Customer Reviews

The God Game: It's Your Move: Healing the Wounds of Religious Addiction & Religious Abuse

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Leo Booth's book describes just how addicting conventional religion can become when it is taken as a final step in the spiritual life rather than what it really is meant to be: a first step in adult faith development. In an age when adults are turning to conventional piety in greater numbers, it seems, Booth's book is a practical guide for developing authentic adult spirituality rooted in wisdom when the "God Box" offered in contemporary forms of True Believerism loses its allure.

I consider works like Booth's (and many others) to be a kind of "warning label" on the real dangers of devotion associated with the resurgent fundamentalism and parochialism found today in most religious institutions and spiritual movements. Booth's work meets a growing need for spiritual recovery among adults who become disillusioned with the polarization, polemics and proselytism too often associated with naive forms of religious enthusiasm, however orthodox and "grown-up" in nature.

Chapter by chapter, Booth leads the reader in recovery from the "numbing effects of... religiosity" (page 11), to the "reclaiming of spiritual power lost to dysfunctional or outmoded religious messages." (page 13).

Thanks to Leo Booth for encouraging us all to "experience 'The Way' demonstrated not just by Jesus, but by so many great spiritual leaders and teachers in all cultures and walks of life. Writing a new story for ourselves helps us discover the sacred in the secular that reveals God at work in so many diverse places- not only in the traditional religious scriptures, but in the words of ordinary people who challenge us to connect with our world." (page 183)

I have claimed to be an agnostic for years with a strict penticostal background and according to my therapist a grudge with Jesus. A friend gave me this book to read who herself is a "recovering catholic" who shuns most religous-osity. I hesitated opening up the cover which has God in bright blue letters across the cover. But I was hooked before the end of the first chapter.

This book takes everything I ever learned and loathed about God, spirituality, and religion and twist it around, throws it out or clears it up in a mere 176 pages. All the things that have kept me stuck and stunted in my spirituality were addressed by Father Leo in a realistic and nurturing way. He suggest we clear out our "God Box" those things that keep us beat down, guilty and judged in our religions and work on co-creating our destinies with God. I now know I have a lot of work to do with my spiritual side... I've simply been lazy due to my fears. Who knows if I'll ever claim the description of christian again... but I know I'll be more spiritually sound in what ever path I take. Thank you Father Leo!