Ted Dekker

I read Black, Red, and White and remember really liking them. In fact, I recently re-read Black and still really liked it, though I don't remember much from the other two books.

Green has been on my to-read list for literally years. But three chapters in, I'm giving up.

Right from the get-go, it seems Dekker is idolizing romantic relationships. He does it under the guise of marriage being a picture of Christ's relationship with the Church, except he seems to think that a romantic relationship is actually better than a relationship with Christ. There are aspects of singleness and celibacy that speak to Christ's relationship with the Church, as well, but I don't remember Dekker ever delving into that in any of his books.

On page 29, one of the characters says, "You can't possibly go your entire life knowing about such a thing and not try it at least once. Kinda like sex, right?" -- Really? I believe Christ, Paul, and a multitude of believers have been able to live their entire lives without sex. I realize this is a novel, and not a "Christian-living" non-fiction work, and that just because a character says something doesn't mean that's the moral of the story. But Dekker's theology upsets me more and more with every book of his I read. Which is unfortunate, because I really do like his story-telling. I think it's dangerous, especially for believers who may not know their own Bibles very well, to read "Christian" novels like this where truths and lies are mixed together and no effort is made to define which is which.

Lastly, it annoys me that Dekker essentially takes the name of God in vain, albeit using the name he's created for God in his story, which is Elyon. On page 18, one of the characters thinks, "This was his own son, for the love of Elyon!" and that's just one instance. This is something that irked me in every single one of Dekker's other books, also. It's so unnecessary.

I was confused about Billy's introduction into the story, since I thought he was in a completely different series of Dekker's - and after reading a few other reviews, realized I was right. Apparently Dekker tried combining three or so different series into this book. But hey, that's not weird at all, right?… (mer)

I'm truly sad to have to give this book only 2 stars. I've read many of Dekker's other books and loved them; I consider him one of my favorite authors. But this particular book was rather messy.

The characters are contrived and superficial, and their stories hold a few irregularities. For example, the daughter Bethany is 16 but everyone thinks she looks 18, and her modeling career is starting to take off. Really? It wasn't enough for her to be a normal teenager? I thought maybe this fact would have a justification somewhere later in the book, but it was completely irrelevant. In one chapter, she's a depressed, rebellious teenager singing about "Makin' love and till the morning light," and in the next, she's listening to Christian bands. After she's kidnapped and converses very shortly with her abductor, she manages (with very little information) to deduce his motive, and understand his past, which includes a bad relationship with his mother. This strikes me as completely unrealistic. She's 16 years old and was abducted and held captive for a week... I highly doubt she would be thinking so clearly and analytically, especially since nowhere else in the book is her intelligence touted as supreme, like her beauty is.

I also incredibly disliked the ending. It ends with a verse, Genesis 3:15, which reads "And I will put enmity and hate and hostility between you, the serpent, and the woman; between your seed and hers. You will strike his heel, but he will crush your head."

The BoneMan claims to be Satan, and treats Ryan, the main character, as a God-like figure. Ryan is shown throughout the book to be a completely selfish man who deserts his family and then has a partial change of heart (he decides he loves his daughter, but still doesn't love his wife) and the story is of his attempt to rescue his daughter, which he succeeds at. He bests the BoneMan, and he and his daughter proceed to burn the man, presumably, alive. Ryan's actions are seemingly justified in the ending, but this book isn't the Bible. My problem with this whole thing is that Ryan ISN'T God, not even close. And though his actions are terrible, the BoneMan isn't actually the devil. The story, I presume, is meant to demonstrate how far God will go to save one of His children. I guess I just don't believe that for God, the end always justifies the means. He sacrificed His Son on the cross (and His Son Jesus was willing) to save His children, yet never sinned in the process, unlike the main character of this story. It was a very poor allegory.

The writing of this book became very repetitive, particularly the sections told from the BoneMan's perspective. And last but not least, Dekker's characters take the name of God in vain, which very much bothers me as a Christian, knowing that Dekker is also a Christian. It would have been very easy to use some other exclamation without undermining the story, and it frustrates me that he chose to defy a very basic biblical command anyway.

All in all, it was interesting enough to merit 2 stars, but I will probably hold off for a while on reading Dekker's other books.… (mer)