What’s In Your Wallet, by Lawrence J. Beharry

[Note: This book was provided free of charge by the author in exchange for an honest review.]

The title of this book contains a clever reference to the saying by Jesus Christ that where one’s treasure is, there one’s heart will be also. As a whole, this book was difficult to fairly judge, especially because it was unclear if the Trinidadian origins of the author should be taken as a reason to be kinder to the language of this book than it deserves on its own merits alone. In terms of its style, the book itself contains three different styles. One is long block quotations of the King James Version of the Bible to give an archaic flavor, another is regurgitated statements from encyclopedias and other unknown sources that show a complete absence of either correct citation or original thought, and the third is the grammatically simple and broad, sweeping generalizations without nuance or qualification that appear to be the author’s original thoughts, as contradictory and sometimes incoherent [1] as they are. The book could have greatly used a cowriter to help form the thoughts in a better style, a copy editor to help with obvious mistakes in spelling and capitalization that fill this book.

In terms of its content, this book seeks to blend the insights of psychology along with a particular interpretation of scriptures and the use of the author’s personal life as a model for others. In addition, the author spends a lot of time talking about the Triune God as if it was something that existed and that he understood. Likewise, the author praises the words of a certain Terence Fretheim on the level of scripture, which seems more than a little bit troubling. It seems a bit of a waste of paper as well that the spacing of this book is so large, when it could have been almost half the size and been a truer book in terms of its actual depth of material. In many ways, this particular book is puffed a bit from its padding, and could have used some trimming.

That said, with all of the critical comments that can be made about this book, of what value is it? For one, this book is obviously a work of considerable time and effort from someone who wished to express themselves and encourage others, and it takes a great deal of courage to write a book and subject it to harsh criticism. Additionally, the book speaks about issues like faith and fear and showing love to others and avoiding hatred over confessional differences, and these are matters about which all of us, myself included, can be reminded from time to time. By no means is this a perfect book, or even a polished book, or even at times a coherent book, but that does not mean that value cannot be found for those willing to reconstruct the author’s argument in one’s head, with qualifying statements added and dogmatic statements and syncretism and speculation removed. This may be a tall task, but sometimes it can be a worthwhile one.

[1] Here is an example, chosen at random from page 66:

“Over time, we will all draw a variety of constricting habits around us; ones that trap us in a place of supposed comfort, well below what our potential mind would allow us to attain. Pretty soon, such habits drop below the level of our consciousness, but they still decide what we believe what we can and cannot do, and what we cannot even bring ourselves to try. Nevertheless, this is the reason why society is in a rut, because we fail to take a stand, and wait for the second coming of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”