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Meet the new God
Neale Walsch believes the end is at hand. "Life, as we know it, is in the end times, is coming to an end" the author of the "Conversations with God" books says. He's not too upset by this. What he means, he explains, is that humanity has reached a turning point, and humanity knows it's reached a turning point. It's a concept he in his new book, "Tomorrow's God: Our Greatest Spiritual Challenge".
For Walsch, that means letting go of "yesterday's God", as in an omnipotent and separate entity from humanity. For Walsch, God represents Creation itself. "Tomorrow's God," described in the book, is without the characteristics of an individual living being; separate from nothing; and "the extraordinary process called Life." "Tomorrow's God says that every church is 'his church,' and every faith is 'her faith,' and every soul is God's soul, because it shares the same soul with God!" Walsch, an intense man who says he welcomes skepticism, knows that it is hard to change peoples of religion, but he says getting over it is necessary for humanity's survival. "Humanity can evolve in one of two ways," says Walsch. "We can be spectators, nagging each other till we reach annihilation, or we can engage in a process in which we evolve aware of who we are the role we are playing."
Walsch is well aware his ideas conflict with those of some religious and their religions, particularly his belief that faith only goes so far. "Ninety-five percent of what religions teach is valuable, good and true," he says, "but 5 percent of it isn't." What he takes issue with, he adds, is the failure of some religious leaders to questions and admit their religion doesn't have all the answers. "The only way to make 'Yesterday's God' go away," he says, "is to have the will to say, 'We were wrong about some of that.' We're not talking about rejecting religion, but reforming the great religions," he adds. "The theology of inquiry has been castigated and abused.
These sorts of opinions have put Walsch under fire in the past. In a of "Conversations with God" for the Southern Evangelical Journal, Marcia Montenegro was very critical. "Many of this book's messages consistently and completely match the messages of someone who questioned God's Word, called God a liar, told Adam and Eve that they could be like God, and that they would not die. This someone was Satan," she wrote.
But others defend Walsch and the tradition of inquiry he trumpets. "Religion is closed-minded," says the Right Rev. John Shelby Spong, the retired Episcopal Bishop of Newark, New Jersey. (Spong, a liberal cleric known for his contrarian views, is no to controversy himself.) "It is not a search for truth near so much as it is a quest for security. No new definition of God will be 'ruinous for religion,' but clinging to a dead definition will be."
His works a following among those following a New Age spirituality. However, Walsch knows that many religious people will be loath to try "Tomorrow's God." That concerns him, but he'd rather energize those who do. He's put his heart where his soul is, creating an organization called Humanity's Team to foster the message, what he calls "a civil rights movement of the soul". "My assumption is that people agree with the ideas in the book, but haven't decided anything about it," he says. "For those who are already converted, I say, 'Wake up and sing your song.' What we need to do is wake people up and get them excited again."