Tea With Hezbollah

Tea With Hezbollah
Ted Dekker and Carl Medearis
Doubleday Religion, 210
262 pgs.

I’ll be honest…

I really wanted to like this book when I started to read it. It was an interesting premise: go over to the Middle East and ask members of parties, factions, etc. simple questions such as their favorite joke, what makes them laugh, and so forth. Above all, the authors wanted to hear their thoughts on what they considered the most sacred lesson: love your neighbor as you love yourself. Can someone truly love their enemies, especially in what is considered one of the most volatile parts in the world?

The authors state that they wanted to go over to Saudia Arabia, Lebenon, and other places close by to ask these questions from a neutral point of view; they were not trying to look at things through a political or religious lens. However, as you read on through the book you find that this is a noble, yet impossible task. It does not help that Ted Dekker is a noted Christian fiction writer, and, while his talents can be seen in his words, you can see that he is unable to remain completely neutral. Again, this isn’t a negative thing whatsoever; however, he is dooming himself by stating in his thesis that he will remain completely neutral, when in reality this is practically an impossible task no matter who you are.

The best parts of the book are the transcripts of the intereviews that Dekker and Medearis have sprinkled through. They include these in the book so that the reader can take the words of the interviewee and not have them be filtered through the authors. This is an excellent tool, and I found myself looking forward to the next transcript since I was not being drawn into the book through the author’s words. Unfortunately, and for reasons I do not quite comprehend, they do not fully complete this process. One of the last interviews is not included, presumably because it would’ve been too long, and the author was having an epiphany during this particular interview. Nevertheless, I felt cheated and angry at the author’s selfishness of focusing on his own thoughts during an interview that the author does not deem worthy enough to share with the reader.

So to be honest, I did not like this book when I finished. I wanted to. I really did. But in the end it buckled under the intentions of the authors. It did show a side of people that are unfairly vilified in this country, forcing the reader to see the humanity in each and every one of them. The whole time I was reading the book I was invited to see things from a new perspective, and it was something that I enjoyed doing. I wish I could recommend this to people (and I might now and again), but I will offer a warning when I do.

Tea With Hezbollah