If I am going to continue to read Christian fiction (and it seems that I can’t escape reading at least some of it) I am going to have to learn how to properly review the genre. How do I say enough about the book to provide the flavor without giving away the integral parts of the plot? And of more concern, how important is it that fiction be doctrinally strong? Do we want to learn from a novel, or do we view it merely as escapism - a few hours of amusement in which we are removed from the real world and are transported into the world of characters whose lives are far more interesting than ours? I’ll work through those issues in due time, I suppose. In the meantime, let me tell you about Blink.

Having read almost fifty books so far this year which were predominantly theological in content, I found myself craving some mindless fiction for a Saturday afternoon. Following a brief trip to the local Christian bookstore I came away with Three by Ted Dekker. I remembered reading a positive review of this title shortly after it released and thought I would give it a try, despite knowing nothing about the author or the story.

It took me seven years to pick A Journey in Grace from my shelf and finally read it. I so enjoyed it that I immediately turned to the sequel, A Journey in Purity which had been sitting beside it all this time. Where the first title in this series of theological novels addresses the doctrines of grace (ie the 5 Points of Calvinism), the second title examines the purity of the church.

The story of young pastor Ira Pointer picks up precisely where it left off in the final pages of A Journey in Grace. Ira is faced with a church with a huge membership, but with low attendance. The book describes his struggle in attempting to purify the church by making membership meaningful. He leads the deacons of his congregation through the long process of discovering what the Scriptures teach about church membership, responsibilities and discipline and then leads them through a difficult time of change as the leadership attempts to purify the church. There is plenty of intruige and some fun plot twists that keep the book a novel rather than solely theology.

A Journey in Grace, by Richard Belcher, is billed as being “A Theological Novel.” So intrigued was I at the prospect of reading a theological novel that I left this book sitting on my shelf for seven years before I ever thought to read it. And now I can't help but wish I had read it sooner.

I believe the order of the words in “theological novel” is important. This book is definitely better theology than fiction. In fact, as fiction goes, it is quite poor. But as theology it is exceptional. I chose to read and examine it as theology rather than fiction, since that is clearly its primary purpose.