An Amazon.com Review For You

[The Sage Nabooru]

I respect Neale Donald Walsch as a fellow hippie and consider him at least somewhat enlightened (an incredibly high respect, considering I'm a negative person), so I read his CWG books. One thing I particularly liked about them was the statement at the end that under no circumstances should somebody just automatically believe in as Gospel (no pun intended) everything written therein and that is was far more important to develop your own connection to spirituality then to simply adopt another's word-for-word. Kind of like Buddha's warning to "believe nothing".

 

Still, I did find the books to contain a good deal of wisdom (although more in the first, than in the third) and admire them, and they have a good place in my bookcases. I think they offer some particularly refreshing insights and even truths. So I wrote them a good review on Amazon.com.

 

One thing that's so amusing about this whole thing is reading the other reviews for these books. I would guess they're about evenly divided between those who rave about the wonder of the books and Christian warnings against Satan's work. I highly suggest that if you're looking for some private online humor (or trying to get pissed off), to read them. Simply type "conversations with god" into the search bar and have fun.

 

Some of the more amusing Christian points made in the reviews are:

 

*Ohhh suuuuuure, you just go on feeling good about yourself and about God. You know that's wrong and can send a person to hell.

 

*It's obvious that anyone that reads these books is willing to buy into the most rediculous garbage.

 

*I know better than to pollute my brain with words that make me have a positive image of God and myself.

 

etc....

 

What's really quite funny about the whole thing is their assumption first of all that this is such a great and dangerous evil that they must do something about it, and that secondly writing book reviews on Amazon.com is the best way they can save the souls of New Age feel-gooders. I think this has a deeper psychological level - since they don't evangelize in public out of embarrassment, they evangelize in the most anonymous way possible online. What's amazing is the sheer amount of it. Like I said a good 50% of reviews on these books and many others are simply Christians spouting dogmatic warnings. I think a great many fundies deliberately spend hours putting terms like "new age spirituality" into search engines for the sole purpose of warning would-be sheep from purchasing non-party-line materials.

[Yaoi Huntress Earth]

I like Walsch's stuff, but one thing I found interesting about the fundies' complaints is that man shouldn't be happy with himself or God. It's sad when you think about it: You have to be scared and unhappy to be right with God. CWG makes some very good points about how dangerous this whole "we're evil, sinful trash who deserve a firey afterlife for the mistake two people in the past made" mentality is and that it brings the worst out in people.