How come this book is so popular?

A couple of days ago I stumbled on this site.  Ann Voscamp, the owner of the site and author of a best-selling book, and her family are such an attractive bunch of people, so I looked on Amazon for the book and reviews. I took advantage of amazon's "look inside" facility, and read some, but the style was so difficult to read and the subject-matter so - in my philosophy - (as in Hamlet I mean) blindly Bible-believing and dangerously misguided that I started wondering (for the thousandth time) how such lovely people could espouse such impossible beliefs. Perhaps it's just Ann, but most likely her husband, too, and then inevitably at least some of the children, some of whom are old enough to have developed beliefs of their own or at least abandoned those of the parents.

 Then I started reading some of the reviews. As it happened, the reviews were shown in order of "helpfulness", and the most helpful ones turned out to be generally unfavourable, often reflecting my own views especially as to style and readability. I found it astonishing that such a difficult book should become a Number 6 best seller on amazon. I also felt anew the very familiar feeling of puzzlement about a large number of apparently sensible people adopting such apparently non-sensical beliefs and using those beliefs as guides to an apparently useful and fulfilling life.

This is the whole problem of religion, for me. To religious people (and I think that means the majority) belief is all, it doesn't have to make sense, but it has to appeal to the emotions. Glaring inconsistencies, such as the existence of other religions with different beliefs underpinning them, are ignored or treated the way I treat all religions: they are mostly mistaken and their adherents misguided. The fact is that life treats everybody with indifference, whatever religion or lack of religion they espouse. Life does not care whether you are a Christian or a Muslim or an atheist, whether you are a philanthropist or a mass murderer. People want to see order and reason in life (though there is really no necessity for it) so they invent stories which seem to justify their situation or the situations of others; but I don't believe such stories. Karma, the wrath of God, Satan's tempting, past lives, judgement after death etc - all stories, pure invention.

Growing old

One thing about getting old in this country, people go out of their way to help quite often.  If I am standing at the back of a long line at the supermarket, I may find one of the male staff suddenly appearing at my side, taking my cart and gently pushing it and me right through the checkout and towards a cash desk in another area of the store which for some reason does not have anyone waiting.  Then again, I went into the bank last week to withdraw some cash and many of their lights weren’t working.  I took my withdrawal slip to an area where there seemed to be more light (my vision in poor light is bad and writing by hand has been very difficult for me for the past three or four years due to tremor) and Joyce, one of the tellers, immediately came round to me with a pen and withdrawal slip in her hand, asked me what my requirements were, wrote out the slip herself and a minute later the other teller was giving me my cash in the assorted denominations she knows I like.  It was all done with smiles into the bargain.
I have never regretted leaving UK and settling in this country.

Reality again

When considering the substance of reality, what things are actually made of, how about considering the substance of what dreams are made of?  What is the scenery of your dreams made of?

Could it be the same with the substance of our “real” world?