Weekend Reads: A novel look at homosexuality and a collection of Christian truth

The Accidental Marriage: A Novel

By Roger B. Thomas

This novel’s premise is profoundly simple. Scott, a gay man in the San Francisco area, meets and befriends a lesbian woman named Megan at a crowded café. They continue meeting for lunch occasionally, both relatively content with their same-sex partners and work lives. Then Megan’s partner decides she wants a baby. Scott volunteers to help. He gets Megan pregnant, and then their lives proceed to unravel. Through a series of decisions, each of which makes sense at the time, they end up married to each other and living in Michigan, trying to retain the homosexual identities circumstances have conspired to call into question. Whether they succeed is something you will want to find out for yourself.

Even the most naïve reader will appreciate that a work like The Accidental Marriage (2014)requires extremely deft handling in the current climate. A glance at the publisher—a conservative Catholic firm called Ignatius Press—confirms that the book’s perspective is going to be in line with traditional Christian views on the subject of homosexuality. Yet almost amazingly, author Roger Thomas avoids any hint of stridency. The work is the very reverse of judgmental, and it enlists the reader’s sympathies for the cause of God and truth. Thomas makes only one comment highlighting the absurdity of homosexuality: “Scott’s body knew what to do, even if she was a woman.”

Thomas’s background in technology allows him to describe Scott’s work environment with enough detail that computer engineers will recognize one of their own, but not enough to bore the layperson. His obvious love for his home state of Michigan is apparent too—in a way that’s touching, not overpowering.

Read Accidental Marriage and you will not be bludgeoned into thinking a certain way; you will be drawn to embrace the path that Scott and Megan follow.

Backchat: Answering Christianity’s Critics

By Chris Sinkinson

Not since G.K. Chesterton’s Tremendous Trifles have I read a book assembled from newspaper columns with as much satisfaction as I did with Chris Sinkinson’s Backchat: Answering Christianity’s Critics (Christian Focus, 2014). Sinkinson is a pastor in the U.K. who has a knack for distilling truth into the limits of a 650-word column. One doesn’t get the feeling that he’s leaving things out, but rather that each column is brimful of Christian truth. Whether he’s dealing with contemporary hoaxes about the finding of Noah’s ark or refuting the claims of the New Atheists, Sinkinson is smooth, plausible, and just plain right.

“Is God a Moral Monster?” asks one article. “No” is Sinkinson’sshort answer. The “ethnic cleansing” in the Old Testament (a) didn’t actually destroy all the Canaanites and (b) wasn’t “ethnic” at all, but religious. “God cared about the purity of His people in their new land,” he writes. In “Where Did the Church Go Wrong?” Sinkinson describes the downplaying of apologetic endeavors over the last two centuries, where the church lost confidence in the truth of its proclamation. His solution is not to adjust the proclamation further, but to return to meaty teaching that explains and vindicates the truth of historic Christianity. A good example: “The Cautionary Tale of John Hick.” Hick (1922–2012) professed faith at one time, but later edited The Myth of God Incarnate and other attacks on the unique character of Christianity. Sinkinson’s column presents his story as a warning to readers not to depart from the truth.

Sinkinson is no moralizer: “Apologetics is a pointless pursuit if its ultimate end is not the presentation of the gospel of Jesus.” Every chapter points readers to the Word of God and the Good News of Christ. These 27 columns are not preachy; they’re pastoral in the best sense.