Beyond Belief

<p>...his passages resonated so deeply that I found myself returning to them over and over. <strong>-Becky Hepinstall coauthor of Sisters of Shiloh</strong></p><p>...this often reads like a novel whose characters are complex fully developed and very real. <strong>-Greg Fields author of Through the Waters and the Wild The Arc of the Comet and The Bright Freight of Memory</strong></p><p><span style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>We read the stories of the Three Little Pigs and Little Red Riding Hood without believing wolves talk. Or Homer's</span><em style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)> Iliad</em><span style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)> and </span><em style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>Odyssey</em><span style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)> without thinking short-tempered gods actually stir up sea storms. Just as pleasurably we can read the Bible also filled with sky gods heavenly messengers and a storytelling magician with profound words about life and death without needing to believe they were real.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>Jan Wojcik devoted himself to God at a young age eventually becoming a Jesuit seminarian. But as he progressed through his education he began to view the Bible differently than his peers-he began to see it as a work of art. And he began to see organized religion as wanting to suppress that art for the purposes of lucrative thought control.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>Jan spent a third of his lifetime getting under and then throwing off the heavy cloak of religious control by reading the Bible as literature. While living to be eighty-and counting-under gospel guidance he has found the beauty and joy of loving women and working the earth stargazing and fishing as Jesus instructed his disciples to do. He learned to lead a godly life that goes beyond belief.</span></p>