A CWG Potteresque Howler of biblical proportions

Oh dear – much as I am enjoying reading “Conversations with God” I can’t help but think that most of the time Walsch quotes (or attempts to quote) a biblical passage he either gets the quote wrong, the context wrong, or both wrong. I am often puzzled why he bothers to quote the bible at all, as the ideas he presents are generally well explained in and of themselves (and more often than not, at odds with the overall biblical message)

This has to be one of the worst examples:

“If you have but the faith of a mustard seed, you shall move mountains. You come to know it is there because I said it is there; because I said that, even before you ask, I shall have answered; because I said, and have said to you in every conceivable way, through every teacher you can name, that whatsoever you shall choose, choosing it in my My Name, so shall it be.” (CWG, Book 1, p19)

What? ” … the faith of a mustard seed?” I didn’t know mustard seeds could have faith! What about the faith of a soya bean – would that be better? Or a pea perhaps? Er Neale … I think when Jesus originally said that He referred to having faith the size of a mustard seed (Math 17:20-21). This “quote” then seems to further confuse what Walsch was explaining in the previous pages, which (correct me if I’m wrong someone) has now come to be known as the “Law of Attraction.” Since it is something we generate within ourselves, I don’t get why Walsch muddies the waters by now referring to faith and choosing something “in My Name” when he then does not refer to this notion anymore in the rest of his book! Faith in who? Certainly not the traditional christian concept of us trusting God that He will do something we have requested. This seems foreign to the rest of the CWG model, which overlaps us and God into the same thing. And what of the phrase “in My Name?” Again, a phrase very familiar to christians, but I cannot find it having any meaning within the CWG model here or anywhere else in the CWG trilogy.

Oh well, if nothing else this paragraph serves as a good reminder that we are reading the words of Neale Walsch, and so should not get hung up in the details of particular words or sentences, but more the “big picture” ideas and concepts. (BTW – that could be a reasonably smart way to handle the bible too!)