Book Review
I have to admit that when I picked up Craig J. Hazen’s book, Five Sacred Crossings: A Novel Approach to a Reasonable Faith, I was asking myself, is this going to be more “novel” or more “reason”? He wrote it as fiction, but really now, how many novels have subtitles? Would he let the story be a story?
Hazen is the founder and director of Biola University’s excellent graduate program in apologetics, which one might think would put him in the realm of the heady. It’s another reason to wonder what kind of novel he might write. I’ve had the privilege of meeting him, though, and he’s refreshingly real. You can get a good sense of his heart (and an extended preview of the book, too) through an interview he did with Jim Wallace on the Stand to Reason radio program (mp3 file; fast-forward to 1:52:00).
Here’s the good news: his novel has the feel of a real person behind it, too. The story works, right from the beginning.
Michael Jernigan felt the explosion, and every muscle in his body suddenly tensed. Adrenaline flooded his body as a wave of panic gripped him. His mind screamed at him to fall to the floor and get behind cover, but his fifty-six-year-old body was more than a moment or two behind his instincts. His delayed reaction gave him enough time to remember where he was, steady himself, and quickly sit down on the ottoman in front of his reading chair. The blast couldn’t have been more than a few blocks away.
So begins the first of two intertwined plot lines. The explosion unfolds into the discovery of a local terrorist plot, involving suspects studying at nearby Laguna City College. Meanwhile, Jernigan, an expert in languages and comparative religion, steps in to substitute teach the last half-dozen sessions of a comparative religions class there at the college. There he introduces students to the “Five Sacred Crossings,” which Jernigan had encountered during a long and meaningful Vietnam war-era sojourn at a fictitious Cambodian village. Gently, through means of the “Five Sacred Crossings” text and much dialogue, Jernigan helps the class explore their own beliefs as well as those of others. By the end, he has opportunity to look deep within to see whether he’s ready to live out the full extent of his own Christian convictions. It’s imaginative, well-crafted, and gripping.
Hazen writes in the Introduction,
Defenses [of Christianity] usually come from believing theologians, philosophers, lawyers, and scholars of various stripes. From time to time, however, scholars who are fascinated by presenting reasons for faith have used allegories, analogies, novels, and other modes of storytelling to make specific points about the truth of the Christian view of the world…. This present work certainly does not compare to what [C.S.] Lewis produced except that it fits in the same category of literature.
Comparisons with Lewis aside, Five Sacred Crossings fits. It fits in the category of good fiction that makes you think. I would not describe it that way, I promise you, if it were not first of all good fiction. Read it for the thoughts it will provoke in you, certainly. Share it with your friends to open up discussions. As you do that, though, be sure to enjoy it for the fine novel that it is.
Five Sacred Crossings: A Novel Approach to a Reasonable Faith by Craig Hazen. Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers. 169 pages. Amazon price US$12.99.
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