A Letter to Neale

Dear Mr. Walsch,

Thank you for the gift of your book to the world.   I recently borrowed a copy of The New Revelations from my local public library.  

I have found your philosophies to be both insightful and challenging.   I find much within it with which my heart concurs. I would, however, seek to take issue with you on a fundamental point.   You state that it is not necessary to reject old beliefs in order to transcend them.   I find this difficult to accept.

From a Christian perspective, did Jesus Christ speak with Divine authority about himself?   Was his testimony inaccurate or misreported by those who bore witness to it?  

Furthermore, if mankind were not separated from God by his/her sinful nature, was Christ's sacrifice not futile, rather than the fulfillment of God's covenant with his people?

If I accept your philosophy, which has much to commend it, I can no longer in good conscience describe myself as a Christian.   I therefore address my remarks as one child of God to another.  

I would be interested to know your point of view on the issues I have raised, so I hope that you might find time in your schedule to respond to this letter.

Yours sincerely, Daniel

Neale Responds

Dear Daniel,  

Thank you for your interesting letter.   I will try to answer you as directly as I can and as briefly as possible since I have limited space here in this newsletter.

I hear you when you say it is difficult to accept the message of Conversations with God that it is not necessary to reject old beliefs in order to transcend them. Nevertheless, this statement is profoundly true in my experience.  

I don't think that transcending and rejecting are the same action at all.   Transcending is the act of becoming larger.   Rejecting is the act of pushing oneself away from something.   The book The New Revelations discusses the process of transcending our present beliefs--that is, becoming larger than they are.   We can still hold onto what is best in our belief system without rejecting that belief system in its totality.   This is called transcending.  

For instance, in my own life I was born and raised a Roman Catholic.   I have decided not to reject the Roman Catholic faith but to transcend it. That is, to become larger than the Catholic faith.   This allows me to hold onto the best of what Catholicism has taught me while embracing new ideas, new concepts, new thoughts and new truths about God which are not contained in Roman Catholic teaching.  

So transcending means to become larger, whereas rejecting means to abandon and to disengage completely from something.   I do not wish to disengage completely from any of my old beliefs, but I do wish to transcend most of them.

You ask if Jesus spoke with Divine authority about himself, and my answer is yes, he did.   Then you ask if his testimony was inaccurate or misreported by those who bore witness to it, and my answer is that it was simply misreported.  

Not everything that has been written by the authors of the Gospels is literally true.   Those authors were human beings like you and me and many times wrote what they thought they understood or what they wanted to understand as opposed to what was inherently true.  

In addition, the writings of the Bible authors, all of them, have been interpreted, translated and reinterpreted many, many times through the centuries.   In some cases those writings have been completely changed or edited to meet the needs of the moment.  

So for us to fail to realize that the testimony of Christ as recorded in the Bible may very well have been misreported or misinterpreted through the years would be for us to walk blindly down an alley that leads us to a place of faith in that which could not possibly be completely accurate.

You ask if mankind were not separated from God by his sinful nature, would not Christ's sacrifice have been futile.   I am here to tell you that the answer is, profoundly, no.   Christ did not die to save us from our sins, however.   Christ died on the cross to demonstrate who he was in relationship to the experience called life and death, to demonstrate God's unconditional love for all of humanity, and to demonstrate the awesome truth about who we are as brothers in Christ.   This is the message that has been lost in the teaching of the crucifixion.

If we accept the teaching of Christ, that he is the son of God and that we are his brothers, if we hear his words when he says "These things and more shall you do also," we may indeed no longer be able to describe ourselves as "Christians" in the traditional or classic sense, but we may always describe ourselves as Christians in the larger sense of one who believes in the message of Christ as saving us from our own misguided and misplaced thoughts about ourselves, about God, and about all of life.  

I, for one, am a Christian.   I am also a Jew.   I am also a Muslim.   I am also a Hindu.   I am also a Buddhist.   I am also a Mormon.   And indeed I belong to every religion on the earth, even those I don't know about.   I belong to all religions because I am a product of all religions, because I am a human being and religions teach in a higher power and I am in agreement with that basic teaching.   Whether I agree with every single doctrine or every single statement proposed by a particular religion does not mean that I cannot practice as a meoodness and kindness, mercy and justice, peace and joy and live your highest choice to live in harmony with all of life and with all people to the extent that it is humanly possible. That is what is important, Daniel, and nothing else matters.   This you will understand deeply on the last day of your life.   I understand this deeply now.   If indeed all of us lived each day as if it were the last day of our lives, we would understand this immediately.

Thanks, Daniel, for your question.mber of all religions, for every religion teaches that love is the answer and I agree with that profoundly

I don't think, therefore, that it is important, Daniel, whether you are a Christian or whether you are not a Christian in the classic sense.   What is important is whether you count God among your best friends, whether you live life filled with love and joy, charity and compassion, goodness and kindness, mercy and justice, peace and joy and live your highest choice to live in harmony with all of life and with all people to the extent that it is humanly possible. That is what is important, Daniel, and nothing else matters.   This you will understand deeply on the last day of your life.   I understand this deeply now.   If indeed all of us lived each day as if it were the last day of our lives, we would understand this immediately.

Thanks, Daniel, for your question.

With Pure Love,