Along with, apparently, nearly everyone else here in Charm City, I got one of these in the mail the other day…

This comes from a religious publisher, Remnant Publications, that’s known for mail bombing its wares all over the country, so I reckon Maryland, or at least Baltimore, is having its turn at being on the receiving end of one of their mass mailings. Remnant is affiliated with the Seventh Day Adventists. But the author of the book, or at least its original author since it’s apparently been through many revisions over the years, was Ellen G. White, a co-founder of the faith. Though having gone through many editions the book itself dates back to the 1800s, about ten or eleven years after what the Seventh Day Adventists call The Great Disappointment (the world didn’t end), and purports to explain the rise and fall of nations in terms of the cosmic battle between Christ and Satan. Just the thing to add to my collection of Jack Chick tracts. Especially as it seems to be an anti-Catholic screed, although I’m told later editions of the book have toned that down a tad.

I am not a Catholic, I’m an atheist, and recently I got my hands on a really lovely graphic novel about a gay teenage Catholic boy trying to reconcile his emerging sexuality with his faith, and his crush on a classmate who is atheist. It’s Hey, Mary! by Andrew Wheeler and Rye Hickman.

It’s very sympathetically done and it gave this Baptist Boy Turned Atheist a better insight into that faith and its culture, and why it matters deeply to some of them. In the end the Catholic boy embraces himself, and his faith, and his atheist boyfriend, and the two of them agree to find a way to walk together, because they are in love. Because each of those pieces of themselves, and each other, make a whole.

I love stories like that. And it’s not hard to see the difference between it and The Great Controversy. The one looks to scripture to discover its eternal truths, the other to the human heart.