The Biggest Lie in the History of Christianity by Matthew Kelly (2018)

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Yard sales. I love ’em. Nowhere else can you find such great deals on used books, except maybe at a Goodwill Outlet (yeah…there is such a thing). Anything over a buck at a yard sale and you might as well be shopping at Barnes & Noble. I like seeing books for a dime or a quarter, and in years past, I’d used such deals to build up my large, eclectic library.

COVID-19 hasn’t keep me from the yard sales, and this weekend I picked up this totally random read for a tiny State Quarter. I had no idea what I was buying but come on. It was just twenty-five cents!

Now that I’ve read the book, I want my quarter back.

The Gist of The Biggest Lie in the History of Christianity

To cut to the chase, “the biggest lie in the history of Christianity” according to Matthew Kelly is that holiness is impossible. Christians have convinced themselves that the battle isn’t worth fighting, which is why our godless culture seems to be winning. In Kelly’s words:

The idea that the culture has become so powerful that even all the Christians in the world cannot match it is the natural extension of the biggest lie in the history or Christianity. If holiness is not possible, then we certainly can’t change the world. It is diabolical genius. It’s the perfect way to shut down Christianity. (90)

What he calls for throughout the book then is “Holy Moments,” individual choices to do right, to live selflessly, to be better than we normally are. Try to live out a Holy Moment just once per day, he says, and then add more. If every Christian would do this, the world would change. Culture would change. Everyone would eventually want to become a Christian like us.

The basic premise of “Holy Moments” is nice, I’ll admit. The recognition that right now I have a choice either to do right or to do wrong, to be selfish or to be selfless, to please God or offend Him. It’s a great concept and while it’s not new, kudos to Kelly if he is in fact the person to first coin the phrase. In fact, I might even borrow the idea at some point, and then build on it with Scripture. And that’s where my beef lies.

My Beef with the Book, Its Premise…with Everything!

Where’s the Scripture in this book? I’m not about to re-read the whole book just to verify, but a quick perusal shows me perhaps 5-6 quoted verses throughout the entire text. If he’s supposing to drive the Christian world back to holiness, then why did he never once quote the most important verse in the Bible on holiness of all: “Be holy, because I am holy” (1Peter 1:16)?

Instead of using God’s Word to convince God’s people, he cries out relentlessly: “Be holy, because it will make you happy. Be holy, because it will intrigue people. Be holy, because we can change the world.” God’s holiness is completely absent from this book, even more so than quoted Scripture. That’s strike one.

Strike two for me came at about page 70 when I realized that Kelly kept writing about people “becoming Christians,” yet he hadn’t once shared the Gospel. What does it even mean to become a Christian? How does one do that? There’s virtually nothing about Jesus’ shed blood which washes away the sins of the world, about His resurrection, about the love and forgiveness of God, about the drawing of the Spirit or the grace by which even the worst of sinners can be saved.

Strike three came at about the same time, when I realized that Kelly hadn’t once yet mentioned the Holy Spirit! In fact, I circled “the Spirit” on page 102, because as far as I could tell, that was the first time he ever mentioned Him. In a book about a Christian’s pursuit of holiness, come on! How could he not mention the Spirit of Jesus who has made His home in the heart of the believer? Does he not know that “without Him we can do nothing” (John 15:1-11)?

With all these strikes, I know that Kelly’s already out, but I’ve got a bit more to note. After all my reading—of the book, the front-matter, the blurbs, the “About the Author”—I still have no idea about Kelly’s religious stripe. “Christian” is all I got. Is he Evangelical? Is he Catholic? Is he an Evangelical Catholic? Is he whatever-the-heck-Joel-Osteen-is? Kelly is so hard to pin down, judging by his praise of Mother Theresa, Billy Graham, and Nelson Mandela, I simply have no clue where he’s coming from. Add the fact that he thinks that there’s currently 3.5 billion Christians in the world (half the planet!), I assume that he and Jesus don’t quite see eye-to-eye regarding the “narrow gate which leads to eternal life” (Matthew 7:13-14).

Conclusion

I write all this to say that I probably should have put the book down earlier, once I found that nugget about “Holy Moments.” The rest of the book is fluff and stuff that I could get from any feel-good motivational speaker, Christian or non-, on any channel at 3 in the morning. I simply can’t recommend this book. There’s a vast world of better options out there. 

©2020 E.T.