Religion Social

For centuries, the story of Adam and Eve has resonated richly through the corridors of art, literature, and theology. But for most moderns, taking it at face value is incongruous. Author John Walton explores the ancient Near Eastern context of Genesis 2-3, creating space for a faithful reading of Scripture along with full engagement with science for a new way forward in the human origins debate.

Alisa Childers never thought she would question her Christian faith. She was raised in a Christian home, where she had seen her mom and dad feed the hungry, clothe the homeless, and love the outcast. She had witnessed God at work and then had dedicated her own life to leading worship as part of the popular Christian band ZOEgirl. All that was deeply challenged when she met a progressive pastor who called himself a hopeful agnostic. Another Gospel? describes the intellectual journey Alisa took over several years as she wrestled with a series of questions.

What if Batman knew your name and wanted to be friends with you? What if you were the one that Tony Stark died to save? What if it was you that Luke Skywalker would stop at nothing to redeem? Hollywood Heroes will awaken you to these questions and help you to see a God who stops at nothing to redeem you. Fictional stories about heroes help us realize that there is evil to fight, souls to be won, and growth to be achieved. It helps us recognize - regardless of religious or cultural beliefs - that sacrificing your life for another’s is a powerful and beautiful display of love.

This is the story of how a meditation practice gave Henry Shukman a context for integrating a sudden spiritual awakening into his life and how his depression and anxiety were gradually healed through this practice. In sharing how he grew into a Zen teacher, Shukman demystifies Zen training, casting its profound insights in simple, lucid language. Along the way, One Blade of Grass guides listeners on a journey of their own, into the hidden treasures that contemplative practice can reveal to any of us.

The Bible predicts that in the last days a charismatic leader will establish a global following in the name of peace. The Qur’an also predicts that a man will rise up to lead the nations, pledging to usher in an era of peace. The man in the Qur’an is called the Mahdi, or Islam’s savior. However, the man in the Bible is the Antichrist. Joel Richardson’s stunning research and analysis suggest that the Mahdi and the Antichrist are actually one and the same.

Human and divine energies complement each other; when joined, they become a potent catalyst for true magick and change. Celtic Myth & Magick describes the energies of over 300 cross-referenced Celtic deities and heroic figures so you can quickly determine which one can best help you in attaining specific goals through magick - such as greater prosperity (Cernunnos), glowing health (Airmid), or a soul partner (Aengus MacOg). This guidebook explains how to use creative Pagan ritual and pathworking to align yourself with the energy of these powerful archetypes.

A comprehensive guide to the foundations of Toltec wisdom, Beyond Fear is essential reading for fans of Don Miguel Ruiz’s New York Times best-selling book, The Four Agreements, which has sold over 8 million copies and has been translated into 46 languages worldwide. Providing instruction in the basic elements of the Toltec spiritual practice, this collection of ceremonies, wisdom, and prophecies empowers readers to shed their fears, judgments, and guilt - an essential step before practicing the Four Agreements.

The Koran: It may be the most controversial book in the world. Some see it as a paean to peace, others call it a violent mandate for worldwide Islamic supremacy. How can one book lead to such dramatically different conclusions?

In this inspirational collection of stories, Swami Rama relates his experiences with the great teachers who guided his life, including Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo, and Ramana Maharshi. It documents Swami Rama's spiritual quest, which showed him that direct experience is the source of real knowledge.

When the goddess culture was stolen and buried, so too were women's rites of passage into our wild, intuitive femininity and maturity. With Maiden to Mother, Sarah Durham Wilson excavates these ancient rites, guiding us through a sacred and crucial initiation from the immature Maiden into the archetypal Mother—the powerful, safe, compassionate, full-bloom feminine life force that exists within all of us.

Who is Satan in the New Testament, and what is the evil that he represents? In this groundbreaking book, Elaine Pagels, Princeton's distinguished historian of religion, traces the evolution of Satan from its origins in the Hebrew Bible, where Satan is at first merely obstructive, to the New Testament, where Satan becomes the Prince of Darkness, the bitter enemy of God and man, evil incarnate. In The Origin of Satan, Pagels shows that the four Christian gospels tell two very different stories.

In Hauntings, James Hollis considers how we are all governed by the presence of invisible forms - spirits, ghosts, ancestral and parental influences, inner voices, dreams, impulses, untold stories, complexes, synchronicities, and mysteries - that move through us through history. He offers a way to understand them psychologically, examining the persistence of the past in influencing our present, conscious lives and noting that engagement with mystery is what life asks of each of us. From such engagements, a deeper, more thoughtful, more considered life may come.

How did the world arrive at its current, disorienting state of identity politics, and how should the church respond? Historian Carl R. Trueman discusses how influences ranging from traditional institutions to technology and pornography moved modern culture toward an era of "expressive individualism." Investigating philosophies from the Romantics, Nietzsche, Marx, Wilde, Freud, and the New Left, he outlines the history of Western thought to the distinctly sexual direction of present-day identity politics and explains the modern implications of these ideas.

Widely hailed as a spiritual classic, this inspirational and unfailingly powerful story reveals the life and visions of the Lakota healer Nicholas Black Elk (1863–1950) and the tragic history of his Sioux people during the epic closing decades of the Old West. In 1930, the aging Black Elk met a kindred spirit, the famed poet, writer, and critic John G. Neihardt (1881–1973) on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

We’ve all seen the memes that populate the internet: live your truth, follow your heart, you only have one life to live. They sound nice and positive. But what if these slogans are actually lies that unhinge us from reality and leave us anxious and exhausted? Another Gospel? author Alisa Childers invites you to examine modern lies that are disguised as truths in today’s culture. Everyday messages of peace, fulfillment, and empowerment swirl around social media. On the surface, they seem like sentiments of freedom and hope, but in reality, they are deeply deceptive.

Viktor Frankl is known to millions of listeners as a psychotherapist who has transcended his field in his search for answers to the ultimate questions of life, death, and suffering. Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning explores the sometimes unconscious basic human desire for inspiration or revelation and illustrates how life can offer profound meaning at every turn.

It was the final test. A chance to win not only the love of Allah, but the love of her father - something she had never been able to earn. Esther took a deep breath and raised her hand in the air. At the age of 18, she had just volunteered to become a suicide bomber. Defying Jihad is the true story of a girl growing up under radical Islamic rule, trained to believe her ultimate purpose was to serve Allah by dying as a jihadist. But two nights before she was to leave forever, she had a dream...one that would change the course of her destiny.

The Sufis, mystics of Islam, have been educators of the heart for some fourteen centuries. Their teachings and methods are designed to help us awaken and purify the heart, to learn to listen to our deepest knowing. In The Knowing Heart, Kabir Helminski presents the Sufi way as a practical spirituality suitable for all cultures and times—and offers insights that are especially valuable for our life in today's world. In cultivating a knowing heart, we learn to experience a new sense of self, transform our relationships, and enhance our creative capacities.

The great fourth-century church father Basil of Caesarea once observed that, in his time, most Christians believed that hell was not everlasting, and that all would eventually attain salvation. But today, this view is no longer prevalent within Christian communities. In this momentous book, David Bentley Hart makes the case that nearly two millennia of dogmatic tradition have misled readers on the crucial matter of universal salvation.

You are being hunted. Like a seasoned angler, our enemy opens his tackle box and selects the lure most likely to attract his intended prey - usually the one you and I are least likely to consider harmful. Each lie we bite on causes us to feel pain, lose or injure relationships, and miss out on the abundant life God wants us to have. Lies Men Believe exposes the lies men most commonly believe and shows you how to combat those lies with the truth.