Tuesdays with Morrie

I finished reading Tuesdays with Morrie a little under a week ago.  I first learned about this book through a theatre production my brother was involved in a few years ago.

Let me start by saying that all-in-all I thought this was a good book and a fairly easy read.  Tuesdays with Morrie is a non-fiction book tracing the author's, Mitch Albom, relationship with Morrie Schwartz during the latter's final days on earth.  During the course of the book, the reader is shown Morrie's battle with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease.  The majority of the book is the conversations the two men have each Tuesday discussing life topics such as death, family, and emotions.

The largest disappointment I had with this book is that, although Morrie is dying, the afterlife is rarely mentioned.  The times that it is, it is approached more from a new age perspective than from a biblical perspective.  At one point, Mitch explains,

"Morrie borrowed freely from all religions.  He was born Jewish, but became an agnostic when he was a teen-ager, partly because of all that had happened to him as a child.  He enjoyed some of the philosophies of Buddhism and Christianity, and still felt at home, culturally, in Judaism.  He was a religious mutt, which made him even more open to the students he taught over the years.  And the things he was saying in his final months on earth seemed to transcend all religious differences.  Death has a way of doing that."

 Judging from such comments, I doubt that we will see Morrie Schwartz in heaven.  However, many of the ideas he presents about life follow biblical principles.  Within the book, he mentions topics such as how material things do not satisfy, how we must be prepared to die any day, and how we should live outside of some of the ideas our culture tries to force upon us.

Overall, I would suggest reading Tuesdays with Morrie and learning from it; however, as Christians, we should not make it the final authority.  Everything should be balanced against what the Bible says is true, not from what Morrie believed.