Sacred Pathways

Something I have been wanting to do on my blog for a while is write little reviews on books I read. My selfish reason is that I think this will help me think through what I have read. My altruistic reason would be to help my friends find good books to read. My lack of time has been the main impediment to this, but I thought, as my vacation is ending, that this would be a good time to start. At Matt's graduation party I got into a conversation with the librarian at Southern California Seminary. I mentioned to her that my approach to God has always tended to be through books (of course the Bible being the #1) and the mind. God has been showing me in His Word that a relationship requires more than that and I was trying to widen the means of approach to God in my life. She recommended that I read Sacred Pathways by Gary Thomas. Not only that, she let me borrow her copy. Thanks! I enjoyed the book a lot. The basic thesis of the book is that the preferred means of loving and approaching God differs from person to person based on temperaments and other factors. He sees nine basic sacred pathways that people take to approach God: naturalism, sensation, tradition, asceticism, activism, caregiving, enthusiasm, contemplation and intellect. Each person needs to identify the main path that fits their personality, learn from those that tend toward the other paths, use their main path and strengthen their weak ones. Thomas writes a chapter on each of the 9 paths that includes a definition, description, strengths, temptations of each one and a test to assess how strong each spiritual temperament is in you. I am sure it is no surprise to anyone that my main spiritual temperaments were intellectual and activist. Surprisingly, considering my waist size, I also came out pretty high on asceticism. My weakest were caregiving and enthusiasm. One of my goals this year has been to be more contemplative and the book validated that there was a need for that. This book is definitely a "broad brush" introduction to this subject and I would recommend it as a resource for people who are trying to begin to think more widely about ways to deepen their relationship to God. I appreciated the author's devotion to the authority of scripture and avoidance of extremes. It is not real deep, but it was a helpful introduction to the subject.