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What if a Conservative Christian was invited to study Torah at a Reform synagogue? What might he think? How would he react?

The Gospel According to Moses: What My Jewish Friends Taught Me About Jesus tells us. Author Athol Dickson was initially daunted by the way the Torah was dissected during his first interfaith Shabbat meeting. But he found it so spiritually challenging, he made attendance a weekly habit, and wrote a book about it.

“I found this Torah study superior to every Bible study I had ever attended in a church up until that time, and I wanted fellow Christians to experience it…and have it do for Christian readers what the Reform rabbis did for me: make them think more deeply about what they believe, and why they believe it.”

Dickson is quite clear about where he stands. He is incredibly transparent about his own personal struggles with certain aspects of faith and yet quite staunch in his beliefs. Although his motives are explained in the introduction, when asked about his audience, he explains, “Because my Jewish friends at the temple had so many misconceptions about Christianity, I wanted to try to help them understand our faith more accurately. So the book was really written for two kinds of readers, Christians and Jews, in the hope that it would help us understand each other better.”

Each of the 13 chapters addresses where Christian and Jewish beliefs have converged and diverged from one another. The chapter entitled, God on the Spot reveals one of Dickson’s most surprising discoveries: that Jewish people question God and it is okay. Such a thing is culturally and characteristically common for Jewish people, but nearly heretical to the traditional Christian mindset.

Dickson was taken off guard when the Torah study group began talking about how Jewish people can protect themselves from a future Holocaust and “Christian” anti- Semitism, which he discusses in chapter ten, Skeletons in My Closet, Evil Christians in Spite of Jesus. Overcome with hot emotions, he researched on his own, to find the accusations of persecution and bloodshed are mostly true. He begins to struggle over what to do with the information.

One of the outstanding features of this book is the honest way Athol grapples with key issues. He is a true wrestler, intent on pushing through to find what he really thinks and believes. Written in a style that is easy to understand, the topics, both basic and confounding, are best digested slowly while letting thoughts marinate. Some of the thought-provoking subtitles of the chapters, such as Why God Lets Me Suffer, Finding Connections between Obedience and Grace, and Are Jews Going to Hell? clearly indicate why The Gospel According to Moses and its accompanying study guide (available as a free download) have been used as a springboard for stimulating ecumenical discussions.

This gem of a book seems to have met the author’s goal of blessing people across the board. Dickson says that he knows of “one Reform youth camp that teaches a class based on my book. I also get positive e-mails from Jewish readers. Obviously they disagree strongly with the book’s uncompromising assertion that a complete relationship with God is only possible through Yeshua, but that’s to be expected.” The response from the Christian community has been uniformly positive, and Messianic believers have sincerely appreciated what he has tried to convey. MT