Genre: Non-FictionPublisher: Waterbrook Multnomah
Publication Date: January 26, 2010
Being a pretty big fan of Ted Dekker, and not having read any non-fiction by him, I was pretty intrigued by the premise of his newest book with Carl Medearis, Tea With Hezbollah – Sitting At The Enemies’ Table. “Co-author” Carl Medearis is basically an expert on Christian-Muslim relations, having spent a good part of his life in extremely dangerous places attempting to love them. With his connections, Medearis was able to arrange a “Middle East Tour” where he and Dekker were able to sit down with prominent Muslim leaders, asking “People Magazine”-style questions in order to paint a more human picture of these people.
In this respect, I would say they accomplished their goal. The interviews definitely show a side of these people you won’t see in the news. There are no 1-dimensional portrayals of Jihadist terrorists here. These “enemies of the West” are real people with families, fears, hopes, and stories. Dekker (as he was really the author of the book) provides extensive background on the people and places (via Medearis in most cases, I’m sure). In addition, some chapters are basically journal-like entries with Dekker discussing his emotions and pre-conceived notions of the people he’s about to meet. Finally, there is a very interesting story about a girl named Nicole that weaves its way through the book and the places they visit. Dekker’s trademark narrative style shines here.
Despite its success in showing a different side of these people, though, I was disappointed with the book overall. The differences between Christians and Muslims theologically are great, and this book won’t do anything to shine any light on those differences or help people understand and discuss those differences. Some might want to complain that theology doesn’t matter. It does. Dekker tries to state multiple times that this book isn’t about religion, but bits and pieces of his theology come out unintentionally throughout the book. Everyone does theology; we need to be intentional about the theological statements being made. Unfortunately, the conversations in the book that mentioned Jesus were very shallow (as a side note – Dekker’s insistency over and over that Jesus was basically killed for teaching people to love their enemies gets tedious since it’s just not true).
I read the book hoping to get some insight into the differences between Christians and Muslims and how those differences can be discussed intelligently. Unfortunately, that was not the intention of the book at all. Maybe that’s my bad. From what I hear, I need to read some of Medearis’ stuff, which is apparently very solid. For this book, I enjoyed the parts where Dekker was doing what he does best (narrative storytelling) but was put off by the theologically-shallow conversations that didn’t really help me understand Muslims any better.
This book was provided for review by Waterbrook Multnomah.
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