In Spirit and in Truth: Rediscovering the Message of Jesus

By Tommy E. Smith Jr.

In Spirit and In Truth
Rediscovering the Message of Jesus

Two thousand years ago, a Jewish carpenter with a small band of followers introduced ideas and concepts that shook the religious world down to its very foundations. Two thousand years later, the two-billion-person, multibillion-dollar religious infrastructure it spawned impacts the entire globe, but seems to have lost touch with many of the core ideas introduced by Jesus in the days when he and his disciples walked around Galilee. This book seeks to help readers rediscover the warmth, comfort, and relevance of Jesus by encouraging its readers to take another closer look at his essential message.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 12, 2009
• ISBN: 9781493195329

Tommy E. Smith Jr.

Tommy E. Smith Jr. Tommy Smith was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and grew up in Oakland, California. His professional life reflects his varied interests. He is an engineer, diversity manager, and an ordained minister and has served in positions where each of these roles has been predominant. He earned a bachelor of science degree in engineering from San Francisco State University and received a U.S. patent on an electron energy spectrometer while working at a national security research and development laboratory. Tommy resides in Fremont, California, with his wife, Sandra, and three of his four children.

Book preview

Chapter 1

THE ENCOUNTER

MORNING

Hadassha could tell from the bleating of the goats that the women were returning from their morning visit to the well. So far, the day had gone like any other day. She carefully got up from the camel hair and straw bed pad without disturbing Anir from his sleep, started the fire, and silently set about the task of preparing their breakfast of matzo, cheese, and figs. Just like every other day. Indeed, that was precisely the problem. As much as she tried to fight off the realization and acknowledgment of it, every day was just like every other day. She had been feeling this way for a while now—a year, two years, six months? She really couldn’t be sure. What she was sure about, however, was that she was determined to not let it end up this time as it had so many times before. Why did it always happen this way? Why was it so hard for her? Her friends all seem to have managed to follow the script. Jazel, Roshanna, Lei, Shalema—they all seemed to be able to handle it. They got married, had children, served their husbands, and cared for their parents. Sure, they all had their troubles. They occasionally had to borrow grain, a few eggs, or a cruse of oil. Things sometimes got so bad at their houses that they may have even needed a place to sleep for a few days to allow a disappointed husband’s rage to cool off. But these things were minor. All married couples dealt with them and went through them, except, she felt, for her. Why did she have to overreact? Why couldn’t she just leave well-enough alone? And when she finally did, why did she leave it so much alone that he never came back? She had vowed never again. She was tired of the humiliation, the self-doubt, the stares, the murmuring voices, the walking into a conversation and knowing that just a moment before arriving, her name was once again used as the butt of a joke. No more. Never again. She would take the boredom. She would take Anir’s insults. She would do whatever it took just to feel even the slightest bit normal.

She suddenly snatched herself back from her daydream, panicking for a moment as she realized that the herds—and unfortunately the women who led them—were back from the well and heading into the pens. With a final sigh, realizing that it was now safe to emerge from her self-imposed exile, she gathered her bucket, the three goats and two sheep she had recently purchased, wrapped her shawl tightly over her shoulders (just in case she needed to cover her face from a particularly venomous gossip she might chance along the way), and set out on the half-mile journey down Sychar lane to Jacob’s well.

As she rounded the last bend in the road before the well came into view, Hadassha squinted to try to make out the form she saw in the distance. Too large to be a straggler from one of the herds, she held her breath in a combination of dread and anticipation, hoping it wasn’t one of the townswomen who somehow managed to lag behind the others—or worse yet, one who may have deliberately stayed behind to taunt her. Putting her hand up to shade her eyes, she breathed a sigh of momentary relief as she realized that the figure was not a woman at all, but a man. Returning to her normal pace that had unconsciously slowed while she attempted to make out the form of the well’s visitor, she slowed again, consciously this time, as she realized the stranger was not just a man, but a Jew.

THE ENCOUNTER

Will you give me a drink? The stranger’s words caught her somewhat off guard, but strangely, not in a way that alarmed her or made her uncomfortable. She had avoided making eye contact with him up to this point, but something about his words—or perhaps it was his voice—made her strangely at peace and curious at the same time. In an inward sense that she could not explain, she felt surprisingly comfortable in his presence. Under normal circumstances (although meeting Jewish strangers in Sychar at high noon could hardly be called normal), she would have simply turned and walked away. At times during the lonely hours she spent waiting for Anir to return from his occasional journeys to the coast, she thought about just how easy it had gotten for her to walk away. She silently mused about the vibrant, curious, and loving girl she had once been and how that girl had gradually been replaced by the insecure, cautious, broken woman whose greatest aspiration in any encounter was to avoid criticism, rejection, and ridicule. And yet now, in an encounter with their archenemies, people for whom denigrating Samaritans was as second nature as breathing, she somehow felt comfortable. She did not turn and walk away. Nor did she shyly do his bidding to bring about as quickly an end to this encounter as possible. Without even realizing it, her true—but buried—nature began to surface, and the curiosity was just too much for her. She had probably had as many encounters with Jews as most other Samaritans from her village, and in those encounters, she could probably count no more than five or six Jewish words spoken to her that were not harsh or demeaning. She had not looked closely enough at his face to know whether or not it betrayed any disdain, but she was sure about his voice; there was none—not even a trace.

How is it that you, a Jew, are asking me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink? She had blurted it out almost before realizing exactly what she was saying. And even though she was genuinely curious, and had absolutely no idea what to expect for an answer, she was completely unprepared for his response.

If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.

Just like a Jew, she thought. Pompous, elitist, struck with illusions of grandeur, and feeling that we should feel honored to even be given the opportunity to provide them a drink of water! And of course, he’s got special Jewish water that’s better than our plain old Samaritan water. She was partially aware that she was engaging in more dialogue than was usual for her, but she was mysteriously drawn to having conversation with the stranger. And as outlandish as his statements were, there was still not a hint of judgment or disdain. Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?

Hadassha finally felt as if she knew where this was going. Jewish pride. They think that they are so much better than us. But what they need is a history lesson. We too are the seed of Abraham. And not from Ishmael, but Isaac—the promised son—and Jacob. Yes, God did change his name to Israel, but he was born right here, in this land, as were we. Now, all these years later, in their zeal to be superior to us, Jews feel that they’re even better than Jacob! There is apparently no end to the lengths they will go through to maintain their arrogant sense of superiority. That was her first thought, but somehow, it didn’t last. His words sounded haughty, prideful, and conceited, but something didn’t quite fit. The attitude wasn’t there. If there was anything that Hadassha was an expert in, it was reading other people’s superior attitudes. And no wonder, she probably had more practice at it than anyone else for miles around. She sometimes felt as though someone had put a sign around her neck inviting put-downs and disrespect. But yet, she did not sense this from him. It was then that for the first time she noticed his eyes. They were not strikingly beautiful or of an unusual color. Nor was it the shape or their lashes. There was a different quality about them, something she had not seen since her grandmother died when she was a little girl. Something she did not even see in Anir’s eyes. She saw acceptance. She saw peace. She saw complete calm. For the first time in her adult life, she saw in the eyes of this Jewish stranger someone that she felt completely accepted her. She did not know for sure, but this may have been why when he uttered his next words, she didn’t simply dismiss him as a mad man who was wasting her time.

Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

Hadassha was torn—and riveted. She couldn’t recall ever having heard such an audacious claim in all her life! Yet despite the complete incredulity of his words, somehow, there was something about him—this stranger—that made these words in some way believable. Her mind was almost completely divided. She knew that there was no such thing as living water. She knew that thirst was inevitably a daily occurrence. But she also knew, with almost as much certainty, that this man could be telling the truth—a strange and wonderful truth, one that she could only have mused about in her most private, unguarded moments. Perhaps for these reasons, or perhaps for a hundred others, or perhaps for none at all—she couldn’t be sure—she responded to this statement not with laughter, ridicule, or anger; she responded to this statement with a polite and almost trancelike Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.

Go, call your husband and come back.

The words crashed around her like thunder and shook her to the depths of her soul. The other shoe had fallen. She knew it was too good to be true! The stranger with the gentle, accepting eyes had, with these words, suddenly shocked Hadassha back to a realization of the cold, unsympathetic reality that had brought her to the well at such an inhospitable time in the first place. Reality was slowly returning. She had not escaped judgment, but merely delayed it. She braced herself for the criticism that she knew was only moments away and decided to make one last attempt to avoid the judgment and condemnation that had defined and loomed over her all of her adult life. In a voice barely audible, and trembling with the fear and dread of gossip’s deadly poison, she almost whispered, I have no husband.

Hadassha had averted her eyes as she spoke the words and continued looking down as she waited for his reply. And waited. And waited. As she gradually began to train her eyes upward, almost cringing inside in anticipation of the next probing question, she met the stranger’s eyes. She looked, she searched, she strained, but yet again, incredulously, she could not find even a trace of judgment, only understanding, acceptance, and, strangest of all, knowing.

You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.

Hadassha did not know what to think. For most of her life, she had been constantly subjected to people who—armed with nothing more than gossip, half-truths, and outright lies—seemed bent on judging her. She now stood in the presence of a man who seemed to know her and her truth, and yet condemning her for it seemed to be the farthest thing from his mind. Truly, she had never met anyone like this stranger. However, she had heard about them. Listening to him, and sensing the same acceptance that she used to feel from her grandmother, made her remember the stories she used to hear about the great prophets of old—Elijah, Jeremiah, Joel, Amos, Micaiah. Slowly it began to make a little more sense to her. Sir, I can see that you are a prophet. Despite the stranger’s seeming acceptance of her marital circumstances, Hadassha felt very uneasy about having her story out there as a conversation topic. Sure, he hadn’t criticized her yet, but given time, sooner or later, they all do! She knew how to handle this. After all, this was a Jew she was talking to, and everyone knows what Jews and Samaritans do when they come together; and engaging in introspective, authentic, unifying dialogue was not on the list—but religious arguments sure were! And everyone knows that the mother of all Jewish and Samaritan religious arguments is, whose holy mountain is holier, theirs (Mount Moriah) or ours (Mount Gerizim)?

Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.

He knew what she was doing, and it somewhat saddened him that she decided to resort to this tact. There is a time for theological arguments, and there is a time for unburdening one’s soul of the pressures, hurts, and pains that we collect in this journey through life. It saddened him that this was so difficult for them to see, that their spiritual wounds were so sensitive that they were afraid to risk being touched, that they did not see that this is precisely how—and where—God wanted to touch them, that God was more concerned about how they loved each other than where they worshiped him. Most of all, it saddened him that they felt more comforted by a theological argument than an opportunity to touch a human heart.

Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know, we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.

Spirit and truth. Flesh and lies. Spirit and truth. Flesh and lies. The words stung Hadassha. She wasn’t sure why or how, but somehow she felt as though he was presenting her with a choice. She had always wanted to worship God, but after five divorces, this dream had all but vanished. How could she realistically expect a holy God to accept her when one man after another had openly and cruelly rejected, humiliated, and disrespected her? With a truth as painful as hers, could anyone blame her for hiding it, obscuring it, or even trying to change it? It was a terrible burden to carry, an absolutely miserable way to live life, but what choice did she have? Hadassha could hardly believe her ears. She replayed the words again and again in her mind and contemplated over and over what they might mean. The implications that they hinted at were staggering. An apparent spokesperson for God—a Jewish one at that—had just told her that the Almighty God of the universe desired to have a relationship with her. She who had every reason to be ostracized from orthodox Jewish faith; she was a Samaritan (with impure Jewish blood), a woman (a lower social class), a five-time divorcee (sexually unclean), and was currently living in an illicit sexual union (an active sinner). What could she have possibly had going for her that would cause the God of heaven to send a personal emissary to seek her out and deliver a message of hope and spiritual fulfillment of cosmic proportions? What on earth did she have going for her? According to the stranger, just this one thing: God is looking for people who will worship him with complete truthfulness in their inmost being. This stranger was opening up a whole new world for Hadassha. Is God truly able to look past my shortcomings? Has God always realized my true intentions, even if my former husbands didn’t? Is God able to see my desire to love him fully, even though my life has been one continuous string of failures? The stranger had ignited questions within her soul that Hadassha had to have answers for. She simply could not take the excitement of being this close to realizing the greatest truth she could ever imagine, but yet not know for sure. Her mind was swirling and racing, her emotions on the brink of celebration. She had to know. Can this be true? As much as she wanted to, Hadassha would not allow herself the rapturous pleasure of accepting the stranger’s words at face value. In the midst of her mental strivings, a familiar calm came over her as a reassuring memory slowly welled up within her. Once again, as it had done so many times before, the memory of her grandmother’s soothing words and voice brought her calm. With a quiet assurance that she had not felt in years, she looked deep into the stranger’s eyes and said with complete, unwavering certainty, I know that Messiah is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.

The stranger slowly stood up, straightened himself, and looked into Hadassah’s eyes. For the first time, she saw in his face the faint glimmer of a smile. For a moment, time seemed to stand still as she felt a soothing warmth and acceptance gradually envelope her heart, soul, and entire being. And then, as though it was the most beautiful music one could ever imagine, she heard him say, I who speak to you am he.

Hadassha (forgetting all about her water bucket), with tears of joy streaming down her face, ran back to the village to tell everyone she knew about the stranger at the well . . .

WITNESS

Did Jesus ever give Hadassha the living water he spoke about? We are not told specifically if he did or not. What we are told is that the woman who lived in the shadows—who carefully orchestrated her life to avoid contact with people and telling her painful story of failure and loss—this woman ran through the city telling everyone she could find about the stranger who told me everything I ever did! Water or not, whatever he gave her, was more precious to her than the secret she carried and carefully guarded in the midst of her soul. She had exchanged her hurt and shame for his acceptance and validation, and he had made possible a way for her to enjoy worship and fellowship with the divine. It is interesting to look back on what she told them about her encounter. She did not say, Come meet a man who explained for me the theological mysteries around sacred mountains. Or Come meet a man who answered the mystery of Jacob’s origins. For Hadassha, it was Come meet a man who knew all about my failures, faults, shortcomings, and pain, and showed me that God loves and accepts me anyway, in spite of my shortcomings!

This book was written, in part, to help me understand a struggle that I went through in my Church life. I have started it with Hadassah’s story (John 4:1-42) because I believe this episode uniquely highlights the struggle that I and countless others have faced and continue to face regarding our religious life. But as difficult and pervasive as this struggle is, from the perspective of Hadassah’s story, it is all so unnecessary. In this book, I hope to answer a fundamental question about Christianity: why is the experience of Church today so different from Hadassah’s story? Why is the fundamental characterization of Christianity so different from the ideas expressed in Hadassah’s story? Why did the Church choose not to emphasize Hadassah’s story, in favor of one so less relevant, so less liberating, so less accepting, so less human? Why has the Church considered any other message to be more important than the truth that Jesus shared with this Samaritan woman on that day long ago about worshipping God in spirit and in truth?

My hope is that, as we embark on the journey contained in the pages of this book, we will emerge from it with a new and fresh perspective on the life and teachings of the most unique human being to ever live—Jesus—that we allow his ideas to speak for themselves, and that we are able to summon the courage to respond to these ideas by accepting the challenge and call and invitation to worship God in spirit and in truth.

Chapter 2

FAITH ESSENTIALS

THE QUEST

This book was born out of an attempt to help identify a path forward from a struggle that I had been engaged in for over five years. Although this statement originates from one person’s struggle (my own), it very likely may speak to the concerns and sentiments of a great many minds and hearts. At its core, the book is about a quest for religious peace. I mean by this term something more than mere Church attendance or membership. People seek religious involvement and participation for any number of reasons. And in many cases, religious involvement is very responsive to their needs and desires. Religious activity can frequently provide a person with a sense of belonging, a sense of participating in something significant, and a sense of moral legitimacy. These sentiments are positive and responsive to some of our most basic needs as human beings. However, they do not necessarily create emotional and psychological peace—especially within the deepest recesses of the heart. The search for peace shares many of these same features. In its most basic sense, peace may be thought of as an absence of conflict. In a modern, pluralistic society like ours, there are many sources of—and ways to address—conflict. Religion has traditionally been thought of as one of the most effective ways, if not the most effective way of addressing conflict and acquiring peace. While my purpose is not to dispute this assertion, I will suggest that if this were true, then one would expect Churches to essentially be conflict free zones. It is of course possible that this has been true for some church members. Unfortunately, in my own experience of involvement with organized religion, Churches cannot be accurately characterized as an idyllic fellowship of contented souls. In particular, the last five years of my personal journey have been particularly challenging, but have culminated in what I believe to be some very practical observations and insights about how we can find true peace through religious engagement. This is that story. It is my story told from my perspective. However, I have a strong suspicion that I am not alone.

MY JOURNEY

As was fairly common for children growing up in the ’50s and ’60s in predominately African American communities, going to Church on a regular basis was a part of my upbringing. My parents did not think of themselves as being overly religious, but it was clear to us children that they shared the conventional belief in a providential (and punitive if angered) supreme being. As a child, I was fairly tolerant of and amenable to religion and Church activities. I actually enjoyed the sermons and dialogue in Sunday school, but like my family, I was not someone who could be characterized as particularly religious. This changed as I began developing a social consciousness in my teenage years. During this time, my appreciation for the need for a spiritual sovereign grew—along with my doubts that organized religion, as I understood it, was truly connected to this sovereign. The divergence that I had begun to sense between organized Christianity and spiritual reality accelerated when I went to college and almost immediately became exposed to a host of spiritual traditions above and beyond those I had experienced to date. However, after exploration and experimentation with Eastern traditions, Islam, and a host of other approaches, I eventually did come back to traditional Christianity. This return to my Christian roots did not mean that all of my questions were answered. I was still greatly troubled by the Church’s historical acquiescence in the face of slavery and its lukewarm support of the civil rights movement. Yet despite its flawed human practitioners, Christianity still somehow made sense to me. That is, the picture it presented about man, God, and salvation resonated on a level deep within my soul as being true. And there was something else. As a young university student taking classes in mathematics and physics concurrent with this spiritual search, I was amazed at the order underlying the physical universe. I can remember to this day sitting in a physics class and being taught the principles of ballistic motion and how an object’s path could be known if enough information about its initial velocity vector was known. I recall thinking to myself, What if the rock decides it wants to follow a different course this time? What if the sine and cosine of the equation of motion decide to switch places? Although the physics professor did not say it, I came to the conclusion that the reason that rocks didn’t decide to follow alternative equations of motion is because God had already given matter its marching orders via the laws of physics! Perhaps not a very sophisticated conclusion, but it (and a host of other similar thoughts) did help convince me that the God of the Bible was where truth could ultimately be found.

Soon, my rejuvenated Church involvement brought me into the ministry. It may perhaps be more accurate to describe my position as lay ministry, since I had no formal seminary training. However, the denomination to which I belonged frequently ordained young men into the ministry who demonstrated the call of God on their lives (through their learning, disposition, charisma, etc.), so the distinction was never made. As I reengaged with Christianity and accepted Christ anew, my earlier concerns about organized religion’s relationship with true spiritual reality temporarily subsided. However, after a few years of being in the ministry, they eventually returned. Being in the ministry did not cause them to return. But the look behind the veil that it offered made it clear to me that Christianity was not the antidote for human weakness and folly that I thought it was (or should be). The most compelling example of this that I personally witnessed involved the selection of a new pastor at a large influential Church in California. What should have been a straightforward process to appoint a successor instead morphed into a complex Machiavellian struggle between polarized constituencies and self-interests. Without gratuitously divulging the morbid details, suffice it to say that this behavior was clearly motivated by something other than a sincere desire by all involved to ascertain God’s will for this decision. Yet as troubling as this situation was, I don’t believe that the conditions that led to it are all that uncommon—in Churches or otherwise. What starts as a willingness to accept form over substance gradually devolves into an inability to tell the difference and ends up as a definite preference for the superficial—all for the sake of avoiding the painful reality of having to admit the painful truth: that the substance is missing.

Of course, these problems are not unique to Christianity. It is my belief that the dysfunctionality described above is a sign and symbol of the ills that trouble our larger society today. We have done a completely thorough job of advertising, packaging, and delivering our solutions to all of life’s problems. So effective and persuasive is our cultural propaganda machine that we have come to believe in it ourselves. Desperately wanting the identity, esteem, and fulfillment that our institutions promise, we wholeheartedly go after achieving it. After investing one’s energies, heart (and soul?), into such pursuits, it is very difficult to admit that they come up short. Predictably, we have developed a less painful way out. We look successful. We look contented. We look satisfied. We look as if we have arrived. We make ourselves believe that if we don’t tell anyone, they’ll never know. Ours is not the first society to experience such sentiments. Almost three thousand years ago, Solomon likened this experience to grasping after the wind and called the frustration that would inevitably result from attempting to grab a big handful of wind vanity, and vexation of spirit (Eccles. 1:2). It’s one thing for this to happen with material possessions. It’s quite another when it involves the peace we seek from religious involvement. Vanity and vexation of spirit is common in our world today and takes many forms. There are no doubt many individuals today who truly have found authentic spiritual fulfillment. But for many others, this goal continues to be elusive. For such, the choices are to continue to search, to pretend, or to simply give up.

One of my greatest desires in writing this book is to help people achieve authentic, spiritual peace—with themselves, with mankind, and with God. Human civilization has evolved to a point where we can utilize our collective knowledge about the physical universe to drastically modify the conditions in which we live. Medicine, agriculture, transportation, and engineering are all areas in which our knowledge has enabled us to transcend barriers that past generations could not even conceive of. And yet despite all of this tremendous progress, we are not much further along in our social development than when Cain killed Abel. This estrangement from one another always has and will continue to lead to our estrangement from God. And despite the best efforts from our religious activities, we frequently fail to cross our barriers of separation to embrace each other, and God, in spiritual union. One nuance about organized religion that offers a glimmer of hope is that many of them suggest that we can make peace with God even if we don’t quite manage to accomplish it with other people. This may seem to be a viable and easier option to achieve, but God has made it clear that this is not the case. His statements through Jesus (Matt. 5:21-23) and the apostle John (1 John 2:9-11) make it clear that unless love is concretely actualized in our relationships with others, it is merely an abstract concept with respect to God. He doesn’t buy it. And really, deep down within, neither do we. That is why the feeling of authentic spiritual peace is so elusive. This peace simply cannot be experienced unless all of the prerequisite conditions are met. (Nor can it be faked—for long.) Regardless of how nicely it is packaged, religious activity that professes to achieve love for God without achieving love for man is like a traveler who identifies the right road without actually making the journey (let alone reaching the destination).

While this book is concerned with achieving authentic spiritual peace through love, it does not claim to reveal the secret to obtaining this elusive goal. However, I do not believe that reaching the goal is necessary. I believe that what God wants, and what organized Christianity is designed to offer, is the journey itself. Worshipping with a religious group based on the notion of having arrived carries with it the pressure of having to demonstrate to others that you too have arrived. This pressure to perform is at the root of the lack of religious peace in today’s world and is no doubt what Jesus was referring to when he extended an invitation to all who are occupied with such labors to come to him and rest (Matt. 11:28-30). My desire then, and goal, is to help create a space where like-minded individuals can, while acknowledging their shortcomings, pursue the ideal of love for God through love for man—as opposed to love of God in lieu of love for man. Albert Einstein is reported to have said, One form of insanity is to continue to do the same things, but expect different results. My years of involvement with organized religion have made it abundantly clear to me that actions that are religious outwardly are not likely to yield much peace inwardly. For this reason, even though I am committed to orthodoxy in essential biblical truth, it is clear to me that achieving God’s goals for worship will require at least revisiting the conventional and traditional Christian paths. I will speak in greater detail about the route that I believe will lead to success in this endeavor a bit later. However, before doing so, I would like to share the religious and theological positions—the faith essentials—upon which this book is based.

THE NATURE AND CHARACTER OF GOD

Who is God? What