Review: The 14 stations of The Cross

The 14 stations of The Cross by Mimi L. Thompson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Available on Amazon

I received an ARC copy of this book. What follows is an honest review.

When I first saw the advertisement for this book it caught my interest. The Stations of the Cross was a tradition from when I was growing up in the Catholic Church. As a child, I was told to walk around these sculptured pictures on the walls of the church I went to. Each one of them reflected a time in the events of the death of Jesus. It is hard to get a grade schooler to think of anything like that for more than 10 minutes, and we were supposed to do at least that much at each station. It soon became just look at them and act like I was paying attention while thinking about my favorite books or TV shows. By my teens, when I would have a better understanding of them, it was just a tradition to me. Now I am in my 60's and can see the significance of the stations but as I am no longer a Catholic, I have no place to practice them. Only a few of the high order protestant churches practice them, not that I have attended. So, reading this was an interesting exercise I was to embark on.

The book advertisements said it was to be a devotional. I am not sure who it was a devotional for. To explain, I heard someone ask a preacher why he wanted to put his sermons on a Christian radio station. His reply was he wanted to reach the lost and lead them to Jesus. The person than asked him why he was not going to secular stations because only Christians listen to Christian radio stations. So, to the author, who did you hope to reach with this devotional. If it was the Christians, I am not sure many will read it because of the vulgarity of speech from so many of the people including Jesus himself. If you are trying to reach the lost with this language, and I do understand that you would want to do that, the fact it is a devotional will turn them off.

The book is basically the view of 14 events on the path to the crucification. Each story is told from one person's point of view so we have 14 points of view. In this respect, it was well done. It is hard to flesh out that many people and not get lost in the process. These people are real people, who had doubts and fears and were touched by Jesus in so many ways. We even get to look at Jesus point of view as why He was doing this. It is a good set of stories, and it should be marketed a different way in my thoughts.

Spoiler, Jesus does die in the end. Yes, I know, I may have ruined the story for you. Even though the stations end with Jesus being taken down from the cross this story does not. It follows through to the resurrection and the second coming of Jesus. I point this out because I would not want Christian friends to get the idea that I support the theology behind the book. In the end, all go to heaven, sinners and saints. I will not argue if his theology or mine is correct. I kind of guessed we were going there by about the middle of the book, and there it was at the end. I will not mark it down on the stars, theology is not what a review should be about, how it is written is what should be looked at.

Because of the language and the violence I would only suggest this book to older teens and above. While well written be aware that there is some language in it that as a Christian some may be offended by. I am not, that is the type of people who Jesus hung with. I am putting it here to let people know it is there. If it was a movie it would most likely get a soft R or hard PG because of the violence and language.


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