This "Ressurection" Friday, I finished reading Darin Hufford's "The Misunderstood God".

Here are three passages that begged noting, for totally random reasons, although strangely they all fit together quite nicely!

It would be too easy to reduce the subject of this chapter to "anger" alone.  Though it is true that love is not easily provoked to anger, the fact is, love is not easily provoked to anything.  Love cannot be moved from one emotion to another.  It cannot be content and happy in one moment and be hurled into anger, depression, happiness, or offense the next.  Love is stable and real, and it cannot be controlled.

The issue here is really control.  There is a term in our society that baffled me.  It's a label we put on people who constantly seek to control others.  We call them "control freaks".  While there are many people who are controlling and overbearing, I am amazed that they are the ones being called such a name.  If you ask me, the people allowing themselves to be controlled are the real freaks.  Why would anyone want to do this?

We want to believe that God rejoices in truth, but strangely enough, when I ask anyone if God rejoices in the truth about them, they almost always cringe.  We are taught that the truth about us is B-A-D.  We're even encouraged to abandon our hearts for His because there's nothing good in them.  This is spiritual castration, and it's encouraged the moment someone joins the faith.  We are bombarded with Scriptures about how evil our hearts are and how we should never trust them because "the heart is deceitful".  Once we buy into this nonsense, we begin to behave like a castrated dog.  We become docile and obedient and a thousand times less likely to think for ourselves and consider the truth beyond what we'll find in this kind of church.  It's a fine teaching if obedience is what you're after.  But when spiritual proceation is needed, you end up with a bunch of impotent and sterile followers.  And sadly, we accept this willingly because we're told that God doesn't rejoice in the truth about is.

Keep this in mind.  All truth must pass the "child test".  If a child intuitively understands it, it's probably truth.  But if it's too complicated or doesn't match what a child inherently knows, it's probably a lie.  If you what to know God's heart, you must learn to think simply and with your heart as a little child does.  The harder you try to intellectualize faith, the further away you'll get from understanding.

This book was hard to read, with many raw thoughts spewing forth, within a chapter title that loosely connected them together.  In the beginning I could only read a chapter at a time, and sometimes wondered whether I had 'got' the salient points as, in my mind, the writing style did not contain the typical elements to lead me in a gentle incremental crescendo of thought.  Later I read that in his early childhood Darin was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder and while I don't want to make light of this, it certainly helped me breath a sigh of relief at not being able to follow some of the leaps from idea to idea in the book.

There are many challenging standpoints in the book, and Darin candidly and warmly illustrates the defining moments that helped him "get it".  What would have been good was to find out where he went from being a pastor who fell in love with his congregation to what he is doing today.

The Misunderstood God: The Lies Religion Tells About God

I can't seem to find an excerpt online but I did find a radio podcast on The God Journey with Darin.