Chances are that somewhere along your faith journey, someone has filled you with some bad information.
Whether that be a foundational adult in your life, a friend, something you read or even a faith leader, someone has shared some bad theology with you. Some bad spiritual context that God never intended, and more than likely was a misinterpretation of a biblical text by a human at some point.
It happens to all of us. That's part of the condition of being human. We all are going to misinterpret things, misunderstand things, mishear things or contort the meaning of something based on our own set of contexts. ... And then, we just may share some of that knowledge -- correct or not -- with others in our lives.
Some of us do it out of love. Some of us do it out of ignorance. Some of us do it as a profession. But we all do it, whether intentionally or not.
And the challenge is that some of the bad information that we share when it comes to our understanding of faith can have very critical consequences, even retarding the faith of others or even turning others off of faith completely.
Bad theology is responsible for the loss of countless faithful people who leave the church, and frankly has contributed to the underlying mistrust of the church as a whole.
Ultimately, and I don't say this lightly, I believe that bad theology can be traced to the rise of the "nones" -- a category of folks who claim no faithful affiliation. I firmly believe that many of the millions of folks who claim they don't trust the church, and believe it is hypocritical likely received some bad theology from someone somewhere along the line.
Because, seriously, if you take Jesus' message at its face value, I'm not sure how anyone couldn't love it?
That means that we humans have fallen short on communicating the truth of that message. And I know that as a faith leader I have done so too. I just pray that I'm not a serial misinformer!
That's why this new book by Pastor Laurie Etta Neill called "Who Told You That?" is so brilliant! In simple narrative fashion, Pastor Laurie uses real world stories about herself and others to help frame and explain a lot of bad theology that has been passed on in the name of religious education -- some may call it "religious indoctrination!"
For instance, early in Chapter 1, Pastor Laurie recounts the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. I'm sure you're familiar! But if not, in Genesis 3 the serpent tricks Adam and Eve into eating the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden which God had commanded them not to.
In his sly serpent way, he tells Eve that: "You will not die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." And that is all it takes for Adam and Eve to make a catastrophic decision.
When God comes looking for Adam and Eve, the pair hides because they now are embarrassed. You see, eating the fruit from the forbidden tree has made them realize that they are naked. And so they at first hide from God. Which prompts God to ask, "Who told you that you were naked?"
In other words, relating this to Pastor Laurie's premise in the book: God asks Adam and Eve,"Who told you that?"
In that chapter, Pastor Laurie writes: "They had believed the lie of Satan over the truth of God and had eaten the forbidden fruit. Immediately they realized they were naked, even though they had been naked all along. Their clothing had been innocence, light, love, and grace. The were image-bearers of their Creator. Now they were clothed in shame and fear. I could relate.
Continuing with: "We too were created to be clothed in light, love, and grace, but we have believed lies about who God is and who we are. And those lies have left us feeling naked and exposed." ... And concluding: "Who told you that? That was God's question for Adam and Eve, and it is his question for us."
This story, and the entire chapter sets the reader up for how Pastor Laurie's 20 chapter, 267-page devotional guide will help the reader unpack much of the bad theology and the many spiritual lies that they've absorbed over the course of their lifetime.
For functionality, Pastor Laurie divides her book into three sections including...
1.) "The Truth vs. The Lie" in which she first names our nemesis, Satan, and shares the secrets about how "the enemy's" lies try to separate us from God. In addition, Pastor Laurie devises a helpful spiritual tool she calls "The Lie Detector" to help us inoculate ourselves from Satan's lies.
2.) In this section, "Weapons of Deceit," Pastor Laurie names the various weapons -- or human shortcomings! -- that Satan uses against us in the never-ending attempt to separate us from our Creator.
3.) And finally in section three, "The Lie of Who You Are," Pastor Laurie confronts the many lies we hear about ourselves and even tell ourselves that "the enemy" uses against us.
Intended to be helpful devotional guide, Pastor Laurie structures each chapter with a beginning story, and then through excellent story telling leads us through each lesson in confronting the common lies that are used to separate us from God.
At the end of each chapter, she includes four instructional tools: a section on thoughts on which to dwell, a section that points out the blatant lie the chapter confronts, a section that presents thoughtful counterarguments to each of the lies, and a fourth section that provides the appropriate scriptural references that support those counterarguments.
And the great thing about the book is that it could be used as either a personal tool to enhance your faith, or as a group devotional study guide. Either way, the book is effective!
As an aside, being able to tout Pastor Laurie's book is a great pleasure for me as we have a similar vocational background when it comes to ministry. Before she went to seminary and became an ordained minister, Pastor Laurie's home church was the same church at which I was attending when I started seminary in 2016: The Lutheran Church of Christ the King in Moorhead, Minn.
So by the time I was involved in the church's leadership by serving on its council and in its youth ministry program, I was well aware of Pastor Laurie as her husband and son still attended Christ the King.
I later learned of her book through a story in our local community paper, and was on the lookout for it when I ran across it at a favorite bookstore here in town, Ferguson Books.
Neill said in the newspaper story that the book emerged from a book study about "identity" she wrote for women “It resonated with so many, and showed me that there’s a huge need out there for people to understand who they are,” she was quoted as saying in the newspaper story. “There’s so much in the world that tells us who we are that is not at all helpful or true.”
Pastor Laurie now is an ELCA pastor at First Lutheran Church in Fargo, N.D., as well as a fellow faith blogger at LaurieEtta.com.
The book is published by Deep River Books, and can be ordered online or at Pastor Laurie's website.
So for me, reading "Who Told You that?" was an equation like (theology book) + (written by a local colleague I know) = (win!) ... How awesome is that!
Please let me know what you think of the book after you've read it!
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