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MORE;
Genesis;
The Slant;
Preface
 A Secret of the Universe is for anyone interested in
asking big questions about the beauty and terror of our human experience
and existence!
As emotional and hopeful as it is hard-hitting and
brutally honest, this dramatic allegory is fundamentally about
beliefs. It's about how we come to form "knowledge" about the
big questions in life: God, sex, morals, political ideology—even which
medical treatments we will choose to fight our cancers. More
importantly, it's about how those beliefs affect our actions,
our lives, and the world around us!
Told through two friends’
struggle to make sense of life’s triumphs and tragedies—which they
interpret through very different religious filters—this story is a mirror in which
everyone can glimpse his or her own fallibilities.
A Secret of the Universe
explores both our compulsive need for answers, and the blind spots we
create in the process of searching for elusive clarity. Whether you are a committed Christian, a
Jew, a Muslim, subscribe to another faith, or a hard-core atheist, if
I’ve done my job correctly you will leave this experience having been
challenged—in your dogma, worldview, assumptions, or your tolerance for
dissenting views.
So is there a slant?
Well, sure. Unless we say nothing, whatever we say has an agenda and a
slant. My explicit goal is to do for science, reason, and intellectually
honest dialogue, what Left Behind did for dogmatic literalism;
that is my slant. That said, Christians are a primary intended audience
for this book; and if early readers are any guide, they will find much
that challenges them, but also much that affirms the many positive elements of the Christ
story and the faith traditions. Fair
warning: probably rated "R" if it were a movie, the book is as brutally
honest and candid as it is delicately balanced.
Bottom line? Not only did I go to great
lengths to present the hypocritical oversimplification on all sides of
big questions, but the power of "the secret" will be hard to dismiss on any
side. Indeed the genuine secret that Bill and Ian ultimately discover is
one that humankind has failed to grasp, despite its routine articulation
and esoteric rediscovery through the centuries. I hope you will agree it is
one of the great philosophical realizations in all of human history,
even if it is one that I, too, failed to grasp until recently. As you
will hear in Bill Vanderveen’s words, “Let it be, that we listen.”
Read excerpts using Google's "Book Search."
Discussion Guide
MORE;
Genesis;
The Slant;
Preface |
