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Tea With Hezbollah: Sitting At The Enemies Table Our Journey Through The Middle East (2010)

by Ted Dekker(Favorite Author)

3.88 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0307588270 (ISBN13: 9780307588272)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Doubleday Religion

review 1: Award: 4 stars for the history lesson and the concept of Westerners (Christians here) sitting down with Middle East power brokers/religious leaders to assess whether it is possible to love one's enemies, as Christ commands. Demerit: 2 stars for narrative style and dimwitted questions. Dekker overdoes the tension, the fear, the very real danger. Yes, where they were and what they were trying to accomplish were extremely dangerous, but get out of the way, and just tell the story. "Tell me your favorite joke," and "what makes you happy" are not the kind of questions that probe the nature of loving one's enemies whether they are Christian, Muslim, or Jews. Finally, the "Nicole" story thread, which starts to sound like, yes, Good Samaritans do exist, turns out to be ficti... moreonal.
review 2: This was an excellent book! What these men did was absolutely amazing. To sit down and have tea with your enemy is one thing. To sit down and have tea with these enemies is quite another. But I'm glad they took the time to do this and to explore these questions. I loved following his journey and the journey of Nicole. It was fascinating to see the people they met along the way and to hear their various opinions regarding the teachings of Jesus to love your enemies. Some never really answered the question and some answered in the most politically correct way possible. Only a very few answered in a meaningful way, and of those few an even smaller number actually lived it out.Dekker is curious to know how his "enemies" feel about loving their enemies. He concludes that very few actually follow this teaching, and the result is ongoing discord and fighting the world over. He is right that this is a very difficult teaching to follow. He is right that Christians, Muslims, Jews, etc. all fail to follow this teaching consistently as groups. Sure, there are individuals that follow this and do it well, and those are usually branded and outcast and looked down on.As a Christian, I know I fail to follow this teaching of Jesus, in the same way I fail to follow many other great teachings of Jesus. I worry when I shouldn't, I don't show love the way I should, I judge others when I have no place to. It is not my failure to follow one great teaching of Jesus that is my problem, but my failure to follow Jesus. The one thing Dekker does not focus on is probably the most important. The great problem is not whether or not we follow Jesus' teaching to love. The great problem is who we recognize Jesus to be.I like Dekker. I think the questions he explores here are valuable and life changing. What if we all, regardless of religion, followed the teaching of Jesus to love our enemies? Would the world be different? What if all of those who revere Jesus in some way... Christian, Jew, Muslim... all chose to take this teaching to heart and live it out? There is no question the world would be different, probably much better in many ways. Maybe it would be an easier place to live, to raise a family. But even then, I think something would be missing.I think the real problem is not that we choose to ignore this hard to follow teaching. I think the real problem is that we choose to ignore Jesus Christ for who He is. We fail to make Him the Lord of our lives. When that happens to our hearts, when we submit ourselves to His lordship, we may still fall down and fail to follow His teachings the way we should. But we find healing and the strength to get back up and persevere and overcome. Not by our own ability, but by His at work within us. I think the bottom line is that we are incapable of following these teachings on our own. It is only by God's power at work in us that we will change. less

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