Courting Jesus

Jesus is very hip in America at the moment - especially during the holiday season.

Which is why you'll find him in all sorts of places - including inviting fictional workaholic Nick Cominsky out to dinner in David Gregory's best-selling pocketbook Dinner with a Perfect Stranger.

This throwaway novella, published by WaterBrook press in 2005, uses the notion of Jesus - the real, authentic bloke - inviting cynic Nick Cominsky out to dinner. Over Italian food, the two discuss life, religion and the meaning of existence - and cynical Nick returns home with a slightly greater appreciation of the Christian faith.

In many ways, this book is a masterpiece. It's beautifully printed, it's short enough to read over the course of an afternoon and it's so utterly fluffy and inconsequential that even the most die-hard atheist would struggle to find too much to object to in it.

Which is really why it's so horrible. I mean, it's meant to be our protagonist, Nick, who's the cynical one - but I think there must have been a fair bit of cynicism behind David Gregory's smoothly written prose. "They'll eat this up," he must have chuckled.

The major fault with David's book is that it's ridiculously soft-focus. The big issues - the stuff that really drives a wedge between a rational man and the Christian faith - are glossed over deliciously quickly. Oh, sure, Nick Cominsky asks Jesus some tough questions - like where in God's plan did it say his parents would have to get divorced, or his father pass away when he was a teenager?

The soft-focus comes in when Nick swallows the responses David Gregory's Jesus gives him. In this case, a very 'book of Job' reply which states that letting bad things happen to his followers strengthens their faith in the maker.

When bad things happen, people often turn to God. So Jesus - according to David Gregory - turns people's life to shit and expects them to love him for it.

Given the growing emergence of a Christian Renaissance in America, it's understandable that authors want to jump on the bandwagon and write marketable books intended to bring the Christian faith into the 21st century. However, David Gregory does it in such a hamfisted way that what you're left with is a brief, flippant sermon that panders to our lowest superstitious denominator.

Whether you're a Christian or not, I'd steer well clear of this book. Just as Jesus apparently expects his followers to love him for putting them through hell, David Gregory expects good Christian men and women (or even those on the fence) to swallow this nutritionless gruel he's spoon feeding your spirituality.

Avoid.

Dinner With a Perfect Stranger, by David Gregory, is available from bookshops and online for $12,95. Which is, coincidentally, the same price as one month's subscription to SIRIUS radio and I know which one I'd prefer!