The Nonjudgmental Jesus
The Nonjudgmental Jesus
Of course, Neale Donald Walsch’s Conversations with God could not possibly come in one volume: It required three volumes. Obviously, he wasn’t just living in the now. He alerted us that there would be a “then.” Can you figure out why? The answer is not hard. But Walsch claims to be speaking for God. This is probably the ultimate Screwtape scenario in its most seductive form. At least in Lewis’s Screwtape Letters we knew who Screwtape was. In Conversations with God, we are given the ultimate lie that this is God or a surrogate for God, at best, speaking. Below is one conversation Walsch imagines:
“Why did you create two sexes?… How should we deal with this incredible experience called sexuality?”
[God’s answer from Walsch’s pen:] “Not with shame, that’s for sure. And not with guilt, and not with fear…. Personal gratification has got a bad rap through the years, which is the main reason so much guilt is attached to sex… Practice saying this ten times each day: I LOVE SEX… I LOVE MONEY… I LOVE ME! Religion would have you take its word for it. That is why all religions ultimately fail! Spirituality on the other hand, will always succeed. Self-denial is destruction.”3
In a section where, in effect, Hitler is given a pass into heaven, the chapter ends with “God” speaking thus:
Shall you then condemn Adam and Eve, or thank them? And what, say you, shall I do with Hitler? I tell you this: God’s love and God’s compassion, God’s wisdom and God’s forgiveness, God’s intention and God’s purpose, are large enough to include the most heinous crime and the most heinous criminal.
You may not agree with this, but it does not matter. You have just learned what you came here to discover.4
There are other supposed discussions with God in Walsch’s book that I would not even quote. It is the new brash, crude, and vulgar way of desensitizing us to the sacred and deforming our mind-set, all in the name of “God talk.”
But then again, it is not quite original. When society ceases to think rationally, and when passions reign supreme to overthrow everything that stands in the way of our autonomy, then the more radical the teaching, the more coverage it gets. The more coverage it gets, the more famous the propagators become. The more famous they become, the less respect they have for anyone who doesn’t agree with them. Their arrogance becomes self-deification. The “noble” stance of not judging anything or anyone has truly eradicated distinctions, and words are used to tell us there is really no particular meaning to anything. This line of reasoning also reflects their spiritual sources.
Let me end this section with a quote from the Gita, which reflects Donald Walsch’s ideas, centuries ago:
Whatever happened is good.
Whatever is happening is also good.
Whatever will happen, that also will be good.
What did you lose that you are crying for?
What did you bring which you have lost?
What have you created that is destroyed?
Whatever you have taken is taken only from here.
Whatever you have given is given only from here.
Whatever is yours today will belong to somebody else tomorrow.
This inevitable change is the law of the universe and the object of my creation. (Krishna)
Disregard all the tenses, Tolle notwithstanding, and you have here the erosion of moral categories: In Tolle, you have the erosion of temporal categories; in Walsch, the erosion of essential categories; and in all the writers of the New Spirituality, ultimately the erosion of moral absolutes. This is a deadly word game at work. Morality, time, essence, absolutes—all are gone by the wayside in the name of spirituality. What is left but to deny anyone who still holds to those distinctions. So, refashion Jesus.