Silas Marshall’s THE CHRISTIAN HANDBOOK OF SURVIVAL makes a straightforward argument: too many believers have fallen prey to the “doctrines of men,” rather than focusing on the Word of God as revealed in scripture. With a focus on both where we come from (Genesis) and where we will end (Revelation), the HANDBOOK is less a step-by-step guide and more a stern course corrective.
To its credit, THE CHRISTIAN HANDBOOK gets some things right. Even non-Christians will likely note (and lament) the number of Christians whose Christianity has little to do with the actual teachings of Jesus Christ, as described in the Bible. The text’s exhortation to ignore these fallible doctrines of men, and to return to the study of scripture, is always a fair piece of guidance. The message there is one of love: as “ambassadors on Earth that represent God’s will,” loving and caring for our neighbors reflects “His goodness and mercy.” “In doing this love”—the active, executive love; not a passive love—“we find redemption from sin and error, and can rightly divide good from evil.” These are the best, and most crucial, pieces of THE CHRISTIAN HANDBOOK. Salvation comes not from a navel-gazing obsession or insularity, but from loving our fellow human beings.
However, the text doesn’t lay out its arguments for best effect. At the most basic level, the text could use some cleanup. The style tends towards run-on sentences, with frequent comma splices. Large sections of the text are given in a blocky, all-caps font, which exacerbates the run-on problem by making it harder to identify the beginnings of new sentences. Meanwhile, some lines of argumentation seem unfocused or disconnected. Mention is made of the “any moment” doctrine and the “rapture” doctrine, but these viewpoints are never clearly defined (in relation to each other, or to THE CHRISTIAN HANDBOOK’s own stance). Off-handed remarks about needing a barter system during the End Times fail to tie back into the central structure. Most notable, though, would be the moments of argumentation unsupported by scripture: significantly, that Adam and Eve engaged in sexual sin with the Serpent, and that Cain was the child of Satan, not of Adam. These are startling novelties in the story of Genesis, and they cut directly against the text’s argument that the reader should eschew the doctrines of men for the plain reading of scripture. Altogether, these foibles may leave a reader with more confusion than clarity, but that may very well depend on the reader.
Silas Marshall’s THE CHRISTIAN HANDBOOK OF SURVIVAL has a simple, strong core.
~Dan Accardi for IndieReader