MESSAGES FROM GOD

A brief religious memoir by a Christian who tells of communing with God.

Kaufman offers two different types of books combined into one volume. The first is a remembrance of the events of his own life that starts with his difficult upbringing on a small Michigan dairy farm, where, he says, he was abused by his violent father. His personal story moves through his school days and into adulthood, recounting his committed relationship in Tucson, Arizona, with a sports therapist named Wayne and his own HIV diagnosis in the late 1980s. The most transformative incident in this part of the book involves Kaufman’s later experience as a caregiver for a man named Benny who was dying of AIDS; the author says that he saw what he believed was the glowing image of Benny’s soul as it left his body. This moment connects with another thread of Kaufman’s accounts of his frequent, direct interactions with God, as he hears and interprets divine “murmurs” throughout his life. This also informs the second major aspect of the work, which consists of a series of inspirational poems, aphorisms, and thoughts about various religious topics. Kaufman’s emotional personal story is intriguing. However, the book’s second part blunts its impact, as it includes unconvincing assertions that will be familiar to readers of the Dan Brown bestseller The Da Vinci Code concerning the supposed descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene and hidden messages in the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci. His definitions also don’t inspire confidence, as many are incorrect; deists do not, for instance, “consider themselves to be disciples and students of Jesus because Jesus taught the natural laws of God,” nor is agnosticism “the idea that the question of the existence of God has no coherent and ambiguous definition.”

A spiritual reflection that’s muddled by its unpersuasive later sections.