Customer Reviews

Jesus Among Other Gods (youth Edition)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is a wonderful antidote for our modern epidemic notion that all religions are the same. Zacharias compares how major world religions answer six major philosophical questions. The author skillfully yet respectfully shows how world religions are not the same and how one must make honest decisions about which is true. I appreciate Zacharias' apologetic works because while he is fully capable in the area of logic, he also approaches his subject with a very human and personal touch. The section in this book on the question of evil is especially good.

This book is superb. It provides a biblically based response for the most common attacks made upon Christians and Christianity today. It is scripturally sound and a wonderful tool to assist in preparing a college bound Christian teen for what lies ahead in academia. I couldn't put it down. I will be handing out several copies of this book as gifts to parents and teens.

Jesus Among Other Gods was recommended reading for the students in our discipleship program during the past year. While this book is intended to be read by teenagers, most of the students in our group who started reading it did not finish. I recently reread the book to try and understand why.

First, I think that the opening chapter in the book gives the wrong idea what the book is about. The very personal account of the author does grip the students. And why not? Most young adults are grappling with the same ideas of what is truth and where should they invest their life. To follow this chapter with a discussion of unique characteristics of Jesus (His virgin birth and sinless life built upon a question of "Where do you live?" - which seemed forced) seemed to lose the students. I think they were expecting some more of the personal account of a man's quest for truth and how he sorted that out from all of the other religions vying for his attention and somehow missed the transition.

Also, students should read the last chapter after the first. When I reread the book, I honestly got bogged down after the first chapter...until I got to the last chapter. In it I found some more personal accounts of a search for Christ and a better foundation of why the discussion is even needed. Sadly, many Christians (and students in particular) avoid any kind of thinking. By asking them "Who are you looking for?" (as the last chapter is titled), we've moved from the author's search for Truth to our very own...now I'm ready to read about the claims of Jesus and how they match up to other faiths. It would have worked for me.

I'm sure there are many criticisms of this book, many based upon the simplifications of issues at hand. However, remember that this book is geared for students, many of whom have never really considered the position of Jesus among the pantheon of the world's gods. This book can be a starting point for that discussion. Students should not expect to read through this book like a novel; rather, it should be seen as textbook to introduce them to realm of apologetics. The book does address the critical claims of Jesus, the very real differences from three other world religions, and the personal desires of many people to find a god who will serve as our personal pleasure genie - answering all my questions, canceling out all my pain, and instantly fulfilling all my desires.

Overall, I was satisfied with the explanation of the existence of evil in the world and how Christianity offers the best explanation. The importance of the cross, the validity of the resurrection, and the uniqueness of the Bible are just a few issues the book adequately addresses. Jesus truly is unique among all other gods.

I had expected this book to be a Christian apologetic. But I soon noticed that it was not. Zacharias is obviously not trying to convert anyone; rather, he is trying to remind Christians of what to expect from Christ, and what following Christ can offer above the promises of other religions. His goal is not to disprove other beliefs, but rather the ability to believe in them and in Christian ones at the same time.

So this was the first element of disappointment. Not that it was Zacharias's fault. But when I continued to read, out of curiousity, I found other problems.

First is the disorganized and rambling feel to it. In an attempt to sound fresh and conversational, Zacharias often obscures his point. I found myself getting lost in his attempts to rephrase his main points. For example, in chapter 5, he introduces "six elements" to the Christian response to the concept of evil. Later he refers to them as "steps," implying some sort of process that he doesn't outline extensively. This is a subtle and possibly minute example, but little things like this add up, making the book more taxing to read than it needs to be.

But besides this, I found most of his arguments involving any position other than a Christian one to be unconvincing. Essentially, this was because the counter-arguments he produces are incomplete and unsatisfying. First of all, he rarely quotes from anything besides the Gospel of John. There is nothing wrong with the gospel of John, it's just that one would expect more in a book that is supposed to be a comparison of different doctrines. Second, he rarely explained his quotes. It was not made clear to me, as a reader, that the quotes pertaining to other various other religions or belief systems truly represented their fundamental doctrines. They seemed stilted and incomplete. It would seem that for these arguments to be logically sound, he would need to clearly express the beliefs of other systems, before even claiming that they are different from Christianity. There is also the point that he only describes a handful of positions, not all possible beliefs, in all of their forms, as would be necessary in proving the uniqueness of Christianity. He also often seemed to be putting words in the other authors' mouth, saying things like "This paragraph sums up so-and-so's opinion on this issue." Third, he seemed unable to truly grasp the quotes as coming from another point of view. An example is when he quotes Deepak Chopra in chapter 4. Now, I have not read anything by Deepak Chopra, nor does it matter. The point is that he takes a quote from The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, and proceeds to argue from it that Chopra believes that life is meaningless, whereas I saw no evidence from the quote itself that would lead to that conclusion. Chopra says that the matter in us is the same as the matter everywhere, and that the difference between a man and a tree is the energy vibration inherent in it. Zacharias seems to glean from this that therefore life is meaningless, if it is just a vibration or wave. The same phrase is reiterated, but somehow a value judgment is added to it in analysis that was not in the original. Chopra might very well believe this, but there is no reason to conclude that from JAOG alone. My point is that Zacharias, in this book, seems to use his own assumptions to examine the ideas of others, without questioning their validity. Therefore there is little room for the actual beliefs of others; they are presented in this book as mere declensions of the author's own.

But, once again, to explain other religions was not the point of the book, and I think it was a mistake both by the marketers and the author to define the book as comparative in nature. It is an affirmation, not an argument, and I think it is deceptive insofar as many people will assume that they will find reasons to choose Christianity over other religions. In fact, though he quotes from the New Testament, for most of the book you could fill in the word Christianity with any other personal, intimate, abstract and mystical type of religion and it would amount to the same thing. On the other hand, if you are already Christian, the book does indeed give you many reasons to continue with your faith, and lessons on how to strengthen and enrich it. Whether it's worth struggling through the other aspects of the book to reach this core, is up to the reader.

In an era where our teachers and ministers alike are striving ever harder to imbue our children with a sense of the beauty of cultural diversity and concord among the peoples of the world, Johnson and Zacharias' contribution to children's literature is shameful and backward. According to Johnson and Zacharias, being a good Christian means affirming that "our" God is not "their" God, that modern science is dubious, and that a layman's survey of the bible is sufficient preparation for spiritual independence. Ignoring modern critical scholarship of the bible (but emphasizing inconsistencies in non-Christian texts), the children's version of Jesus Among Other Gods teaches that religious exploration is for clever people like Zacharias but not for those who really want to reflect on the nature of God, salvation and religious observance. That this book should be on any child's bookshelf is a tragedy.