IT'S IRONIC that the phenomenal success of Eugene Peterson's translation of the Bible, The Message, has drawn attention away from his other books, which carry their own exhilarating messages about the Bible's relevance to life in today's world.

The latest of them to reach bookstores is The Jesus Way: A conversation on the ways that Jesus is the way. Peterson says his goal was to write not only about the actual geographical path that Jesus walked in Palestine in the first century, but the way many others have "walked" in a wide-ranging historical and theological landscape that is large enough for us to see Jesus whole.

Peterson pays special attention to several key Bible figures who give texture and depth to his "conversation": Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, and Isaiah. He also profiles three prominent leaders who didn't follow the Jesus way: Herod, Caiaphas, and Josephus. They provide contrasts that bring out what is distinctive about following Jesus, and point out the discernment required of those who claim to do so.

The author never misses an opportunity to relate his study of Bible texts to everyday experiences, with imagery as up to date as Internet news. You can almost see the wry smile on his face as he suggests that religion is one of the best covers for sin of almost all kinds. "Being religious does not translate across the board into being good or trustworthy," he says. "The devil does some of his best work behind stained glass."

Much of The Jesus Way relates to temptation, as Peterson emphasizes in a particularly strong eight-page section on the ways Jesus was tempted of the devil in the wilderness (see Luke 4:1-13). He points out that people often grow up in a world in which evil ways of "doing good" are lavishly praised and practiced. These include marketing the gospel by employing the strategies of a consumerist culture. He says that it's in our own "wilderness time" that we can best discern the lies woven into evil's fine rhetoric, and see through its dazzling, disorienting extravagance. "Time in the wilderness," writes Peterson, "guards the way of Jesus from presumption and misapprehension."

Jesus' way is not a sequence of exceptions to the ordinary, says Peterson, but a way of living deeply and fully with people here and now in the place you find yourself. And when you follow Jesus, you don't have to concern yourself with details. You can let Jesus' wisdom help you pick the roads, set the timetables, and tell you what you need to know, but only when you need to know it.

Peterson devotes more than ten pages to the Pharisees, in whom he finds much to admire—especially their historically proven "sincerity and loyalty to the demands and promises of God." He has less time for their love of definitions and their impersonal and controlled language.

For all his scholarship and international success, Peterson remains astonishingly humble. At the end of The Jesus Way he readily admits that though—like all of us—he has the Christian roadmap, conditions on the road are constantly changing. He is still baffled by unpredictable circumstances and by the actions of others. Evil's seductions come in bewildering variety, he says. He finds that he lives in a culture that is overrun with advice-givers.

So it is that Peterson depends on "wise and alert Christian friends" to help him along the way. These include other authors with whom he maintains a running conversation through their books. "I need friends," he writes, "who are not naive concerning the complexities involved in following Jesus on roads heavily trafficked with blind guides and false prophets, but who are at the same time wide-awake to beauty and wonder, capable of being astonished and responsive to the richness of life all around me." His list includes such spiritually motivated writers as Albert Borgmann, John Muir, Marva Dawn, Dorothy Day, Georges Bernanos, Stanlet Hauerwas, and Czeslaw Milosz.

To my personal list of the "wise and alert Christian friends" who enrich my life in a similar way, I would unhesitatingly add Eugene Peterson. CSS