Summer Reading

The second best thing about summer (besides having my sweetie home) is getting to read more. In an interesting crossover of these two, the Emperor took the kids to the library and brought me back a book I never would have picked up for myself: Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana by Anne Rice.

Two things made me balk at opening the book: first, I'm not a big fan of "this is what Jesus was really like" fiction, and second, I was not sure where Ms. Rice stood religiously. I mean, I admired her for chucking her truly fabulous career and following Christ, but I wasn't sure how far her conversion had taken her. I had read the Joshua books rather naively some years ago and had (to totally ruin the metaphor) gotten blindsided by the author's axe to grind.

I began reading with cautious foreboding. Hmm. Virgin birth? Check. Jesus' brothers? Step brothers. Fine. Hypostatic union? That's the tricky part, isn't it? Especially if you are going to do a biography from a first person perspective. How does it feel to be fully God and fully human? And, of course, the controversial: When did He know?

Ms Rice's answer is more than on the level, it's actually graceful! She gives Jesus the words,"I know what I need to know. I learn what I need to learn." She also answers the "When?" in a very nice way. (Do I need to give a spoiler alert? I mean, you know His life story, right?) Instead of siding with the "Knew it as a fetus!" camp or the "What a surprising thing to discover in the desert!"camp, she has Him realize (in the desert after His Baptism) that He has chosen not to remember that He is God. The temptation in the desert was also very well done, and she adds a detail which says something very meaningful about the nature of the devil. I don't want to spoil that even if you do know how it turns out!

I most appreciated the segments based on the actual Gospels. Ms. Rice brings her considerable talents as a novelist to bringing these passages to life and she succeeds fabulously. I was a bit less comfortable with the parts dealing with His family life and circumstances. They were marvelously written and plotted to bring the events at Cana to a focus and level of meaning that are nothing less than brilliant.

What they say about Jesus and His life are very true, yet I still couldn't read them without feeling a little put off. It is marvelously well researched guesswork. I think I dislike mixing fiction and non-fiction in the area of religion, probably because so many people view the Gospels themselves as fiction. That's not a criticism of the book, just a personal preference.

That being said, Ms. Rice strikes an excellent balance between showing that Jesus was, in fact, a man like us in all things except sin, and showing that He was, in fact, the God that created the universe. She also does a marvelous job anchoring Jesus securely in history: showing that Jesus came in a particular time to a particular place.

Despite my own minor issues with the book, I would recommend it, particularly to someone who has never quite felt that Jesus is real.