eBook Forgiving Ararat download

Excellent opening chapter, followed by a couple chapters with too much back story, followed by slow build to excellent and gripping vignettes, several surprises and a well imagined conclusion.

The author describes vividly scenes touching on the holocaust, the legal profession, and other minutiae which make the tale come to life, even when the narration takes huge swaths of a character's life and compresses them into a few paragraphs. Her imagining of the afterlife is fresh and adds to the story, unlike some stories that have a bland and underdeveloped setting. I can see some aspects that remind me of the movies "What Dreams May Come" and "Beetlejuice".

After I passed the slow parts, I enjoyed the story very much. The philosophical and theological points are well integrated into the story. The use of two characters who appear to be in conflict forced me to withhold my judgment concerning the contradictory propositions that were posited until I reached the end, creating philosophical as well as plot suspense.

But ultimately, though the author argues her views persuasively, passionately, and with genuine artistry, I strongly disagree. Thus from the view of artistry, I would probably give this book five stars, from the point of truth I would give it a three. Much is made of the conflict between justice and forgiveness. I read the Old Testament in a different light. Micah 6:8 says, "He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." Justice and mercy are BOTH required, and one cannot be sacrificed to obtain the other. And a comparison between the Old and New Testaments seems to find a contrast: the author claims that the word justice appears many times in the Old Testament but only four times in the New, suggesting a change of focus, or an abandonment of justice in favor of forgiveness. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount of Matthew 5, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished." The only change was that God himself would perform the just actions and attribute them to us since we cannot live up to his standards otherwise. God shows his forgiveness not by overlooking our crimes, but by absorbing the brunt of the punishment himself.

The title of the book is a fair description of a peculiar view of Noah espoused in the book, to wit, that Noah (or us) had to forgive God for his judgment of the world, and God returned the favor by dying on the cross to forgive man. The problem is that forgiveness presumes justice. If nothing is wrong, there is nothing to forgive. The judgment of the world in the time of Noah was just because it followed open and notorious conduct deserving such a punishment, and came only after a one hundred twenty year advance warning, which is pretty patient if you ask me.

I am not a trained theologian, but as near as I can tell, the departure from ideas I can believe began with the assumption that God created mankind because He was lonely. As a trinitarian, I believe that God is eternally self-sufficient in and of Himself, because as three persons, each person can display love for the other two, therefore the creation of intelligent beings was not necessary for God to show love. Thus when He created us, He was under no compulsion to do so, and the love He shows us is not forced, not an obligation, but freely offered.

And as for the possibility that even Noah could have disobeyed, hence God might have destroyed all life, making His plan reckless, that is refuted by the promise He made to Adam and Eve that one of their descendants would obtain victory over the evil one. However much free will we have as humans, it will never invalidate one of God's promises. God's earlier promise ensured that humanity would survive, even before the promise that He would never again destroy the world by flood.

Nevertheless, I can find common ground with the author on one very important conclusion: our ability to forgive the people that hurt us the most is an essential part of our spiritual growth. As Jesus said, "For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins." The author has painted realistic character studies that illustrate just how unforgivable some people appear, how hard it is for the protagonist to forgive them, and the blessing that awaits when she learns to love and forgive. So while I do not agree with some of the steps in her argument, I agree with her conclusion.

I finished the book Forgiving Ararat last night. I didn't really care for it. I had the impression the author read The Shack and thought, "Hey, I could do a book like that," and proceeded to produce a rather inferior attempt at explaining the afterlife. She's certainly able to do good descriptive writing, but to my mind didn't think through the coherence of her work or the implications of her theology. If you just want a quick-read, supernatural thriller, this will work for you; if you've truly wondered about evil vs. good and justice and love in the world, you'll probably be disappointed.

It's main point seems to be that love trumps justice and that all our lives are interconnected. All well and good, but to get to that conclusion one has to plow through chapter after chapter filled with violence where victims are always the ones who have to act as attorneys representing their killers in final judgment before an unmoving gigantic triangle of stone in a cosmic coutroom. The stone monolith's only role other than evidently a symbol of God (Trinity?), is to always cut off testimony part way through after only the evil deeds of a person's life have been reviewed. Naturally, every gunshot, rape, burning, explosion, electrocution, and beheading is described in loving detail with lots of Nazi memorabilia thrown in for fun.

Spoiler Alert! This is where you need to stop in my review if you do not want to know the ending.

The main character is a woman who ended up shooting her own daughter accidentally while trying to kill the kidnapper who eventually shot her. At one point she gets to spend a year skiing, yachting, and generally living the high life since anything you can imagine you can have. Sadly, that also includes a desire to go back and visit her husband and daughter - evidently also a cruel illusion since the daughter was killed before she was, but she couldn't remember.

God comes off in this story as a distant, uncaring judge who makes the victims present their killers' cases over and over until a verdict is reached. God seems to be the ultimate narcissist, never giving, but always wanting to be loved. The title of the book comes from the shakey theological assertion that because God was so very grateful that Noah forgave Him for wiping out the earth in the flood while He was having a tantrum (yes, screams of the dying and bloated bodies banging against the hull of the ark are included), that he is now willing to give forgiveness to human beings no matter what their crime. Noah, in a sense, becomes the Christ-figure.

As a pastor I found this story to be every bit as riveting as The Shack. Tremendous Biblical lesson about forgiveness. Storyline is gripping but does require some thinking to follow. I put it on my list for the church of books to read before you die.

I won't re-iterate what the other reviewrs have written. There were a few theologically sloppy moments (but then it is a novel and not factual), and a section discussing dimensions which went right over my head; but other than that it was an amazing journey to read this book and Gita Nazareth is a writer well worth watching in the years ahead. My preconceptions were challenged and I too had a 'round' journey like Brek, understanding her anger and desperately wanting her to be set free by forgiveness.A book to take with us out into our own world where the lessons hold as true as for the next!

This is an amazing book. A beautiful story, beautifully told. Full of startling imagery, but more than that, deeply spiritual. I found myself stopping in several places just to let the images painted by the author float in my mind so I could fully appreciate their richness. Philosophically, the book moves into an area of human interaction that few of us have ever explored and the twist ending is fulfilling in itself. I cannot recommend this book more highly than 5 stars. I certainly would if I could. Kudos to the author and I anxiously await her next offering.