FROM THE MANUSCRIPT
In the author’s words
is supposed to mean rebirth, surrender, repentance, awakening, healing, transformation, and a reorientation of one’s life toward God, then we should tremble before using the word. But many people do not tremble. They recruit. They say “convert” as if they are asking someone to switch teams. They say “accept Jesus” as if the name alone proves they understand the life, teachings, mystery, and demand of the one they are asking someone else to follow. They say “give your life to Christ” as if they have deeply examined what it means to give a life to anything, let alone to the Divine. They say “you need to be saved” as if salvation is a sentence someone repeats under pressure rather than a transformation that reaches the deepest part of the self. And when you ask them what they mean, many of them cannot answer with depth. They can answer with slogans. They can answer with verses. They can answer with fear. They can answer with church language. They can answer with what they were taught to say. But that is not the same as understanding. There is a difference between guiding someone toward God and recruiting someone into your religious certainty. There is a difference between witnessing and winning. There is a difference between inviting someone into transformation and
The God They Inherited, manuscript p. 346. Transcribed from the supplied manuscript; line breaks normalized.
The definition above is an editorial summary of this chapter, not a separately named theory or a claim of scientific proof.