Safely Home

I’ve been dragging my feet about writing this review. I know that this author has a real following, and I don’t want to be overly critical. Yet my reaction is very mixed.

My mom gave me this book. She and my dad had both read it, and she explained that though it wasn’t a fun read, it was an eye-opening one. I would agree. It’s a novel about two men, one in China and one in the States, and their contrasting journeys of faith. As the story unfolds, we get a disturbing glimpse of the fate of Christians in China, where they face persecution — as well as in the United States, where they face perhaps too easy and comfortable a road.

My reading coincided with the Chinese president’s recent trip to America. This made the book all the more thought-provoking, since the American character in the story is a high-powered business executive who seeks to carve out a lucrative niche in the Chinese market.

In addition to the themes of friendship and persecution and their effects on faith, Alcorn attempted a theodicy of sorts by inserting passages that show us what’s going on in Heaven as the characters live out their lives on earth. I didn’t like this aspect of the book. To me it was a failure in both imaginative vision and effective argument.

Not that a novel should be, in my opinion, an “argument.” This was where I was most disappointed by the writing: it seemed heavy-handed about its message, failing to develop the characters fully, or to make the dialogue and situations seem very realistic. Some of the concepts are simply borrowed from other more able pens — most recognizably C.S. Lewis, but used in the service of a spiritual and artistic sensibility I doubt Lewis would have felt very comfortable with.

Here is the startling thing: I found Safely Home deeply moving anyway. It makes me think about how slippery a book is when it comes to “evaluating” it. As characterization, I thought this was unrealized. As theology, I found it somewhat thin. As a plot, I found it stretched my credulity.

But as truth, for a believer, it strikes chords I need to hear:

• I need to be reminded that persecution, historically, has ended up encouraging the faith and causing the church to flourish.
• I need to be reminded that questions about God’s goodness or why He allows suffering are usually asked by comfortable people in comfortable houses with comfortable educations, but they’re answered by those who are walking through the most extreme trials.
• I need to be reminded that there are places in the world where martyrdom for believing in Jesus Christ is real.
• I need to be reminded to pray for my brothers and sisters in these places.
• I need to be reminded of the great treasure the Bible is, and how the more of it I can get from the pages into my memory, the more it will be made incarnate.
• I need to be reminded of the transience of earthly life.
• I need to be reminded that there is only one Person in the audience who I want to impress with my life.
• I need to remember the eternal influence a single life can have.

Safely Home is worth reading if you need reminding of these things too. As an artistic creation, perhaps it’s not as good as I wish it were. But God can reveal Himself in unexpected vessels, and He doesn’t demand that they be perfectly rendered. Would I prefer that all Christian writing (including my own)  be stellar? Sure. But in the end, I’m very thankful that God is more gracious than to require that. I would take a humble novel that God anoints over a superb but empty work of art any day.