Coram Deo - a new book by Harry Van Belle

Coram Deo: Living Life in the Presence of God in a Secular Age
Edmonton, AB: Legacy Press, 2019 ISBN-10:1077705689
Available directly from the author at harryvanbelle at hotmail.com
US $14.95, CAD $19.50, or by mail from:
Legacy Press 10517 69 Street Edmonton AB T6A 2S7 Canada
It is also available through amazon in paperback and in kindle format

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Preface
Chapter one: Introduction

Chapter two: A Brief History of God 

Chapter three: Coram Deo: Living Life in the Presence of God 

Chapter four: Reading the Bible with Coram Deo in Mind 

Chapter five: The Antithesis and the Notwithstanding Clause of Grace

Chapter six: A Christian View of Reality 

Chapter seven: A Christian View of Spirituality 

Chapter eight: Structure and Direction: recounting the Presence of God in the Therapeutic Relation 

Chapter nine: Office Discovery and Education 

Chapter ten: Reflecting on the Seasons of Life Chapter eleven: Closing Comments 

Harry writes:

This book was written out of a deep concern for the current state of the world in which we live. The Western world is facing a number of major problems: the disastrous effects of climate change, the daily dreadful occurrence of gun violence, the heart-rending and perilous mass-migration of people from the third world into nations of the developed world, major conflicts between and within nations everywhere, the rise of racism and the hatred of strangers worldwide fuelled by ideologies of populism, nationalism, fascism and anti-Semitism, the opioid crisis creating an epidemic of overdose deaths, and the disappearance of truth speaking in our formal and informal communications, resulting in our inability to distinguish right from wrong. 

There appears to be no consensus among world leaders on how to deal with any of these, or any other problem for that matter. The result is a paralysis of decision-making. That, to my mind, is the worst problem of all facing the world today. Consequently, there is a global sense of unease, anxiety even, about how to frame our existence. The way we live and move and have our being is fraught with uncertainty and unpredictability. None of us seem to feel at home in the world any more. We know more about human life than ever before, but we no longer seem to know what human life is all about. What is lacking is an overarching vision that binds us together. In the words of the Hebrew Scriptures, each of us seem doomed to “doing what is good in our own eyes” ( Judges 21: 25). 

Our fragmented way of living together did not happen overnight. It took an extended historical period of secularizing our Western culture. Our current sense of unrest is largely due to a deliberate attempt to banish God from our public and private lives in order to demonstrate that we are masters of our own fate and are capable of managing our affairs without the need of outside help or direction. The time span during which the absence of God became a normal part of human life in the Western world is relatively short, a mere 500 years, when compared with the thou- sands and thousands of years during which the relation of the Divine to the world was considered a commonly accepted religious fact. During that time human life was inconceivable without its relation to the gods. Divine existence structured and gave meaning to human existence. The purpose of human existence was to serve and to worship the Divine. 

Something essential was lost when we collectively decided some time ago to live life without God. Secularism represents a loss of religious support and direction for human life. Without God human life easily becomes a perpetual restless search to serve and to worship something or some- one other than God, without the chance of ever arriving anywhere. 

For thousands and thousands of years civilizations were cognizant of the presence of the Divine in human life. It gave significance to the lives of human beings. For pagan- ism this presence was threatening. For the worshippers of Yahweh and for Hebraic Christianity that presence was a protective cover over their lives. In this secular age we have lost that sense of support and we feel supremely vulnerable in an uncaring universe. 

Perhaps the time has come to acknowledge that without God we are not masters of our own fate, that in living our lives we are addressed by Someone greater than us, a God who challenges us to live life in ways He has revealed, ways informed by coram deo. The notion of coram deo expresses my belief that human life is always and everywhere lived in the presence of God. What human life from that perspective looks like is the focus of this book.