Conversations With Jesus: Unexpected Answers to Contemporary Questions by Harold Fickett

Conversations With Jesus: Unexpected Answers to Contemporary Questions Reviews

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  JD Waggy

  Sometimes, "updates" of the parables of Jesus are just corny, or out of touch, or so obviously heavy-handed that they're hard to read. Fickett's light touch is just right, though, and each chapter is very well organized with the "new" parable, an explanation, and the parable it's attempting to mirror. I like that Fickett isn't trying to override the original parables, only make us see how extraordinary they really were. This is a fantastic volume of renewing stories that have become trite by repetition, which they were never meant to do. This was my second read-through of this book, about five years after the first, and it's still relevant, still striking, and still incredibly good at making the biblical texts leap out from the boxes into which we try to put them.
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  Nikki

  I bought this book originally as one of the required texts for a "Writing about Spiritual Experiences" class in college. It got nixed part way through the class, but I read it anyway, and now, 15 years later it remains one of my favorites. I have re-read it several times in the intervening years, and each time something new hits me, about just how extraordinarily radical the parables were to the original listeners. Unfortunately, the stories have lost much of their impact due to the cultural differences between the original audience and readers today and their familiarity to believers. Fickett's more up-to-culture renditions allows us to read the familiar stories afresh, and hopefully, seek how God would like us to respond with our lives.