The issue with there being multiple ways to be God if an individual is part of the major world religions is that they contradict each other. Christianity is a monotheistic religion while Hinduism is a polytheistic faith. Buddhism is an atheistic Faith. At the same time, Wilson treats Christianity like Star Trek does religion. Star Trek is often as condescending to religion as any of the Hollywood shows Wilson critiques, a lesson I learned while becoming a Trekkie as a missionary kid in the ’90s. In describing one species’ development, for example, Captain Picard remarks, “Millennia ago, they abandoned their belief in the supernatural … the dark ages of superstition and ignorance and fear.” Rainn Wilson is best known for playing a paper salesman named Dwight Schrute on The Office. Most people that I have encountered had no idea how devoutly religious Wilson is to his faith which is the Baha’i Faith founded in the 1800s by a man named Bahá’u’lláh whose claim is to be the fulfillment of all the major world religions. Rainn talks positively about there being so many good spiritual paths I think he does not see that they contradict each other or that there are spiritual paths that can be dangerous. It was not a good spiritual path as people followed David Koresh, Jim Jones or Marshall Applewhite. It led to destruction and death. Like so many spiritual seekers, I “hit bottom” but eventually found a way forward, a path toward recovery and tranquility. Out of this darkness, I went on a spiritual journey to help me in my quest for the truth. I investigated religions and spent many hours reading holy texts and secular works on the spiritual path. Meditating. Searching for God. For meaning. For something beyond the material. For transcendence.

I remember one time, when members of a particular sect of Christian Protestant came to our house on a Sunday afternoon, my father asked them to describe their concept of the kingdom of heaven.

Register for email newsletters

I work at a Christian study center serving a large public university, so the trends of “nones” and the “spiritual but not religious” are present every day. Wilson should be lauded for breaking down the artificial “privatization” of spirituality that reduces faith to an individualistic pursuit of self-actualization or a distant set of dogmas. To the extent that SoulBoom’s spirituality fosters values that make it possible for people to become more Christlike, Christian readers can affirm the value of Soul Boom’s intervention. Fans of The Office will find a few scattered nods to the beloved show, but Rainn is not Dwight, and this is not a book about the show... at *all*. Instead it is a thought provoking, inspiring call to spiritual growth and reformation, not just for ourselves, but for the entirety of humanity. So yes, my childhood shaped me this way. This strange petri dish of experiences—this recipe for weirdness—set the stage for the question at hand: Why is the guy who played Dwight writing a book on religious and spiritual ideas? You wrote that no one else was really talking about these topics. Obviously there's books on spirituality and death and God, what did you see missing from the bookshelves?

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast:Through life experiences and his Baháʼí faith, which embraces anessential unity of allreligionsand the unity of humanity,Rainn Wilson takes readers on a 10-chapter journey that touches on how spirituality can be found in everything from official religious texts to quotes from Captain James T. Kirk, the “Star Trek” character. This book is exactly what I expected. I enjoyed Rainn’s humor in the book and saw his sincerity as I read the book. Months before this book came out I let my Baha’i friend know that I was concerned about this book because the Baha’i Faith teaches there are multiple ways to God. This is why you see quotes from many of the religious founders throughout the book and their comments being true from Rainn’s viewpoint The teachings of Baháʼu'lláh, as well as his son and grandson and the Universal House of Justice, the faith’s governing body since 1963, are quite ecumenical. For starters, they draw widely from world religions to form the basis of their teachings. In addition—and more provocatively, at least from this Christian’s perspective—the faith rejects the exclusivist claims of world religious leaders, making figures like Jesus far less consequential than he appears in any historic Christian creed.When I think of spirituality and the 1970s, a particular word comes to mind. It’s not “meditation.” It’s not “LSD.” It’s not “guru” or “incense” or “chakras.”

The trauma that our struggling species has experienced in recent years-because of both the pandemic and societal tensions that threaten to overwhelm us-is not going away anytime soon. Existing political and economic systems are not enough to bring the change that the world needs. In this book, Rainn Wilson explores the possibility and hope for a spiritual revolution, a “Soul Boom,” to find a healing transformation on both a personal and global level

Rainn unfortunately never warns the reader that not all paths are good. The individual must test and see if it is a good path. What's going through your mind, especially when you read that headline and maybe dive a little more into that story?