A Course in Miracles

I give you a command in the sight of God and Christ Jesus. Christ will judge the living and the dead. Because he and his kingdom are coming, here is the command I give you. Preach the word. Be ready to serve God in good times and bad. Correct people's mistakes. Warn them. Cheer them up with words of hope. Be very patient as you do these things. Teach them carefully. The time will come when people won't put up with true teaching. Instead, they will try to satisfy their own longings. They will gather a large number of teachers around them. The teachers will say what the people want to hear. The people will turn their ears away from the truth. They will turn to stories that aren't completely true. But I want you to keep your head no matter what happens. Don't give up when times are hard. Work to spread the good news. Do everything God has given you to do. ~ 2 Timothy 4:1-5

An old boyfriend/boss of mine emailed me today and asked me about A Course in Miracles. Back in the early 90's when I was working for him, I read Marianne Williamson's book A Return to Love and he of course remembered this (he is smart like that). Anyway, apparently she is now on Oprah and Friends and going through the 365 lessons from A Course in Miracles. Anyway his question was whether I thought it was good or evil. Now, he was an atheist when we were together and when I worked for him, and as far as I know he still is. I have had him on my prayer list for a long time...and as of the first of the year, I have actually been looking at and praying through my prayer list everyday. I felt it was significant that I received this email from him and then I read the scripture above when I was searching for the scripture I would email out to my list today. I have thought on how I should respond to him all day. I want to encourage him to study Christianity because I believe if he does he will learn the Truth. I didn't want to say anything that would lead him to discount Christianity. Below is my response to him.

I guess I don't really have an opinion on A Course in Miracles itself as I never finished it. I read the book A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson and really liked it - I actually read it twice. I bought the Course in Miracles and the index cards with the 365 lessons, but I didn't get very far in either. I'm not sure if it was because I lacked the discipline at the time, or maybe it didn't hold my attention. I don't remember that it had anything offensive to me, but I remember that it led me to study Christianity further instead. I guess because I knew Christianity and the Bible came first and this came along later (like Mormonism), I decided to start at the beginning. So, I don't think that A Course in Miracles is the Truth. I believe that Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life. But because I think my reading A Return to Love and hence A Course in Miracles contributed to my journey to a closer relationship to Jesus Christ, I wouldn't call it evil. Maybe if I read the whole thing, I might have a different opinion, but I didn't, so that's all the opinion I can form. Have you ever read it? I remember that you asked me about it a while back.

I wrote him the truth. I never did read the whole thing, so I can't really form an opinion on it. But like I said, it did lead me to investigate Christianity and I think it helped lead me to be the person in Christ that I am today. God writes straight with crooked lines.