Good Thinking

I just read a Facebook post listing a handful of "so-called Christian" books and all the ways they are heretical and New Age-y, including the bulleted false teachings promoted in the individual books.  

I haven't read all of them.  

But I have read two of the five, and at least one person whose faith I deeply respect has read another and 

Here's the thing: God formed our MINDS.  He made us SENTIENT BEINGS, after His own image.  We are the most complex, the most creative, the highest of all His creations, BECAUSE WE CAN THINK philosophically and morally, and BECAUSE WE HAVE THE EXERCISE OF FREE WILL, and BECAUSE WE ARE MADE IN HIS OWN IMAGE.  

God is not conventional.  We are conventional.  

God has all of the masculine qualities, and He has all of the feminine qualities, because He is Whole.  Following the reasoning of imago dei, we couldn't be male and female if all those qualities were not in God.  We choose to refer to Him in the masculine not because it is the fullness of Him, but because we need to be able to understand things.  Also because Jesus was a man, not a woman, and He is God.  

Because I read a book does not make me a full subscriber to its message.  Dare I say that revolutionary spiritual growth has been sparked in me as a result of books that not everybody agrees are good?  The Shack, for example.  Some people take deep offense to gender roles in the book.  The character of the Holy Spirit is a woman, and a very feminine woman at that.  (So is the character of Father God, and the character of Wisdom, maybe others, I don't remember--but the revolutionary-spiritual-growth bits are mostly in the Holy Spirit category for me.)  

I don't exactly know how to describe how I grew up thinking about the Holy Spirit.  In my traditional-church background, we spoke of the Holy Spirit...I think the best of my understanding of the Holy Spirit was as the Infallible Conscience.  The Holy Spirit (talked ABOUT (by Name and not pronoun) but never TO) was the Helper for making the right choice.  

But a Holy Spirit who is personal, creative, fearfully powerful, and Who asks us to do uncomfortable things sometimes that allow Christ to have the preeminence--that was dangerous, out of control, not allowed.