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Karl Barth

Face to Face

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Beatitudes

I loved this book. It is honest, hard hitting, funny, and ultimately revealing the glory of God even amidst human brokenness. That whole last part, when they were marching to the capital knowing that they were going to pay for their faithfulness to the gospel, was a picture of Christian courage in the face of evil. In light of the end, it gave hope that they had not been abandoned by God. Jack's honest struggles with his faith and the intersection with his faith and family life were real, painful, and honest. The characters were human and believable. The descriptive picture that Sanders paints of the Honduran background is vivid and lively. It is really good.

That's a book that caused me to lose half a night's sleep because I couldn't put it down.

I am in Scotland traveling around with my wife on vacation. Everywhere we stop, I read portions of your novel in the evening. It is brilliant. You touch all the bases. I am loving every word of it. Brilliant, my friend, just brilliant. Your twin focus on justice and the gifts of the Spirit, Incarnation and salvation are perfectly rhymed and juxtaposed exquisitely. What more can I say.

It left me profoundly moved, awed by the imminence of suffering, death, destruction and by the transcendence that one sees happily in the games played by the children in the story; that one sees dreadfully in the confrontation face-to-face with destruction, torture and death, by McFarland and friends. A transcendence shines through these lives with the light of the God of their faith.

Rob Sanders' Face to Face is enjoyable both for its sensuous description of the countryside and people of Honduras and for the description of the struggles of a young priest to reconcile his faith in Jesus with the realities of the life he sees in the poverty stricken villages he serves.

His evolving relationship with the beautiful Marxist girl Sonia leads him to examine his faith more seriously than ever before. At the end of the book, he comes to a decision with far reaching consequences for his marriage, his friends in the villages, and himself.

A complex and intriguing novel.

While you say up front that it is all "fiction", surely there is something
deep that is a clear reflection of your own time and ministry and
relationships in Honduras. Anyway, so it rings. And for that, all the more
does it touch me. Alicia's words, that you bring up again at the very end,
"tell them what we do here" are ones that I have heard myself very deeply --
to be lived by -- from my own former places of work. The wrenching conflict
between evil -- political and otherwise, dragging down the spirit and
corrupting the Church of Christ -- and the fire of Jesus' Spirit -- you
describe all this, through the desperate seeking of Jack, thrown amidst
saint and sinner, very powerfully. And "seeing God"... perhaps I am still
waiting for the second sighting over here! Or perhaps what is "second" is
only a being faithful the first.

I sent you an email back in January (to which you responded), and I am now
on summer break from my English Dept. job at Langston U., allowing me the
opportunity to read your novel.

I must say, I was very pleasantly surprised by its quality (not that I was
expecting hack work--but usually first attempts at novels are amateurish
and predictable). Face to Face is very well written. I began reading it
late the other night and did not want to stop, but finally did go to bed
then finished it the next evening. It is a compelling story that kept me
riveted until the end. And while in the end things work out, it is not
in the saccharine way I expected. The underlying theme of God's victory
is evident, even when it may not be the sense of victory we would choose.

I also liked the interaction between the husband and wife--it too had the
ring of truth of a marriage with two individuals trying to come together
even though they had differing goals and visions.

On a theological note, your novel has resparked in me an interest in the
Holy Spirit and how it operates in this world and our lives and also a
renewed interest in the mystery of Eucharist (as a former Baptist one of
the aspects of Anglicanism that most appealed to me in the Episcopal
Church was the importance and centrality of the Eucharist to our faith).
 

Face to Face can be obtained online from the publisher, www.xlibris.com/bookstore. On the left of your screen, click on "Search," then at the resulting screen, type in my name, "Robert J. Sanders or the title of the book, for the search. At the next screen, click on Face to Face to add to cart. You can also order direct at 1-888-7954274.

The Rev. Robert J. Sanders, Ph.D.