A.D. 30

I finished this book, A.D. 30, by Ted Dekker, quite awhile ago, and I apologize that the delay in getting this review out has somewhat diffused my initial impressions.

I gave the book four stars (It's Ted Dekker...how could I not?), but it's a different kind of story than what you might expect from the thriller writer. When I first heard what it was about, I thought of The Big Fisherman, by Lloyd C. Douglas, who also wrote The Robe (two books I read in middle school and was very impressed by). But aside from having similar female protagonists with similar vendettas, their plots play out far differently.

A.D. 30 takes us on Maviah's journey from the depths of the Arabian desert to the palaces of kings and eventually into the presence of another kind of king, Yeshua (Jesus) of Nazareth. Maviah is the illegitimate daughter of an Arabian ruler. She's a former slave brought back to her father's household but still looked down upon. She is nothing, but when her father's wife dies and his alliances fall apart, she may be the only one who can help her people. She just has to go to Palestine and convince King Herod of the Jews of her worth. Accompanied by trusted servants, one of whom she grows to love, she sets out to do the impossible: become a queen. Only an Arabic tribe that wants her dead, two dangerous kings, the past, and her own grievances stand in her way.

While the main plot and conflicts of the story are completely fictionalized and deal with alliances and power-struggles, the climax has to do with issues of the heart, and the heart of this story takes us to the hillsides of Galilee to the teachings of Jesus Christ. Dekker uses passages straight from the Bible for almost all of Jesus' dialog but, of course, still manages to put his own fictional stamp on those scenes, making Jesus seem more of a mystic to the people and the reader than we normally think of him as. In Dekker's telling, he is mysterious. He speaks in riddles, never directly. He knows things about people that a normal human shouldn't be able to know, as though in constant contact with a Being who gives him insight into every heart. Some of these things conflict with how I view Jesus in the Bible, but I didn't feel I could dismiss them entirely. We don't really know much about the day-to-day interactions of Jesus. Perhaps he always spoke in riddles. We know he always taught in parables. Did Jesus know from moment to moment what people were thinking? How much of God was in the Man? While on Earth, he was human, but is it conceivable that God gave him super-human knowledge on a moment-by-moment basis? I guess so.

Writing about Jesus in fiction cannot be easy. I know Dekker had been thinking about this book for years, and I could definitely see Dekker's views on how Jesus works today written into his view of Jesus when he walked the Earth. I'm not sure Dekker is right on this, but I can't say definitively that he's wrong either. I appreciate that he tried not to add to or change Jesus' own words, but there's still a surprising amount you can do without words to create a persona. Regardless, the important part, Jesus' teaching, is not changed. The interesting part comes in how the people interpret Jesus' words, and that can be fictionalized all you want, I suppose.

I confess, my favorite pieces of the story were those that were entirely fictionalized. The sections with Jesus were a little off-putting, partly because so much Bible was directly quoted and because Jesus came across as so mystical and a bit inhuman. I don't know how it might have been done better, but it just didn't entirely work for me. Knowing Dekker, though, I think he'd be happy if the Jesus parts made people uncomfortable, as long as they made them think about what Jesus' words really mean. Hopefully, his version isn't too distracting for the truth to come out. On my part, I saw the truth most clearly not in the words I am so familiar with but through Maviah's understanding of them, and I think that, too, is part of Dekker's plan here.

Dekker always has a message, and you'd expect nothing less from a work of fiction that quotes the Bible directly. His latest focus in writing has had a lot to do with identity and who we really are, as seen through God's eyes. This book has some of that, certainly, but also a lot about letting go of grievances, forgiveness. I noticed other themes as I read, but some of those elude me now after so much time.

A.D. 30 appears to be the beginning of a new series or, at least, the first of two books. It will be interesting to see where Maviah's story goes and how Dekker handles the other events of Jesus' earthly life. Dekker always surprises, perhaps more subtly now than in his early works, and he always makes me think. For that, I am a big fan, ready to explore whatever he may throw at us next.

Tea with Hezbollah

This book is about a year or two old, but I have been wanting to read it since I heard about it. It's nonfiction, which I admit, I typically don't read, but it's a memoir/travelogue of sorts, written by Ted Dekker, who is my favorite fiction author. And with a title like Tea with Hezbollah: Sitting at the Enemies' Table, Our Journey Through the Middle East, I was definitely intrigued.

Tea with Hezbollah is the true tale of how Carl Medearis, a man with a great love for Arabs, and Ted Dekker went in 2009 to sit with Arabs in the Middle East and discuss the greatest teaching of Jesus: loving one's enemies. They got interviews with men no other group could reach, interviews that were often "up in the air" until the very day or hour. They spoke to men who write Islamic law and men who practice it. They drank tea with Hamas and Hezbollah. They met real Samaritans. They visited Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Beirut, Southern Lebanon, Syria, and Jerusalem, some of which were practically war zones, in the middle of cease-fires. And all the way, they asked, "What do you think of Jesus' teaching to love your enemy?" They recorded the answers, and Dekker relates these sessions in transcripts while also telling about his own emotions going into such dangerous territories. It's fascinating stuff, mainly because Westerners don't often get a chance to get into the heads of those from the Middle East. What do they think of us? Do they hate us? Could they love us? More to the point, could we love them?

It was particularly interesting to me to read this from Dekker's point of view, having met him and heard him speak. Believe me when I tell you that the book sounds just like him. I don't think he ever studied writing or English, but he has a brilliant mind and great communication skills, not to mention an awesome imagination. I say this to point out that the book isn't, perhaps, the best written piece of nonfiction. Dekker delves a little too much into history at some points. I think he finds a lot of things interesting and sees the connections in all of it, but for this particular book, I didn't find it always necessary. Nonetheless, the actual tale of his travels is delivered in a very informal way that makes you feel like Dekker is a normal guy with the same reactions his readers would have had in a similar situation. He draws you in and really makes you feel what he's feeling, makes people you wouldn't know how to relate to relatable.

My reaction coming away from this book was that I haven't been loving my enemies the way Jesus tells us to. Like many Americans, I group all the Arabs together and I fear them. I've read books about Arab women, and I feel compassion for them. But I haven't loved the Arab people as a whole. I've always been okay with our soldiers being over there fighting the War on Terror, and I'm still okay with liberating people from terror. But now I'm a little less enthusiastic about the measures we take because I see a little better how it affects our image in the eyes of Arab people. In the end, all the fighting in the world will never bring about peace. After all, that's what the Jews and Arabs have been fighting about all along. Each side wants peace ultimately, but when one side attacks, the other thinks they must retaliate, an eye for an eye at the very least. But how do you keep track of such things? One side, either way, will always feel like it's their turn to deal the damage.

Regardless of what you feel on this issue, this is a good book to read. It's not political. It's only about love. Whether you think it's right to be at war in the Middle East or not isn't the issue. The question is: do you love your enemies? Christians, especially, should be aware of the things this book has to say. You might feel a little less like calling yourself a Christian after reading this. But don't just take my viewpoint on this book. You really need to read it for yourself. I promise, it will make you think and rethink a lot of things.

MUNICH on DVD

On a similar topic but in another medium entirely, I recently watched Munich, the 2005 Steven Spielberg film about the Israeli athletes murdered during the 1972 summer Olympics in Munich and the Israeli Mossad agents sent to assassinate those who had a hand in the massacre. It's rated R for graphic violence, nudity, sex, and language in about that order, and I don't recommend it. However, it was interesting to watch, having just read Dekker's book. It's another look at the seemingly hopeless situation between the Jews and Arabs, from a non-Christian, Jewish point of view. It has a similar message in some ways, but it's much more depressing in its interpretation of the situation. The main similarity is that the movie explores the idea that each person has a story. Each Arab they kill has a family, and the conflicted man in charge of the Mossad assassination group has a wife and new baby of his own. Over the course of the movie, this Israeli agent (played very well by Eric Bana) grows from a naive, untested, sensitive soul into a killer who is more paranoid, more angry, and more unsure of himself by the day. It's really sad, and watching it, you are unsure who is right or even if the director meant to say one side is more right than the other. But the end gives no answer except to say we are all human, and each human has the potential to become an animal.

Tea with Hezbollah doesn't really give an answer to the whole Middle Eastern mess either, but it does suggest the individual's role much better than Munich, offering hope where there seems to be none.