(Note: I received this book from Active Christian Media as a gift from the publisher who has donated the books for the sole purpose of receiving reviews.)

Divine by Karen Kingsbury

The Biblical story of Mary Magdelene is probably one of my favorites. It is a story of redemption, acceptance, forgiveness and devotion. Here is a follower so totally devoted to sharing the good news about Christ that she uses her own money to support his ministry. My favorite part of the whole story is when her devotion is rewarded by Jesus’ visit after the empty tomb is discovered. Does he reveal himself to one of his disciples? No! He comes to Mary and tells her to go tell his disciples what she has seen – He is risen! What a joy that must have been to know her Savior lives!

Divine by Karen Kingsbury is a modern-day story about a woman named Mary Madison. We know from scripture that Jesus saved Mary Magdelene from seven demons and that Mary went on to support his ministry with her own finances. In Divine, Mary Madison experiences her own seven demons, but she is led to accept Christ as her Savior and goes on to use her past experiences, as horrible as they were, to gain government funding for women’s shelters and abstinence programs in the public schools. She is so changed by her experience of God’s redemption that she dedicates her life to sharing her experiences so that she can bring others to Christ.

Divine is a good story and kept my interest. However, I had a few problems with the story. Although Mary Magdelene is often portrayed as a prostitute, there is no evidence to back this supposition. Liz Curtis Higgs explores the scriptures in her book, Mad Mary, and gives us a better idea of who Mary Magdelene was. The author of Divine even states this in her Author’s Note in the front of the book. However, the main character of Divine, Mary Madison, is forced to become a prostitute after she is kidnapped from her mother. After Mary is rescued from this terrible situation, she ends up in a juvenile detention center where she once again succumbs to promiscuity with various men at the center. After her time in juvenile detention, she is released to a mission center as part of her probation and promptly falls in love with one of the directors, Nigel. Mary Madison believes that love = sex and so she sets out to get Nigel into bed. He resists and we later hear him praying for her - he wants Mary to understand Christ’s love her and for her to accept Christ as her Savior.

The problem for me with this story is that Nigel has many Christ-like qualities and so became the symbolic Christ character in the story. Although Nigel wants to rescue Mary from her "demons" and show her what God’s love can do for her, he later admits that he loves Mary. And even though he says that he loves her "the way that Jesus does," I just couldn’t get my mind around that because this admission is contradicted just a page later; Nigel tells Mary that he is leaving to become a missionary in Portugal. He and Mary make an agreement that they won’t communicate more than once a year at Christmas because he could become "confused, distracted" and "start thinking that [his] love for [her] is something more than the love Jesus has for [her]." A final scene in the book has Mary and Nigel admitting (and fighting) their feelings for each other once again, both believing that they can’t work effectively to bring people to Christ if they let themselves love each other.

Divine is a good book and I would recommend it, but I was just dissatisfied with the Nigel/Mary storyline. I honestly believe that because humans are social people, we are at our best when we are around those we love the most. They help bring out the best in us and we can only become better people when we are with those with similar beliefs and values. The Nigel/Mary ending just didn’t seem real to me. However, the story of Mary Madison’s coming to Christ even though she had dealt with a LOT of horrible experiences in her life is a very good one. We are reminded that life is NOT about us, but about Christ. We can turn all of our problems over to Him and trust in Him to help us through them. Now THAT is probably the best story of all!