Have A Little Faith {Book Review}

I just finished Mitch Albom’s Have A Little Faith. It was a tearjerking good read, though not as good as his first, Tuesdays with Morrie.

The synopsis from its jacket reads:

What if our beliefs were not what divided us, but what pulled us together?

In Have a Little Faith, Mitch Albom offers a beautifully written story of a remarkable eight-year journey between two worlds—two men, two faiths, two communities—that will inspire readers everywhere.

Albom’s first nonfiction book since Tuesdays with Morrie, Have a Little Faith begins with an unusual request: an eighty-two-year-old rabbi from Albom’s old hometown asks him to deliver his eulogy.

Feeling unworthy, Albom insists on understanding the man better, which throws him back into a world of faith he’d left years ago. Meanwhile, closer to his current home, Albom becomes involved with a Detroit pastor—a reformed drug dealer and convict—who preaches to the poor and homeless in a decaying church with a hole in its roof.

Moving between their worlds, Christian and Jewish, African-American and white, impoverished and well-to-do, Albom observes how these very different men employ faith similarly in fighting for survival: the older, suburban rabbi embracing it as death approaches; the younger, inner-city pastor relying on it to keep himself and his church afloat.

As America struggles with hard times and people turn more to their beliefs, Albom and the two men of God explore issues that perplex modern man: how to endure when difficult things happen; what heaven is; intermarriage; forgiveness; doubting God; and the importance of faith in trying times. Although the texts, prayers, and histories are different, Albom begins to recognize a striking unity between the two worlds—and indeed, between beliefs everywhere.

In the end, as the rabbi nears death and a harsh winter threatens the pastor’s wobbly church, Albom sadly fulfills the rabbi’s last request and writes the eulogy. And he finally understands what both men had been teaching all along: the profound comfort of believing in something bigger than yourself.

Have a Little Faith is a book about a life’s purpose; about losing belief and finding it again; about the divine spark inside us all. It is one man’s journey, but it is everyone’s story.

I borrowed the book from AA who had stuck little post-its on the pages with passages that particularly struck her, which is a far better method than highlighting, which is what I did to my copy of The Little Prince.

Since this is isn’t my book and I can’t mark the quotes I liked there, I’ll place them here instead:

When you come to the end, that’s where God begins.

Mom, you’re not listening with your eyes.

It is far more comforting to think God listened and said no, than to think that nobody’s out there.

What do people fear most about death? Being forgotten.

You are not your past.

If you could pack for heaven, this was how you’d do it, touching everything, taking nothing.

Nothing haunts like the things we don’t say.

But the passage that struck me the most would have to be the one I could relate to the most. It was when Mitch talked about walking away from his faith because I had done exactly the same thing and for exactly the same reason. His words could’ve been mine. Well, almost.

It wasn’t revolt. It wasn’t some tragic loss of faith. It was, if I’m being honest, apathy. A lack of need. My career as a sports writer was blossoming; work dominated my days. Saturday mornings were spent traveling to college football games, Sunday mornings to professional ones. I attended no services. Who had time? I was fine. I was healthy. I was making money. I was climbing the ladder. I didn’t need to ask God for much, and I figured, as long as I wasn’t hurting anyone, God wasn’t asking much of me either. We had forged a sort of “you go your way, I’ll go mine” arrangement, at least in my mind.

For the past five years, I’ve been losing my religion. But now it’s time to stop running away from God. So I started by attending sacrament meetings every Sunday. Then only a few weeks ago, I attended Sunday School classes. Baby steps. The prodigal daughter is coming home.