"50 to 10 Men" or "400 to 98 Yen"
As I once wrote, I have seen Jesus Christ around Tokyo several times but never received an invitation to a beatific dinner from our Holy and Holy Lord.
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That’s the dilemma facing cynical but successful businessman Nick Cominsky when he accepts an invitation to join Jesus of Nazareth for dinner at a local restaurant. Nick is convinced that his friends at work are pulling a prank. But the man sitting across from him appears to be quite serious, introducing Himself as “Jesus. My family called me Yeshua.”
Nick accepts his dinner companion’s suggestion to suspend his disbelief and “proceed as if I am Jesus.” What follows is a fascinating conversation that covers family relationships, world religions, and the afterlife, among other topics. Along the way, Nick confronts his own unfulfilled longings, spiritual uncertainties, and anger with God and he begins to wonder if the man across from him holds the answers to his deepest questions.
http://www.randomhouse.com/features/dinner/Home.html
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The above novel was published around 2005 and aroused some notice.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
76 of 79 people found the following review helpful:
I'm a Skeptic, October 22, 2005
By Eric Wilson "novelist" (Nashville, TN United States) - See all my reviews
I'm a skeptic when it comes to little books that are supposed to pack a big punch. They seem shallow, glib, and over-simplified. Usually.
I read "Dinner with a Perfect Stranger" in one sitting. Yes, it's short; yes, it's simple; but it's also profoundly moving. There are no big surprises--a few little ones--and no hit-you-in-the-gut emotional twists. Instead, the author moves us through this meal with Jesus in such a way that I wanted to kick back and have coffee and dessert too. I wanted to meet Jesus face to face and ask some of my own questions….
http://www.amazon.com/Dinner-Perfect-Stranger-Invitation-Considering/dp/1578569052
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The above common sentiment and longing of Americans, the greatest beneficiary of Christianity, can be summarized in the following way:
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From the WSJ Opinion Archives
HOUSES OF WORSHIP
An Intimate Dinner
What is a personal relationship with Jesus?
by MARK NOLL
Friday, August 19, 2005 12:01 A.M. EDT
…
The Jesus who meets the young businessman is calm and empathetic. "He had an average build," the businessman-narrator tells us. "His suit wasn't Armani, but it wasn't Discount Warehouse either." Over the course of a lingering dinner at an Italian restaurant Jesus offers his new, and skeptical, friend a brief course in apologetics, including especially C.S. Lewis's famous contention from "Mere Christianity" that there are only three possible responses to the claims that Jesus made for himself: He was a liar; he was a madman; or he was God incarnate as a human being.
Less traditional is the book's answer to a question that the medieval philosopher-theologian Anselm of Canterbury asked in the title of his 1098 volume: "Why Did God Become a Man?" To David Gregory the answer is clear and worth repeating: so that individuals could have "a personal relationship" with God; he wanted to build a "relationship" of "trust" with humans; Jesus, more than anything, wants "to have a relationship" with individuas.
…
So it is, as well, in a modern America marked by the increasing demands of work, strain between the generations, political acrimony, international uncertainty and peripatetic lifestyles. Into such a culture a Christian message stressing the possibility of an enduring--and often less demanding--personal relationship with the loving Creator of the universe sounds very appealing. But does such an adaptation retain enough of historic Christianity's other dimension? Or does dinner with a perfect stranger fit a little too conveniently into our lives?
http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110007133
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The key factors we have to acknowledge are the year “2005” and “WSJ - Wall Street Journal.”
In 2005, if Jesus Christ had issued an unambiguous warning on sub-prime loan security-embedded financial goods being leveraged to 100 times larger volume to workers on Wall Street and in any other places, including the White House, the current tragedy on Wall Street and even the turmoil around GM might have been avoided.
Nonetheless, I think that there is a chance that Americans will recover efficiently from this economic quagmire deeply anchored by a tremendous amount of the national debts to Japan, China, and other stakeholders, so long as they have never lost respect, no matter worldly if not spiritually, for Jesus Christ, the Holy, Holy Lord of their ancestors having lived in Europe.
As the Son of God, Jesus Christ must be in charge of determining a fate of every rich man in this world, including kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers, investors and financiers, corporate chairmen and presidents, and various upper- and middle-class citizens, you must long for a dinner with Jesus Christ more than one with, say, Mr. Barack Obama.
On Wall Street in 2005, if there had been 50 people who respected Jesus Christ so much as to be waiting for an invitation for a dinner with Him, the God would surely not destroy Wall Street, New York, the East Coast including Washington D.C., and the whole United States of America, though you might like to lower the bar to 10 like Abraham.
Yet, in my personal view, it would be very difficult to spot a single executive on Wall Street who has learned proper table manners (ever since the debacle of WTC in 2001 as might have been the case in the time prior to the Great Depression but after the Civil War).
For example, even in Japan, Prime Minister Mr. Taro Aso answered "400 yen" to a question on a price of a cup noodle posed in a Diet session. The instant noodles with a cup to contain them inside costs usually "160 yen" or less.
To judge a person whether he or she has the very proper table manners mankind is allowed to exhibit before Holy, Holy, and Holy Lord Jesus Christ, let him or her take a cup noodle and see his or her manners.
I suppose it would be very difficult for a rich man to pass this preliminary examination, if he is good at observing table manners at a French cuisine banquet.
Learn good manners for taking a cup noodle, which I sometimes purchase at 98 yen, before dreaming of a blessed dinner with our Ever-Holy Lord Jesus Christ in New York or Paris, if not in the White House or the Prime Minister's Official Residence in Tokyo.
(Yet, personally I love this song, though wine and a cup noodle is not a sweet combination for my taste. But how about you?:
http://www.gagirl.com/music/thismagicmoment.html )
Mar 11:20 And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots.
Mar 11:21 And Peter calling to remembrance saith unto him, Master, behold, the fig tree which thou cursedst is withered away.
Mar 11:22 And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God.
Mar 11:23 For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.