Author: Michelle Warren
Date: 2013, 2018
Quote: "It's 2030, and...Temperature's rising, food's disappearing, people are fighting, and lunatics are still preaching."
It's a hypothetical dystopian 2030. Elizabeth II is still Queen of England--age 104. (She's not onstage in the story.) New Zealanders are generally nice, not overcrowded people, so they're coping with food shortages by raising their own food and sharing it with neighbors, but even that worries Prime Minister James Connor, who fears that if the national government doesn't appear to be in control of things the globalists will take over. Bishop Mark Blake, father of Tristan (who utters the line quoted above), is a deeply unhappy widowed father of even more unhappy adult-sized children. And Joshua Davidson, a plainly dressed, charismatic, Christian young man, is turning hobo camps on the beaches into real parties. Joshua is a mixed breed. Some of his followers have determined that he's descended from both British and Maori royalty. Someone starts publicizing his speaking tours by calling him a king, though New Zealand is basically a democracy and no one expects, or wants, Joshua to do any actual ruling. Joshua believes in the separation of church and state.
But in some mysterious way, that allows this story to become a political parable, Joshua is destined to reenact the story of Jesus. He heals people who may already be dead. He promises people a spiritual way to meet the war and tsunami to come. He suffers horrible migraines and seizures after making contact with sinful people, reacting to the "spiritual darkness" of people who've decided that it's more palatable to call sin "darkness," and without being suicidal he's not trying to delay the day when his physical body will be allowed to die. And he attracts people with coincidental names, though they don't seem to be drawn directly from the saints--John is younger than Mark, James is Mark's friend rather than John's brother, and Rau Petera is a priest who speaks with the voice of caution rather than a fisherman who's always first with the wrong answer. There's a Rachel, too, and although she's too young to have children, she weeps with motherly love before the story's over. There's a Luke, and not a Eunice but a Eun Ae. With a cast like this there's probably a reason why no major character in this book is called Mary.
And then there's Tristan, the Sad Man, who's been in the Army, and his baby sister Selena, who is so rebellious that, since her dead mother and emotionally distant father were Christians, she's become a Satanist. Together with James and Mark they find themselves drawn into the roles of the enemies of Jesus. But the roles overlap and break down. In the real world the enemies of Jesus didn't live very long--Herod feared a new king because he was dying, Judas went out and hanged himself, Annas and Caiaphas weren't young. In this story the enemies of Joshua need to repent and be reconciled, not only because repentance and reconciliation are what Christianity is all about, but so that they can be major characters in the political parable that continues to unfold in two more volumes of their story.
Sinful people, this story tells us, would react to Jesus exactly the same way now, as professed Christians, as they did in Jesus' time. Well, not quite. Technology now allows people to be killed by methods that at least work faster than crucifixion.
Christians are told that we have "one Lord, one faith, one baptism." Jesus was unique. His mission will never be repeated. Historically, however, there have been many Christians who wanted to offer up to God whatever bodily suffering they had to endure, who wanted--and tried--to do everything Jesus did. In this story Joshua is able to do what many of the saints have prayed to be able to do, only a little more effectively than they did.
This story is primarily for and about people in New Zealand but it's worth reading in any country. Most of the world could stand to learn a bit more about New Zealand.
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