Tenets: #4

The Key to Personal Peace, Billy Graham

This is in reference to my New Years Resolutions to read one spiritual book each month.

While perusing my parent's bookshelf at home, the only work we possessed by Billy Graham caught my eye. It was a short pamphlet, fifty pages or so, and hardly qualifies as one of my twelve spiritual books, as I read its entirety while in the bathtub.

Unlike Bonhoeffer, Graham did not write to his title. This book is a basic recapitulation of the Christian tenements, with an entire section devoted to signing your life over Christ. Its a book for evangelism: one to give away to your non-Christian friends who perhaps are wondering about the faith you possess. It's not a hard book. It's a simple one. It may have been too simple.

While reading this, once I discovered that it was an evangelism tool, I grew disappointed, and was tempted to just peruse through it to say I'd read it. However! I tried to read it like I was reading the tenements of Christianity for the first time. It helped. But it just seemed too easy. One section asked if I felt wicked or disgusting or had sins I needed to repent of. My initial reaction was 'No! I'm good! I'm fine. Leave me be.' I then realized if someone had asked me if I felt particularly good, angelic, holy, I would have replied, 'No, far from it!' This put me in a complex position: I felt both unholy and unsinful at the same time. I think that's what the problem was with the book. It didn't account for this complex way I was feeling, the capacity for good and evil, or lackluster in both.

I recognize where this book would have it's uses: someone who wants a basic introduction to what Christianity is all about. It simplified the precepts in plain language. While I wasn't in the category, I thought the book might still be useful in reminding me what the gospel is all about. Instead, I grew annoyed, as I sometimes do with evangelism, that is oversimplified the state of the human soul.