When Alex first tried to tell a ‘pastor’ how wrong the book was and how it needed stopped, Alex was told that the book was blessing people.
I don't know why "pastor" is in quotes in that quote, but this is something that really gets under my skin. Now it's one thing if you are publishing beliefs that are anywhere from incorrect to misleading yet they are your sincerely held beliefs. That I can live with, as long as you are prepared to defend them without running away. But when you know something is wrong and continue to engage in it anyway, publishing it because it seems to have benefits, that's just unfair.
It's really too bad that this book got to sell so many copies anyway, if you think about it. I mean it's a six year-old's account of what Heaven is like even though he didn't get to stay there. There are two things in that sentence that immediately cause me to be skeptical, and I'm one of the more open-minded to the spiritual here. One is that it's a six year-old. They tend to have a lot more imagination than logic. The other is the idea that he went and came back. Even if you do believe in going to heaven, that's not how the system works or has ever worked. I feel like the reason the book proved to be so popular is because, in a way, the people who bought it felt it somehow validated their own concept of the afterlife. Yet the premise of the book seems to run contrary to their own belief.
In short, I think there are a lot of desperate, struggling people out there, looking for any sort of inspiration and being willing to believe anything that sounds good. But good for this kid, being willing to admit that to the world.