dr. Carl Jung’s Answer to Job will undoubtedly prove to be the most important writing of the twentieth century. … This is a strange affirmation in that Answer to Job was not written as a theological treatise. (P 102)

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Jesus stands as the most influential person in the last two thousand years of Western history. We may have dethroned him from his God status, but he is still a person to be reckoned with and honoured. He is one of the profound spiritual leaders of human history. …. We no longer need to look exclusively to Jesus and the Christian tradition for our spiritual nourishment, but neither do we want him to get lost among the plethora of wisdom that is no farther away than Google. (p 124 )

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To venture into the book of Revelation requires nerves of steel and a deep awareness that, although it is presented in myth and metaphor, we are dealing with reality. … Revelation, the final book of the Christian scriptures, is most persistent and consistent in facing evil. There, on the one hand, the grim reality of the dark side of the human struggle to become fully human is exposed. On the other hand, we meet with the Cosmic powers that surround us and yearn for us to become what humanity can be.

It is the courtship of Heaven and Earth. (p 192)