The Cost of Certainty: How Religious Conviction Betrays the Human Psyche

by JeremyYoung (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2005

  $20.18

  The Cost of Certainty explores a fundamental ambiguity in mainstream Christian teaching: although the church claims that God's love is unconditional, he only accepts those who believe in Jesus Christ and have repented of their sins. This gospel of conditional love breeds anxiety and polarization. Young shows how this demeans the true message of the gospels. He argues for the recovery of a spirituality of uncertainty and unconditional love as a basis for a renewal of contemporary Christian faith and practice.

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $3.43

  There is a fundamental ambiguity in mainstream Christian teaching about the love of God: namely, that although the Church claims that God's love is unconditional, he only accepts those humans into heaven who believe in Jesus Christ and have repented of their sins. This gospel of conditional love breeds anxiety, and fosters a tendency among believers to polarise into antagonistic camps. Far from offering liberating truth, adhering to such a religion may easily become an emotional, intellectual or spiritual prison, which inhibits the growth of its followers towards both psychological and spiritual maturity. In The Cost of Certainty Jeremy Young explores how these complex themes conspire to demean the true message of the gospels. He argues for the recovery of a spirituality of uncertainty and unconditional love as a basis for a renewal of contemporary Christian faith and practice.