The Life and Death of Mr. Badman Review

The Life and Death of Mr. Badman by John Bunyan is his companion novel to Pilgrim’s Progress. Whereas Pilgrim’s Progress follows a man on the path to following God and reaching heaven, The Life and Death of Mr. Badman follows a man on the path away from God and to hell. This book is done in a conversation format between “wiseman” and “attentive”. They are talking about Mr. Badman, his life and sins, and discussing those sins (the why and how they are sins along with their consequences) with examples to prove their point.

I gave this book a 2 out of 5 stars. I wasn’t all that impressed with it and honestly didn’t really enjoy reading it. The premise was interesting, but truly only well suited to Bunyan’s time period. For our time, it felt too preachy and judgmental in tone. It was blunt, hard-hitting and sermon like, but in the “sinner in the hands of an angry God” kind of way. Reading it as a Christian, I can appreciate the story and what Bunyan is trying to do through this book (turn people away from sinful living and to God), but I think it would push non-believers further away from God rather than draw them to him if read now. Furthermore, many of the issues he discusses are not relevant or not as big in our time (other issues would be better to address in this type of work for people today).

As for the theology: I felt it was for the most part sound and used a lot of Biblical support. However, there were some points that I disagreed with him on. One of those issues was Bunyan’s view that bad things that happen to us (bankruptcy, falling in with bad people, etc.) are all God’s judgment on us in this life for our sins, even if those sins are unknown or unintentional.

I must admit I wasn’t fond of the format. I’m not sure what it is about completely dialog books, but I don’t really enjoy reading them (maybe that is why I am not so fond of reading plays). This was an automatic drawback for me. I would have enjoyed reading it so much more if Bunyan had gone with some other format. As it was, the story was quite boring and slow moving.

I can understand now why this work by Bunyan is not considered a Christian classic. It does still have that lovely writing style that I associate with his Pilgrim’s Progress, but isn’t nearly as good. Perhaps some of his other less known works are better.