Review: David Murrow's The Map

David Murrow’s second book, The Map: The Way of All Great Men, immediately draws the reader in with an “a la Da Vinci Code” title and relatively fast-paced fictional story of his around-the-globe chase to uncover a map hidden in the gospel of Matthew and reveal it to the world before other interested parties discover and suppress its secrets. Ten chapters in, though, the text shifts from fiction to non-fiction with the author revealing he discovered “the map” while in his pajamas, not on this dangerous quest.

The remainder of the book attempts to explain why Matthew is the only gospel not written in chronological order. Murrow concludes that Matthew intended the Jewish male reader to view the gospel text as a symbolic map of three distinct “journeys” for how to live a life like Christ—the journey of submission, strength, and sacrifice.

If the reader can get past Murrow’s insistence that he’s discovered a “map,” which sounds more hokey pop-culture than hard-core theology, he does have an interesting view of why Jesus’ life experiences are structured so differently in Matthew’s gospel.

Overall, he has two worthwhile points that a new (or old) disciple of Christ would benefit from. One, that some new Christians jump over the journey of submission and go straight for a journey of strength…eventually burning out and doing more harm than good in the church because they never learned to submit first to God’s voice and commands. And two, that most Christians stay in the journey of submission, never making the turn to the journey of strength where they work for Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Ultimately, though, Murrow has one major flaw—until a half-thought in the very last chapter, he ignores how Christ’s three-part journey could apply to women. He gives several good examples of men in the Bible who exhibit this three-stage walk with Christ; yet, he ignores women like Queen Esther and Ruth who also are good fits for his theory, merely choosing to say that few of the women’s stories are told in detail.

While I understand Murrow’s calling is obviously to minister to men, and I respect that, his comment that he’s unsure if women are required to walk the three journeys in the same order as men is disconcerting. To imply that the Bible shows a pattern for how male Christians should walk in the footsteps of Christ (from submission to strength to sacrifice) and then to imply that female Christians might not be required to walk that same journey in that same order as their Lord did, honestly, seems shortsighted and unscriptural.