I recently finished reading this book and thought I’d share a little about what I thought.  A few of us started discussing it through the comment thread of one of my other posts and I thought it would make more sense to bring it here.

While I thought the book was a decent enough read for a fiction book, I was disappointed with it as a Christian.  The reason I didn’t care for it is that I found it to be contrary to what Scripture teaches.  I realize that it’s a fiction book and isn’t meant to be taken literally – at least I would guess that isn’t the intent – but when a person writes things about Christianity and the Bible that just aren’t true and aren’t backed up by Scripture a huge risk is being taken – a risk of leading people away from the one, true God.

In the comment thread that I was referring to, Neil shared a great site that nails the way I was feeling after reading the book.  The guy that wrote the article on that site lists many things that are problems in the book.  I would highly recommend reading his article!

I will share with you just a few things that really struck me as wrong in the book though:

1. In the story, God manifests himself as a woman.  Not only is God always referred to as God the father in the Bible (and not mother), He is not a man (like Jesus became man) and does not have a human body like we do.

2. The Holy Spirit manifests himself as a woman.  Just as above – the Holy Spirit is never referred to as female nor does the Holy Spirit have a human body like we do.

3.The way the Trinity is portrayed in the book is not Biblical. The Trinity are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in one.  They are not three distinct people.

4. In the book, God says that sin does not need to be punished – that it is punishment itself.  That’s not Scriptural either.  The Bible clearly teaches that God will judge each and every one of us one day.  We will be held accountable for our sins.

5. The Trinity is portrayed as being completely equal and that there is no heirarchy among the three of them nor should there be on earth.  That’s simply not true.  Jesus says many times in Scripture that he does as his Father commands him, that he wants to do the Father’s will, that he seeks his Father’s will through prayer.  We also have many heirarchies on earth as Scripture commands.

These are definitley not the only problems with the book but these were the ones that really stood out to me and made me say, “Wait a minute!  That’s not right!”  Other things were much more subtle – enough that I would kind of furrow my brow and say, “Hmmm…” to myself but not something I really could put my finger on in the middle of the story.  Norman Giesler and Bill Roach, the authors of the article I linked to above, have done a fabulous job of pinning down the problems so please give that a read.

Mark Driscoll has also preached against this book and has a short video on You Tube.  I would highly encourage you to watch it as well.  He explains very well why this book is not Scriptural.