A Good Book

I just finished reading ‘Have a Little Faith’ by Mitch Albom. Although Publishers Weekly called it “a masterpiece,” and it is a #1 New York Times bestseller, I wouldn’t go quite that far with the encomiums; nevertheless it is a really good little book and I (and my wife who reads most of what I read so we can have our ongoing great discussions) would recommend it.

In this little non-fiction gem the author relates his experience with two very different churchmen who changed his life: the rabbi of his youth—whom he avoided as a youth—and a reformed black convict who was the pastor of a ghetto church in Detroit. Maybe the book would be a catalyst for change in your life.

Although I agree with nineteenth-century American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson that “man is a god in ruins,” I also agree with C. S. Lewis that “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one of these destinations…there are no ordinary people” (from ‘The Weight of Glory’).

‘Have a Little Faith’ illustrates both of these observations from these astute observers of human nature.

Since the Lewis quotation is so provocative for contemplation I will end by giving you the Emerson quotation in its expanded form for a balanced discussion should you want to explore the work of any of these three influential writers.

The Emerson quote is from ‘Generations’: “Man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer and pass into the immortal as gently as we awake from dreams. Now, the world would be insane and rabid if those disorganizations should last for hundreds of years. It is kept in check by death and infancy. Infancy is the perpetual Messiah when it comes into the arms of fallen men, and pleads with them to return to paradise.”

Hmmm….