Considering the Fourth Fisherman

The book arrived unbidden. Unexpected.

This was my first Advance Reading Copy, and I was not sure why I got one. Perhaps I’ll never get another one.

The book is the story of 5 Mexican fishermen who ran out of gas after a fierce storm. The current pulled them westward until the 3 men still alive were picked up by a fishing trawler out of Taiwan.  They had spent nearly 10 months at sea spending their days looking for ships and food, gathering rainwater and reading the Bible one of them had brought with him.

The book is also the story of the author who was quite successful selling syndication rights, but very much adrift and lost himself. After his life falls apart, he leans of the fishermen who’d just been rescued and feels called to tell their story to the world.

There are parts of this book that are VERY interesting. I was fascinated by the story of the Mexican fishermen. I want to know more about their story. It sort of reminds me of 127 Hours, which I recently watched.

Joe Kissack’s story was interesting, but not nearly as interesting. I hate to say that- as though how God brings a sinner to saving faith is not interesting. But it is clearly more ordinary- I know hundreds, thousands of saved sinners. But I’ve never met anyone who survived adrift on the Pacific for 10 months. Unlike the people near the end of the story who encouraged Joe to see the 2 stories as one, I was not as enthused by the process. It distracted me. I understand the contrasts, but they just didn’t work for me like they did for others. That’s okay.

His writing style was more conversational. But even for that genre, I didn’t think it was written well. The short chapters made for easy reading, though.

I thought of people who might like to read this book. My father-in-law came to mind. But then I thought of this as a pastor- would I feel safe recommending this book to others? It is intended to be read by the average Christian, and hopefully the average non-Christian (or maybe it shouldn’t). I struggled with this. Particularly when I thought of the average Christian. I find that many lack discernment- the ability to distinguish between the good and negative aspects, sort the truths from partial truths, the meat from the bones and gristle.

The book is clearly about faith in God. But it never clearly articulates what faith is, who God is and what the gospel is. Joe seems to be a (former?) Catholic who ends up in an evangelical church. The fishermen are Catholic. There is a Jewish person who is also a person of faith. He never delves into what these people believe and how divergent those beliefs may or not be. It is essentially a rather generic faith in God, not “self abandoning trust in the person and work of Jesus Christ” (JI.. Packer in Knowing God). So it reads like an overly wide, undiscerning ecumenicalism that slips into pluralism. I say this because of 1 John 2.

²³ No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.

Jewish people who reject the Son have no part of the Father. Not because I think so, but because God said so. An undiscerning Christian is easily led astray by an interesting story that refuses to make such distinctions that are biblical and therefore normative. I can walk away from the book thinking “interesting story” but recognize that none of these people may have saving faith in Jesus Christ because he is glaringly absent in this book. But others may not catch all that and think all of these people are Christians (they may be, but there is nothing here to indicated anything beyond that general faith in God). They may lack the wisdom to see the superstition (however well intentioned) expressed by some of the fishermen and one of their grandmothers. The book quotes her prayer for those in purgatory. She is seen as a godly, faithful person though her faith and practice depart from biblical norms (though I realize she’s probably known nothing but this from her youth in rural Mexico which is dominated by Roman Catholicism). The author just glides over this without any assessment beyond what a great faith she had.

So, I find some serious theological problems here. This book is not alone in this as many Christians seem to enjoy those “true” stories of people who died, went to heaven (or hell) and came back to life. Again, a serious lack of discernment at work. What surprised me was the publisher. I’ve seen many good books released by Waterbrook. I expected more from them. I guess I expected more discernment from Lee Strobel, whose blurb graces the cover, as well.

In addition to a theological editor, they really need to invest in a good editor. Perhaps we are letting computers do too much of this work. I caught a number of grammatical errors, missing words, extraneous words or wrong words (waived instead of waved). This is a distressing trend in publishing these days.

So, I’m not sure what to say. The people who are discerning enough to read it without being influenced by missing or erroneous theology will probably be annoyed by the things left unsaid. The people who aren’t discerning enough shouldn’t read this because they will swallow the bones with the meat. And there are some potentially nasty bones here. I’m thinking of why don’t shouldn’t chew on chicken bones.

This book is due to be released on March 13, 2012 and I obviously received a promotional copy for the purposes of review.