---
.14 = THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
BOOKS
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2002
Kansan.com is hiring!
Web assistants needed to publish the University Daily Kansan to the web
kansan.com The online edition of The University Daily Kansan
Fun and easy to learn Flexible scheduling Great experience - great for resumes Get paid!
Contact web editor Kim Elsham at kelsham@kansan.com
Book explores God, religion in conflicts
"The world is in trouble. Bigger trouble than it has ever been before."
BOOKS
This is the first thing Neale Donald Walsch has to say in The New Revelations: A Conversation with God. His story deals with conflict we find in our lives today. That is how his Conversations with God series began.
As he began to write down some questions,he said a voice guided him through some answers.
"Back about 10 years ago, my life was falling apart and nothing was working," Walsch said in an interview. "I was always depressed, because I didn't understand what was happening. I had been doing what society had asked me and what my parents told me to do."
"What does it take to make life work? What have I done to deserve life containing struggle? What are the rules? I found myself involved in some dialogue on a page," Walsch said. "I wound up writing two nights a week for about a year until I had literally 100 pages of question/ answer."
That began to change on a February night in 1992. Walsch said he couldn't sleep and instead found his way into his den, where he felt compelled to grab a yellow legal pad and vent all of his anger.
Eventually, this dialogue evolved into what has become the Conversations with God series. Walsch has published 15 books, many of which have made The New York Times bestseller list.
He was in Kansas City last week to talk about his thoughts on organized religion, war and other topics discussed in the book.
Currently, Walsch is in the middle of a 14-city book tour to promote his recently released The New Revelations: A Conversation with God.
"It talks about the crisis in the world," Walsch said. "Exclusist organized religion is taking us down the path to selfdestruction."
Walsch doesn't only say that the world is in trouble, but his dialogue explains how to solve the crisis.
Throughout the book, Walsch lays out nine new revelations about life, death and the way we perceive organized religion. He also states fallacies about life and God that are common truths in today's societies.
In the introduction, Walsch said it was
Leslie Kimmel
lkimmel@kansan.com
not necessary to accept that he did have this conversation with God, but that "you merely have to be willing to follow the conversation, consider its contents, explore the possibility of applying them in your life and observe the results."
This is a good piece of advice.
At first Walsch's message seemed questionable, but it was reassuring when he said he didn't expect the reader to believe it was the word of God.
Walsch also discussed different belief systems and how they bring about war.
"The reason that people have war is because they see themselves as superior to other people, and this is a very damaging concept," Walsch said in his interview. "I think that there is a very good chance that we will go to war with Iraq. This is a good example of people's arrogance because we think that some people will attack us."
Walsch's concepts are easy to relate to and helpful in understanding our current crisis with Iraq, but the ideas are long and drawn out, have multiple steps and sometimes go in circles.
For instance, Walsch discusses certain belief systems in parts of several chapters. It took reading a majority of the book to figure out that Walsch thought our economic and political problems came from behaviors caused by false beliefs.
Anyone who enjoys having multiple rules or seeing several examples to work through theological questions could appreciate this book. It is also good reading for those interested in how organized religion and belief systems play a part in war and conflicts.
Walsch also said that, because these issues are usually important to college students, his new book can become a part of students' everyday lives.
"If what I'm saying causes a person to shake their head 'yes,' they may need to take a look at these messages and apply them to their daily lives," he said.