Sovereignty: He Lied for Your Sins by Rhys Hagan

I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

To be honest I’m pretty amazed at the daring of the author to write a book like this. Fiction or not it directly takes on Christianity head on. For being bold enough to make a statement like that, I greatly respect the author.

What if everything that you were taught to believe was, in fact, a fiction created by power hungry people and the doctrine you follow was nothing more than one more piece of that fiction? What if your beloved Savior was nothing more than a poor man forced to pretend to be something he’s not so that someone else could make monetary gains?

Rhys Hagan has re-imagined a whole new beginning to the Christian religion. The only thing that stayed the same was Jesus being a down to earth, humble teacher. All of the major players we know from the old Bible stories were present, but their stories were modified. Jesus, for instance, was married to Mary and their son was David. Regardless, the point of the story was the same. Amphion wanted to take on a contract and he needed money to do it so he used Jesus to spearhead a new religion.

“‘Hundreds, thousands of years ago, it was someone like me who started it all. A lie that was told to facilitate the agenda of the times. And, if I have my way, hundreds, thousands of years from now, the story of Christ will still be told. Only it will be adapted to suit the agenda of those times – a lie transposed for a modern purpose.’” (Page 307)

“‘Luke if there’s one thing to take away from Christianity, it’s that faith is profitable.’” (Page 307)

The author kept true to the brutality of the times with the torture chambers of the Romans and the violence that was favored. For me it was a little too gruesome but it was historically accurate.

I really think this was a remarkable and powerful piece of fiction. The author took a huge chance to write something that is this openly challenging to the Christian faith (fiction or not) and I have a lot of respect for that. I’m giving the book 5 stars because it was well thought out, researched and creative.