Tuesday, February 22, 2011

The God Hater: CSFF blog tour

Well, it' the second day in the blog tour already.  I promised myself that this time I would hit all three days, but *shrug* guess you can't win them all.  Anyway, I finished reading "The God Hater" several weeks ago and was I ever impressed!  When I first heard of the book, I wasn't sure if I should even try to read it: I mean, take a look at that title... should a Christian really read a book that is about someone who hated God?  But then I read the synopsis... and since I have proved several times over that I am no good at summing up this book in front of my friends, I'm just going to give you the synopsis I read. :D

A cranky, atheist philosophy professor loves to shred incoming freshmen of their faith. He is chosen by a group of scientists to create a philosophy for a computer-generated world exactly like ours.
 
Much to his frustration every model introduced from Darwinism, to Existentialism, to Eastern beliefs fails. The only way to preserve the computer world is to introduce laws from outside their system through a Law Giver. Of course this goes against everything he believes and he hates it. But even this doesn't completely work because the citizens of that world become legalists and completely miss the spirit behind the Law.
 
The only way to save them is to create a computer character like himself to personally explain it. He does. So now there are two of him—the one in our world and the one in the computer world.
 
Unfortunately, a rival has introduced a virus into the computer world. Things grow worse until the professor in that computer world sees the only way to save his world is to personally absorb the virus and the penalty for breaking the Law. Of course it's clear to all, including our real world professor, that this act of selfless love has become a complete reenactment of the Gospel. It is the only possible choice to save the computer world and, as he finally understands, our own.

Now if that doesn't pique your interests, I'm not sure what will.  It sure grabbed hold of mine, and refused to let them go!

Pros:

This book was well written with a very believable storyline.  The message was very good, and noticeable, but never preachy.  Instead of the message being like someone in your face telling you what's right and what's wrong, and why you should be a certain way, Bill Myers actually wrote the message so that it came through by the character discovering the truth behind God's sacrifice for himself.  To me, this felt unique.  I mean, it's hard to write something and put a message into a book like this so subtly that each time the message surfaces while reading it, it's like a new revelation all on its own.  I was impressed.

Besides this, however, the book had a solid plot and kept me engaged the entire time.  I had a hard time putting it down.  It also had a good balance between action plot, theology, and philosophy... all interesting subjects. Nicholas, the MC, is a Philosophy professor and what I found most interesting was that much of his outlook on the religion in general made a strange kind of sense... it was both interesting and terrifying because it made me realize just how easy it is for some people to ignore Christ on the pretenses built up by their own minds, how easy it is even for todays Christians to steal themselves against God's truths if they really really wanted to.  It made me, as a Christian, realize that I have to build myself up in Christ with his word and with prayer if I want to stay true to him and not fall to the lies of the world, even though they seem to make sense.

Cons:
Actually, I didn't have any problems with this book whatsoever.  I had a friend tell me that she wasn't quite satisfied with the ending, but for me the ending work just perfectly... actually sent chills down my spine, but in a good way.  

With all that said, this is my verdict: 

Great message; Great book.  I would recommend this book to anyone and everyone... seriously.  If you haven't read it yet, READ IT.  You won't regret it.  5 out of 5 stars.



6 comments:

Adele Treskillard said...

Wow, sounds cool! :D That's an interesting point about pretenses you can build up. Hrrmm.

T.D. said...

*goes to library site*

*requests this book*

*bows in gratitude to Nicole*

Star-Dreamer said...

Director: lol!

Seriously though, this book is absolutely awesome!

Jake said...

I loved the book and the plot. Epic. :D

The suggestive content, I didn't like so much. :P No need for that in a Christian novel. Oh well.

Star-Dreamer said...

Jake: Yeah... I guess I can agree with you there. :)

Rebecca LuElla Miller said...

Nichole, so glad you liked this one so much. And as far as posting all three days of a tour, there's always the next one. ;-)

Becky