Dinner with a perfect stranger by David Gregory
ISBN 1-57856-905-2
The book is a small 100 page
hardcover made up of ten chapters. Each chapter is between 8 and 10 pages in
length.
The book is a fictitious story
about an over worked married man named Nick who has a young daughter. Nick
spends way too much time at work and not enough time at home with his wife and
daughter. Nick receives an invitation to dinner one day and thinks it’s some
kind of joke because it’s dinner with Jesus of Nazareth.
I have a hard time with books that
put words in the mouth of Christ that aren’t found in scripture because there
is always a good possibility of making Jesus say something he never would say
or endorse and that’s what we find in this book to some degree but that being
said after the first chapter or two I did find the fictitious conversation
interesting and enjoyed most of it.
The overall concept of the book was
an interesting one, what would you say to Jesus if you had the opportunity to
sit down and have a private dinner with him?
The book, in my opinion, is
something like an apologetics book meant to give an answer to some of the
questions concerning Christianity. Many of the questions that Nick asked are
those that the average non-Christian would ask, things like is there a God,
what about all the other religions and so on.
The fact that some of the theology
is weak shouldn’t surprise anyone reading this kind of a book this isn’t a
theology or an apologetics textbook after all so we shouldn’t treat as such. My
philosophy is “eat and spit out the bones”. Let me give one example of what I
consider bad theology, nothing crazy but weak in my opinion. On page 76 there
is a discussion of the six days of creation and without directly stating it the
author hints at that being the wrong way to view chapter 1 of Genesis. The
implication is that God didn’t create in 6 literal days. There is also a bit of
a jab at anyone who would wear a suit and necktie on page 86 (I do wear ties)
although that has nothing to do with theology or salvation.
In the end I did like and very much
enjoy reading this book. It touches on many of the regular questions and
objections you find to Christianity and to Jesus. I think this is well worth
reading (even though I mentioned a few things that I didn’t like about the book)
and might even be worth reading together with someone who isn’t a Christian but
is open to talk.
Please see the links below for more information.
http://waterbrookmultnomah.com/catalog.php?isbn=9781578569052
http://www.scribd.com/doc/53092260/Dinner-with-a-Perfect-Stranger-by-David-Gregory-Chapter-1-Excerpt
http://waterbrookmultnomah.com/author-spotlight.php?authorid=60719
Disclosure of Material: I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing
Group for this review, which requires an honest, though not necessarily positive,
review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in
accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s CFR
Title 16, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials
in Advertising.”
