{"id":44,"date":"2014-09-21T19:22:54","date_gmt":"2014-09-22T02:22:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fourinthegarden.com\/?p=44"},"modified":"2016-07-05T20:24:38","modified_gmt":"2016-07-06T03:24:38","slug":"removing-the-trappings-that-trip-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rickhocker.com\/weblog\/removing-the-trappings-that-trip-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Removing the Trappings that Trip Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four in the Garden<\/em> takes place in a primordial world, before rules and before religion. There is no church, no organized system of worship, no predefined code of conduct. Just God. I found this the ideal\u00a0setting to depict God because I could describe a relationship with God without all the trappings of religion or\u00a0culture or history. I could depict this relationship in a pure form as it ought to be portrayed. In its writing, I was careful to avoid words that are religiously loaded terms such as God, faith and sin.<\/p>\n

I wanted to show what a relationship with God might look like, complete with the full range of emotions that accompany any meaningful relationship. We experience joy and disappointment, \u00a0understanding and frustration in human relationships and our relationship with God is no different. I believe that our relationship with God develops in the same way as our other relationships develop, as we learn to task risks, be honest and trust more and more. We have setbacks. We misunderstand. We get angry. But if we value the relationship, we work through those issues and hopefully grow closer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Four in the Garden takes place in a primordial world, before rules and before religion. There is no church, no organized system of worship, no predefined code of conduct. Just God. I found this the ideal\u00a0setting to depict God because I could describe a relationship with God without all the trappings of religion or\u00a0culture or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[10],"tags":[7,8],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7Hhvw-I","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":383,"url":"https:\/\/www.rickhocker.com\/weblog\/religion-versus-relationship\/","url_meta":{"origin":44,"position":0},"title":"Religion Versus Relationship","date":"June 3, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Religion cannot nurture a dynamic relationship with God because such a relationship has to transcend the rigid structure inherent to religion. By its very nature, a dynamic relationship with God is fluid and growing and ever-fresh, whereas religion is a fixed blueprint for belief and behavior that confines us within\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Relationship with God"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7,"url":"https:\/\/www.rickhocker.com\/weblog\/why-the-book\/","url_meta":{"origin":44,"position":1},"title":"Why the book?","date":"February 24, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"In February 2007, I had a dream. I dreamt that I was sitting in a college religion class. The class was discussing a book that presented a world where God had created only one person. The story described the growing relationship between this person and God. When I awoke, I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Writing"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":311,"url":"https:\/\/www.rickhocker.com\/weblog\/a-deeper-relationship\/","url_meta":{"origin":44,"position":2},"title":"A Deeper Relationship","date":"November 21, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"A \"relationship with God\" sounds like a lovely thought. But what does it look like? Has anyone defined it for you? How does one have a relationship with a being whom we can\u2019t see or touch? Seems ridiculous, doesn\u2019t it? A healthy relationship is interactive. Giving and receiving must be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Making God Real"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":47,"url":"https:\/\/www.rickhocker.com\/weblog\/a-solitary-adam-without-eve\/","url_meta":{"origin":44,"position":3},"title":"A Solitary Adam, without Eve","date":"October 19, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the most dramatic detours from the Garden of Eden story is that Four in the Garden explores the relationship between one person and God. In the Garden of Eden story, God created a companion for Adam because none of the animals proved to be a suitable companion for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Writing"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":37,"url":"https:\/\/www.rickhocker.com\/weblog\/god-and-brussels-sprouts\/","url_meta":{"origin":44,"position":4},"title":"God and Brussels Sprouts","date":"August 30, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"People seem to either love or hate Brussels sprouts. People who hate them made that determination because they have tried them at least once in their lives. Then you have those people who have spurned God because they tried that once, too, and they didn't like it or it didn't\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Spirituality"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":260,"url":"https:\/\/www.rickhocker.com\/weblog\/willfulness\/","url_meta":{"origin":44,"position":5},"title":"Willfulness","date":"March 18, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"In my book, Four in the Garden, I avoided the use of the word \"sin\" because it's such a religiously-loaded and off-putting word. It conjures feelings of shame, guilt, and condemnation. Rather than driving us to God, it generally has the opposite effect. Sin is often used to describe \"bad\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Spirituality"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rickhocker.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rickhocker.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rickhocker.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rickhocker.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rickhocker.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rickhocker.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45,"href":"https:\/\/www.rickhocker.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions\/45"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rickhocker.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rickhocker.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rickhocker.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}