By Philip Alderink
Arizona Daily Wildcat
November 7, 1997

Columnist misses Truth

Editor:

It seems God gets less and less intelligible every day and according to Erin Stein (God Wants to Speak to You, Oct. 31) we should believe the nonesense he is telling us even if it is not true.

If there in "nothing that we are not" according to Erin and Walsch, then we must also all be God and God is all of us (pantheism). But if that is true, then God can not also be a separate and distinct entity much less personal and self revealing such a Erin and her hero Walsch imply. If "in our highest truths (whatever that means) we are love", then who do I blame if I kick someone in the ass? Who do we blame for the slaughter of millions of Jews during WW II? If God doesn't "give a damn what we do" and will even "give a blessing" to whatever we do, then Adolph Hitler has chalked up a lot of "blessings". If we are "created in Gods likeness" then how can we also "create who WE are"? If we are in we are "created in God's likeness" then God has created some real monsters in the history of humanity or...we have made of ourselves some real monsters. I guess that doesn't to Erin because there is "no objective right or wrong" so there was nothing "objectively wrong" with killing Jews.

And Hitler (and Erin Stein) said "What's right for me may be wrong for you, but I won't tell you what's right for you and you won't tell me what's right for me...OK?"

I hate to tell you Erin, but if we "try to live this way" as you suggest we should, it is not called "love", it is called anarchy. And if I think your world view is "manure" and simply "agree to disagree" as you would like, then I am playing the same simple minded game you are.

The bottom line is...why should I believe that Donald Walsch and Erin Stein are telling the Truth (capital "T") about God? Who made them an authority? Erin and Walsch's God is a god of too many contradictions to trust ones life with. Personally Erin, I think Donald Walsch is plagiarizing Shirly McLain's pantheistic, new age world view just to make a buck. I hope you didn't pay too much for his book.

Philip Alderink
Campus Minister