It's not that there's no humor to be found in "Soul Boom." There's most definitely humor to be found here, however, "Soul Boom" for the most part gives us the other side of Rainn Wilson - a more contemplative fellow, devoted family man, and longtime spiritual human being raised in and still following the Baháʼí faith and fiercely devoted to climate issues. The “kingdom of heaven” is a condition of the heart—not something that comes “upon the earth” or “after death.”

Soul Boom begins with the premise that the purpose of faith is two fold- to grow and evolve in our inner selves, and to create a more open and just world. Wilson delves into a wide range of eastern and western faiths for wisdom and to note the commonalities of all faiths. Based on those commonalities, he toys with creating a new, more perfect faith, one that he admits is remarkably similar to his own Baha'i faith. Because, at the end of the day, as “spiritual” as my family appeared, there was a complete absence of loving expression in our house. Did my parents (including my birth mother, Shay, who took off when I was two and who I didn’t really get to know until I was about fifteen) love me? Yes. Most certainly. To the best of their limited, traumatized ability, my parents attempted a piss-poor fumbling love for me and, occasionally, each other. At the end of the book Rainn comes up with his idea of the perfect religion and pulls a lot from his own religious group, the Baha'i faith. This book feels at times like advertisements for this, his SoulPancake company and various religious TV shows he pitched that networks passed on even though they were really really good. Take care reading this and maybe look online for accounts of people who left the Baha'i faith and why some feel it is a cult before you make any big life choices. If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.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

In a nutshell, I spent many years in my twenties and thirties on a private, personal spiritual search, which led me to read most of the holy books of the world’s major religions. I’m no scholar or expert by any means, but this quest for the truth compelled me to study the Bible, the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Dhammapada and other writings by and about the Buddha. I also read up on many Native American faiths and belief systems and caught up on some basics of Western philosophy. I got deeply reacquainted with the faith of my youth, Baha’i. I prayed and meditated profusely, attended various religious services, and dug deep into many central, profound questions: Is there a God? What happens when we die? Do we have a soul? Why do all these idiots watch The Bachelor? 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. Well, the Beatles met with the Maharishi, Cat Stevens became a Muslim, Shirley MacLaine communed with ancient aliens, a young Steve Jobs studied Buddhism in India, everybody was “kung fu fighting,” and countless young people sought answers along nontraditional spiritual paths. The other part of these 10 points is that many of these religious people disagree on these issues, and we need to see why we disagree on these points and why we cannot be following the same God.And then there’s the other demon of mental (and physical) health: addiction. After some bouts with drugs and alcohol dependency in my twenties, I was able to quit with the help of the Twelve-Step Program of recovery. Pretty much anything you can get addicted to, I have struggled with at one point or another: food, gambling, porn, work, codependence, social media, and debt. Even caffeine and sugar. (And now it’s my frigging iPhone!) I read Soul Boom right after another book, Biblical Critical Theory by Christian scholar Christopher Watkin. Among the merits of Watkin’s biblical approach to critical theory is teasing out what makes the biblical understanding of the world distinct. Two overriding Christian commitments are that the God of the Bible is a personal God and that the biblical worldview is “emplotted” in a storyline of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation that shapes everything the Bible talks about and teaches.

I would HIGHLY recommend this to those interested in spirituality especially if you have not heard of the Baha'i faith before as they have a lot of "new ways" to practice a religion that I think are commendable. 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? I cried when I read about the change Wilson saw in his students over the course of months practicing more mindful and compassionate behaviours. In (a) virtue-nurturing context, we are neither living only for this world (as the atheist/materialist/physicalist might aspire to) nor living only for the next world (as the heaven-seeking fundamentalist might be). We are living for both. Because, it seems, both are connected. Our overarching purpose is pure and simple: soul growth. Developing our virtues is about cultivating that part of ourselves that is, at its essence, divine. This ongoing growth process requires a complete and total commitment to the physical plane of existence — this gorgeous, difficult planet, its ups and downs and trials and challenges, its beauty and sorrow. It also requires a longtail view of the eternal — knowing that we’re in this whole game of life for a very, very, very long haul. As in, like, infinite worlds of existence.

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These spiritual gatherings in our home would include Buddhists and Sikhs and Muslims and Mormons, while our bookshelves became filled with books by and about Buddhists and Sikhs and Muslims. And then I thought to myself, "Maybe I've done myself a disservice here. Maybe I need to re-explore those ideas about God and life and soul and the meaning of life and purpose and the nature of suffering because I'm so very unhappy maybe this will help me." And it did. It hasn't always been easy. It's been a very difficult, arduous road with a lot of ups and downs in it. But that is what really sparked my deep and abiding interest in these gigantic topics was they personally affected me and in the exploration of them, they made my life better. And I believe they can make other people's lives better, and I believe collectively they can make our lives better. As an agnostic, I found myself agreeing with Wilson's premises, yet wishing that they were envisioned humanistically, instead of continually chasing a religious structure. That's not Wilson's vision, though. As warm and as inviting as he is to atheists and atheism, he is a person of faith, and that friction will be felt by atheist and agnostic readers. Viewers of the sitcom “The Office” may wonder why the guy who played the “beet-farming, paper-selling, tangentially Amish man-baby with the giant forehead and short-sleeved mustard shirts” is writing a book about spirituality and how it can save humanity from all that threatens to overwhelm us. With sincere enthusiasm and a playful tone, Wilson highlights the vitality of spirituality in our lives.

While anyone who is spiritually seeking would likely enjoy “Soul Boom,” Wilson seems to have written it particularly with younger generations in mind. He reports hearing three things from young people when talking to them about religion: They often say they “kind of” believe in god, they are not interested in organized religion and they shy away from anything remotely “hippy-dippy/airy fairy” (to use Wilson’s description). Wilson hopes “Soul Boom” and the broader SoulPancake community will inspire young people to take a spiritual journey and give them a place to talk about life’s biggest questions. I’m no authority on spirituality, religion, or holiness, and I’m anything but enlightened. Yes, I’ve read and studied a great deal. I’ve suffered deeply. I’ve pondered and contemplated and meditated. I’ve struggled and many times failed. But aren’t writers on spiritual topics supposed to have life all worked out? I’m here to tell you they (we) don’t. Although I have some insights from the work I’ve done, I still get anxious and confused a great deal. I swear too much. I’m impatient with my kid sometimes. I have a big ego that can sometimes subsume me. I compare and despair. I have been (and can be) overwhelmingly selfish and judgmental. Now, don’t mistake me: Rainn never asked for a review. It wasn’t a wink-wink sort of thing. He just wanted to send me the book. A well-groomed man with a Ned Flanders mustache said, sipping some coffee, “Well, sometime in the near future, there will be a great rumbling from above, lightning will strike, and there will be terrible storms. The sky will open up, and down will come Jesus Christ on a cloud with a great trumpet blast. There will be an incredibly beautiful city with gold and silver turrets that descends with angels on it, and this is the kingdom of God. The good Christians will get into the city, and it will float away with Jesus to be with God, the Father, and the rest of the people will be left behind, left on earth to perish.”The word “spirituality,” as the Oxford English Dictionary defines it, means “the quality of being concerned with the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things.” This is exactly what I’m talking about. Way to go, OED! I will delve into all these concepts in far greater detail as the book progresses, but if we are to believe, as I very much do, that we have some kind of “soul” that continues on some kind of journey after our bodies fall away, and that this spiritual essence of who we are is just as real (if not more so) than our bodies—in other words, that this “soul” is the nonanimal, nonmaterial, non-pleasure-and-power-seeking dimension of ourselves that continues in some form after our physical existence ceases—and if this soul exists, then there are certain practices, processes, and perspectives that might help to shape our human beingness, the reality of who we really are. This is what I’m referring to when I talk about the word “spirituality”: this eternal/divine aspect of ourselves that longs for higher truth and journeys toward heart-centered enlightenment and, dare I say it, God. 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.” I expected Rainn to lose me somewhere in the weeds of the spirituality woo-woo stuff, but he actually lost me when he outed himself as a David Brooks fanboy, yikes. The real problem with this book is it doesn't really teach you anything you don't already know, or convince you of anything you didn't already agree with. Empathy is good, consumerism is bad, people need community, etc. And have you heard that racism and sexism plague human societies around the world? 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.