The Deeper Journey

As I look over this list of quotations from The Deeper Journey, I wonder why I felt disappointed by this book. I’ll have more to say about this later. But first, the quotations:

We attempt to integrate our experience with God into the structures of our life in ways that are minimally disruptive to our status quo.
M. Robert Mulholland, Jr., The Deeper Journey, p. 49

Whenever we attempt to have God in our life on our terms, we are a religious false self.
M. Robert Mulholland, Jr., The Deeper Journey, p. 49

So we continually tinker with the idol we call “God” in futile efforts to upgrade the idol and make it more suitable for us and more under our control. Some of us do this by education, learning more about God, believing that if only we can get our minds around God and understand God better we will be better able to have God in our life on our terms. Others of us do this by shopping from church to church attempting to find a “god” that is suitable for us.
M. Robert Mulholland, Jr., The Deeper Journey, p. 49

Any God we can have in our life on our terms is an idol.
M. Robert Mulholland, Jr., The Deeper Journey, p. 49

A greater fear of our religious false self is that the idol we call “God” may be revealed as false. We fear that the box may be empty! This fear is well grounded. The constructs we call “God” are false; the boxes of dogma, theology, liturgy and doctrine within which we attempt to contain and control God are empty.
M. Robert Mulholland, Jr., The Deeper Journey, pp. 49–50

We may seek a community of faith whose idol is very much the same as ours and whose box has much of the same character and adornment as ours. By this means, our religious false self not only protects our frail idol in its fragile box but finds support and encouragement in a community of “faith” for maintaining that idol in that box.
M. Robert Mulholland, Jr., The Deeper Journey, pp. 50–51

Our religious false selves can be as frenetic in our religiosity as secular false selves are in their performance-oriented attempts to authenticate their identity and value.
M. Robert Mulholland, Jr., The Deeper Journey, p. 51

Our religious false self is often an angry self. We are angry at anyone or anything perceived to be threatening our “God” and the structures of perception and ritual in which our “God” is contained and controlled.
M. Robert Mulholland, Jr., The Deeper Journey, p. 51

Whenever our identity is rooted in an idol we call “God,” we become very protective of that “God.”
M. Robert Mulholland, Jr., The Deeper Journey, p. 52

Whenever anyone even suggests an alternative theology, a different doctrine, an opposing dogma, a variant liturgy, our religious false self rises up to defend the truth against these “heresies.”
M. Robert Mulholland, Jr., The Deeper Journey, p. 52

Our dying with Christ is, ultimately, the loss of everything that has defined us. It is our utter rejection of all that falsely determined our identity, value, meaning and purpose.
M. Robert Mulholland, Jr., The Deeper Journey, p. 62

How often do we find persons and churches who
define the Christian life by abstinence from certain practices and behaviors. Detachment from these practices and behaviors becomes the primary focus of their life rather than an ever deepening attachment to God in love. If detachment is not the consequence of loving attachment to God, then our religiosity is shaped by our detachment, and we have become religious false selves.
M. Robert Mulholland, Jr., The Deeper Journey, p. 65

Forgiveness is a death to your false self and its righteous indignation, its justified rationale for revenge, its fondling of the resentment.
M. Robert Mulholland, Jr., The Deeper Journey, p. 81

Detachment is the ongoing process of disconnecting our false self from all our life-support systems (or, in reality, our death-support systems). Our false self will resist such detachment with unbelievable power. We will become fanatically religious as long as we don’t have to lose our self.
M. Robert Mulholland, Jr., The Deeper Journey, p. 111

We will never experience life in loving union with God as long as the roots of our identity, meaning and purpose are grounded in something other than God.
M. Robert Mulholland, Jr., The Deeper Journey, p. 112

He gets so much right, and he makes so many significant points. Yet I think what disappointed me was that this book could have been so much more. Mulholland seems to have trouble deciding whether to write as a scholar or as a popular writer. When he communicates as a popular writer, he is excellent. When he slips into the scholarly jargon, he is obscure and fuzzy.

I wish he would rewrite this book and refine those fuzzy sections and make them as penetrating as the rest of this excellent book.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”