Understanding Religious Experiences: What the Bible Says about Spirituality(Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality)

Today most people feel less interested in religion and more interested in spirituality. If you ask what they mean, they will tell you that organized religion tends to turn them off, but, nonetheless, they feel a hunger in the heart that they cannot seem to fill. They do not mean that they would rather have disorganized religion; they mean that institutional religion does not seem to satisfy their spirits and feel there must be something more, some better way of experiencing whatever that is for which they are hungry. Much new experimentation is going on as a result. Some of it is a search for the meaning to fill the soul and satisfy the spirit; much of it is a search for meaning on the spiritual level itself. Spirituality reaches always toward the question about the meaning of God, the meaning of relationships with others, the meaning of intimacy, and the meaning of soul gratifying insights into truth. Here, Ellens carefully and sensitively explores the full range of our spiritual natures and the variety of spiritual experiences of which we are capable, describing the way our souls and psyches work in our hunger and thirst for meaning. He explains in an enlightening and unconventional way why and how every human desires to reflect upon, learn, and share a heartfelt experience of God and of others. Readers will find in this book a description of the meaning of the biblical stories about spiritual experiences in addition to descriptions of the kinds of spiritual experiences that ordinary people are having, how they are achieving them, and the ways in which they are filling their lives with meaning that goes beyond the horizons of material life. The author paints this picture in such a way as to let us in on what biblically based authentic spirituality and spiritual experience really is, and why it may or may not necessarily have anything to do with traditional institutionalized religion. He carefully and vividly explains the notion of spirituality as it is illustrated in the Bible and discusses spiritual experiences such as prayer, epiphany, visions, and other experiences. He considers whether spirituality is mainly a connection with God, with others, or with both. Readers hoping to get a better sense of what it means to be spiritual will have many of their questions answered in these pages.

About the Author :
J. Harold Ellens is a Research Scholar at the University of Michigan Department of Near Eastern Studies, a retired Presbyterian theologian, an ordained minister, a retired U.S. Army Colonel, and a retired Professor of Philosophy, Theology, and Psychology. He served 15 years as Executive Director of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies and was Founding Editor and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Psychology and Christianity. He has authored, co-authored, or edited 164 books, including The Destructive Power of Religion (Praeger, 2004) and Sex in the Bible (Praeger, 2006).

Review :
This book is likely to have the greatest value for Christian seminarians, students in Christian colleges and universities, and general readers who are seeking spiritual guidance. It would serve very well as a resource for those who preach and for students in homiletics classes. In short, it conveys the wisdom of an elder who has lived a full and creative life of faith, and who deeply understands pastoral work. Recommended. Lower-level undergraduate through graduate students, practitioners, and general readers. Ellens carefully and sensitively explores the full range of our spiritual natures and the variety of spiritual experiences of which we are capable, describing the way our souls and psyches work in our hunger and thirst for meaning. He explains in an enlightening and unconventional way why and how every human desires to reflect upon, learn, and share a heartfelt experience of God and of others….Readers hoping to get a better sense of what it means to be spiritual will have many of their questions answered in these pages. The book is recommended for college and university libraries, seminary libraries, and for educated laypeople seeking to understand the ways in which "modern man and woman" search for God.