Most of us in Western Christianity have built up strong emotional tensions regarding faith and the way we relate with the God of the Bible. We must ask ourselves, how did we get into this mess? How did certain Greek ideas become so pervasive that they became each of our starting definition of the word God? How do we move past these misconceptions of the Divine so we can see God as he is? That is the purpose of this book.
We may have been swept off our feet by him in love, but over time and after much Bible teaching and exposure to certain mindsets, we ended up believing that this God should be feared. Or that He's unknowable and unpredictable. And that He saved us, not because we're lovable, but because we're damnable.
Atheists believe that any being who is powerful enough to stop evil and good enough to want to, yet doesn't, must be questioned. What if they're right? What if that god doesn't exist? And the infinitely more interesting question is: What is the real God actually like? Is there another way of interpreting the pre-deterministic, all-controlling portrayals of God that our religious heritage may have handed us? Is there another way of interpreting the Bible itself that's even more biblical? I believe there is.
"What does catharsis mean?" You may have heard someone describe an activity or an experience as "cathartic." People use the word to mean something was deeply relaxing. The technical definition of catharsis means "release of tension." A strong feeling of emotional release is the goal of most novelists and screenwriters. Stories take us through tension, betrayal, confusion, suspense, misunderstanding, and delay. But when catharsis happens, and tensions resolve, the viewer, listener, or reader has a real experience of satisfaction. Like a good cry after an episode of This is Us or Call the Midwife, we come away feeling good.
Experiencing Goodness, the way stories help us do, has a profound effect on us emotionally. And, so it is with God and the incredible story we are all a part of. We have lived with tensions in our understanding of God for too long. Catharsis is long overdue. The Bible is full of mysteries, as is every healthy relationship, but we must reject tensions that are actually contradictions--especially tensions that distort or malign the character of God. But, as we will discover in this book, despite all of the confusion religious tensions have perpetrated, goodness shall prevail. Catharsis is coming!
This book has one goal--to release the tensions religion has sown into the way we read the Bible and relate with God. Along the way, we will visit topics like Predestination, Determinism, God's Goodness and his Relatability. We will identify the source texts from the Bible and re-narrate them with deeper, contextual understanding. We will visit certain attributes of God as seen in Jesus, and then end by talking about story--because only story unlocks catharsis.
