Seven Day Reading Challenge - Day 4

Day 4 - The Shining Stranger

  I have accepted the challenge by Jared Adamson to post about a book that I love every day for seven days. Today's is The Shining Stranger by Preston Harold, a pen name. I found my copy in a thrift store, and bought it for five dollars. I've seen newer copies being offered for several hundred dollars.

  One reviewer puts it thusly, "Harold interprets Jesus' mission in the light of the knowledge gained through the centuries in science, psychology, and religious understanding. Getting to the point, Harold sees Jesus' purpose as completing and thereby destroying the Judaic Messianic tradition together with any Messianic concept akin to it through a withering of this idea. The Messianic idea Jesus proclaimed, the idea of the Christ in everyone, is now to take root and flower, thereby overshadowing and replacing the idea of a Messiah outside ourselves. Jesus made of himself an outer symbol of the inner truth of the higher self within each of us - our "I AM," our "Christ in you, the hope of glory."

   I've read a lot of the book; the parts on psychology and language are quite good. The book is full of amazing insights that will force you to use your head. I've read it piecemeal over the years, and not one time have I ever failed to learn something new and important. His theory about how our psyches follow the same rules as the second law of thermodynamics, which explains how entropy increases over time, was a game changer for me. I used it in my classroom and in coaching, as it helped me to better understand kids who were having a hard time being team players.

It was one more piece of the puzzle. I always keep it somewhere close in case I get a urge to learn something new. This is an amazing, yet little known book.