I remember when the book, “The boy who came back from Heaven” came out.  Since I never believe books or speakers whose authors purports to have gone to heaven or hell, I pay scant attention to them.

It came as no surprise, then, when this article came out saying that the book was a hoax.  Even less surprising was this comment from the article:

“You’re right, this whole story is fabricated,” Johnson recalled Beth Malarkey telling him. “[But] because the book was a bestseller, no one in the evangelical publishing industry wanted to kill it.”

This article raises disturbing issues within the “Christian” community, and in particular, the Christian book publishing industry that would choose to publish such an obvious fabrication in the first place.

I’m not a book publisher, but if I was, and someone came to me with a pitch for a book that revolved around someone who allegedly died and subsequently went to heaven or hell and then “came back” to tell about it, I wouldn’t give it a moments serious thought before declining the offer.

That is, of course, if I didn’t love money.

But the love of money appears to be a prime motivation for Christian booksellers in deciding whether or not to put out the trash that often riddles the Christian best-seller lists, like the boy who came back from heaven.

We Americans wonder why our once great nation is dissolving right before our eyes.  Here, in my opinion, is the reason:

“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men. “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lamp stand  and it gives light to all who are in the house.…”   Jesus, Matthew 5:13-15

Christians are the salt and light of the world.  During the days when the Lord was walking upon the Earth, there were no refrigerators or ice available to preserve food.  Salt was used as a preservative to delay spoiling.

Christians in any society can, and should, act as a preserving agent on their respective cultures.  We should influence those around us to godliness, righteousness and moral living, mainly by the manner in which we live our lives.

But when Christians are no more moral than our non-Christian neighbors, our “salt” becomes useless, even worse than useless.  Our hypocrisy can actually embolden others to commit further acts of unrighteousness as they act out in anger and spite for our unfaithfulness and hypocrisy.

So Christians find themselves at this juncture in American society.  Steeped in our hypocrisy, our voice is irrelevant, even mocked, in contemporary culture.  As this so-called “Christian publisher” has aptly demonstrated by printing this stupid book in the first place, money takes precedence over morality.

If it sells, print it, no matter how immoral the decision in deciding to print a book that obviously could not be true.  Make your millions, then when the book is found to be a fraud as everybody knew it was in the first place, remove it from the bookshelves, offer an apology, and laugh all the way to the bank.

And we wonder why America is hellbent on destruction.