What if Jesus hadn't been born two thousand years ago? What if his ministry began now? What type of people would be his followers? Who would be his enemies?
These are the initial questions that come into your mind when you first pick up this book, along with doubts that it will actually portray the biblical story or be "loosely based on truth" like a lot of modern books and movies have begun doing.
Before I really dive into this particular review, I need to say that I don't read religious books often, because I find that a lot of them make me really angry. Not because I'm in denial about what I horrible person I am, or that I'm a bad follower of Christ. They generally make me angry because they are hypocritical pieces of paper. When you actually read what a religious author is writing, so many things are contradictory and, honestly, stupid. But I am happy to say, that I don't find Bill Myers fits into that group. I was very hesitant to read this book, I'll admit.
In my opinion, Myers does a nice job of taking two completely different stories and weaving them together so it reads smoothly. In the first chapters, I was a little put off because everything was so fast paced and so much information was thrown at me it was hard to keep track of just exactly who was who and what the heck was happening. I gotta say, that was difficult to get through, but once you get passed the initial shell shock, it's much easier to absorb.
My favorite character in this is probably Julia. She is Conrad Davis's estranged daughter who comes to visit him in the hospital after his crash. Not out of love for him, you actually find out very quickly and bluntly that she hates him, but because he gave her power of attorney, and she is coming to the hospital to see for herself if she needs to pull the plug. I connected with Julia on several levels, and that is honestly the one thing that really drew me into the book. Her struggle to remove herself from her feelings, especially concerning her father, hits home for me, and I found it refreshing to come across "side-characters" that have internal struggles instead of only the main characters.
I was very happy to see that the "Jesus" of this book was not a Hey-Zeus. His name is Eli Shepherd (His last name did earn a groan from me though). For those of you who may not know, Eli is actually a Hebrew name which means "high". In the Bible, Eli was a priest and a judge who brought up the prophet Samuel, so I found that particular name choice interesting. Myers took the basic understanding most people have of the Biblical Jesus and transformed him into a realistic, modern guy come to save us all.
Overall, I would rate this book at 4 stars. There were a couple inconsistancies in the writing that bothered me, but that is the only real complaint I have with Eli.