This is the new book for the book club. I'll be sending emails to the members this week.

I chose to read the book ahead of time so I would be sure I didn't make a bad choice this time around.

I only have about twenty pages left. I think everyone is going to like it.

More later!

The email has been sent about our next read. If you haven't received it, but would like to be included, just let me know and I'll send it to you. Thanks!

My daughter just read this and loved it. I'll see if the copy is still around. (She'd borrowed it from a friend.)

Donna

Time to start posting.

Without giving too much away, I especially liked the thought on the first page about every ending being a beginning, though we don't know it at the time.

Whether it's a dilemma in life, or life's end, it doesn't matter. There is always a new beginning and that's refreshing. It gives hope.

Whose hands do you think were in his at the end of the first chapter?

What do you think happens to the little girl?

What do you think of the explanation about afterlife in the chapter titled, "The Journey"?

I was just ambling through the active topics and thought the topic was "The five POUNDS you meet in Heaven". I was thinking maybe I just wouldn't go!!

Gave me a start.

Maybe I need glasses.

smile

Guess we know what's been on your mind lately!

Yes...a girlfriend of mine gave me this book for Christmas...A wonderful book. It makes you think about what how you affect a person lifeor death (beginning and end) and not even realizing it. I couldn't put the book down and had it read in 3 days. Its an easy read and very thought provoking.

I've not read "The 5..." but ran across an interesting commentary about it.

BreakPoint with Charles Colson
Commentary #040323 - 03/23/2004

An Everlasting Playground
Understanding the Nature of Heaven

Many people worry that Mel Gibson's brutal film about the crucifixion of Christ will bring out the worst in all of us. But New York Times columnist David Brooks is much more worried about Mitch Albom, the author whose sentimental story The Five People You Meet in Heaven has spent months on the bestseller lists. Albom, you may remember, wrote the runaway bestseller Tuesdays with Morrie.

"While religious dogmatism is always a danger," Brooks writes, "it is less of a problem for us today than the soft-core spirituality that is its opposite. … We've got more to fear from the easygoing narcissism that is so much part of the atmosphere nobody even thinks to protest or get angry about it." He's right.

Perhaps the biggest indication of this religious narcissism, as Albom's book demonstrates, shows up in our ideas about heaven. For the most part, rather than being a place where God is worshiped and glorified, Albom's heaven, according to Brooks, is "an excellent therapy session"—a place where people from our past chat with us about the significance of our lives.

The therapeutic heaven isn't the only vision of the afterlife that we find tempting. As a book review in Slate.com points out, we also love the idea of a heaven where we'll experience unbridled luxury. Writer Adam Kirsch explains that this idea has been around for centuries, but a number of new books take it to unprecedented levels. For instance, according to the inspirational book A Travel Guide to Heaven, heaven is all about "having fun" in "the ultimate playground, created purely for our enjoyment."

What the therapeutic heaven and the luxurious heaven have in common, Kirsch writes, is "their refusal of transcendence." We tend to think of heaven as being all about us—the answer to all our questions, the end of all our sufferings, the beginning of endless fun and excitement, with what Kirsch calls a "cruise-director God" catering to our every whim.

It's true that God has promised that heaven will be a place of joy, where our tears will be wiped away forever. But in concentrating completely on these aspects, we've lost sight of what heaven is ultimately about. As Kirsch speculates, "Instead of angelic choirs, it now seems," according to the present theories, that "we will be greeted in heaven by the sound of a billion voices, all talking about themselves." When you think about that, our self-centered visions of heaven start to look pretty awful.

Compare this idea with C. S. Lewis's vision of heaven in his book The Great Divorce, in which new arrivals must learn to want God more than they want their own sins, their own desires, or even their own beloved family members. Only then can they experience the joy that God has prepared for them.

As Lewis wrote elsewhere, "a ruthless, sleepless, unsmiling concentration upon self … is the mark of Hell," not of heaven, which is why the hellish violence of The Passion of the Christ paints a clearer picture of heaven—that is, what it cost to bring us there and whom we should look forward to meeting when we get there—than all the syrupy therapeutic or luxury visions we can ever make up for ourselves.

That's interesting. When I read the book it made me think more about heaven. Fortunately, I already have my very own perception of what heaven will be like.

I guess for some people who read that book, it's the only thoughts they've had. Do you thnk that's possible?

Thistle,

I'm not real sure what your position is. I know what the critics you quoted feel about 5 people but what are your viewpoints?

I think everyone's heaven is very private to themselves. We all worship together in one church but God is very personal to each of us. Who should care what God appears like to me or my reltionship with Him. And my or anyone's perception of Heaven is jsut that...a perception. If I think I will sit at God's hand and learn some lessons about my good and poor judgements in this life then that should be Ok. If Dotsie wants something else that is OK, too.

Sorry, but I find it difficult to gather what you think from these critics' viewpoints. Could you clarify?