The biggest lie in the history of christianity

A fast read with a big message: small acts of kindness and humility can change the world. If you are religious, pray to God for transformation. Kelly refers to these acts of kindness as holiness. But I think it is equally powerful if you are not a believer; either way, don't be a jerk!

This is an intriguing book. Where one might expect a very elaborate amplification of the title, what one finds is quite simple. Archimedes said if he could find a large enough lever, he could move the world. Perhaps. Kelly offers an alternative method of moving the world ... Holy Moments, which can

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be defined as similar to good deeds but of even lesser stature. A gentle zephyr of thinking about God can be a Holy Moment. As a kid, I worked as a soda jerk in my Dad's drug store. An ice cream soda was quite an event requiring a very tall and wide glass into which was placed the chosen syrup flavor or fresh fruit. This was expanded to fill the glass with a spurt of the high-velocity soda water spigot. Ice cream was added, more soda water but at ordinary velocity, whip cream and, perhaps, a cherry. The thing is the high-velocity soda water created a huge amount of bubbles -- something like if you could put Holy Moments in a glass that is what it would look like.
But, of course, you don't put Holy Moments in a glass. I believe the current Covid pandemic is producing Holy Moments in each of us like nothing before.

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The Biggest Lie in the History of Christianity was a 2018 Christmas gift from my church to each family of parishioners. We've been given other books by Matthew Kelly before. I let my copy sit, forgotten, until I decided to make it my religious book to read one chapter of each Sunday in January of

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2021. There are only 15 chapters, so I finished it in April.

This book is about what we need to do to find lasting happiness. It's no surprise that the answer is not striving to acquire whatever is proclaimed to be a'"must have'. Nor is living only for our own pleasure. The big lie is that holiness is not possible for ordinary persons.

Chapter seven tells us how to create a holy moment -- just a moment. Once you've created that one holy moment, you will be able to create more. As the author points out, even those persons whom we believe to have led holy lives, weren't being holy all the time. They had their own holy and unholy moments.

We are given stories about persons whose first holy moment started to change their lives for the better. Then we are told about how we, as Christians, can use the simplicity of Christianity's core values of goodness, beauty (for holy moments are things of beauty), and hope to transform our world. Mr. Kelly uses mathematics to show how if each person who has absorbed the concept and habit of creating holy moments converts just three other persons to do the same, the entire world could be changed.

Is it possible? As my late father used to tell me, you'll never know if you don't try.

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