Book #4: Crazy LoveAuthor: Francis Chan
Acquired: My friend Brenda, who is working at PACA, a Christian School in Brazil sent it to me :) 'brigada, Brenda!
I have read about 100 pages of Crazy Love. Here are some first impressions.
Like: Francis Chan is calling the church to a deeper walk with Christ.
Don't like: The way he does this. The book, instead of inspiring me to a grace walk with Christ, has left me feeling guilty and fearful and insecure in my relationship with the Lord (vs. another book I read recently about Adoption in Christ that moves me to deeper relationship with Christ and to action because of the way grace is presented)
. This morning I spent a few minutes talking with my friend Jessica Dean about the way the book uses guilt (different from conviction), rather than grace, to motivate its readers, and she suggested look at some reviews of the book to see if anyone else was saying something similar.
Sometimes I have a hard time putting into words what I am thinking , but here is what some others have said and they seem to capture what I want to say (these are from Amazon.com book reviews):
1. "My favorite explanation of the... concept of "Law and Gospel" is "Disturbing the Comfortable and Comforting the Disturbed"... Francis succeeds in disturbing the comfortable, but not in comforting the disturbed and giving the empowerment to do that which God has set before us. To me, that means that the job is only half-done."
2. "While I am sure that many "older" Christians might be able take this book as a genuine challenge to live their faith more boldly, I find very little in the way of encouragement in this book. I think that this book is downright dangerous to newer Christians. I at least thought I had been growing in my faith over the last several months, but this book put a nice big question mark over all of that. Frankly, by the time I was finished reading this book, I didn't feel in any way inspired to be a better Christian... I felt like I had been torn into little pieces, I felt destroyed."
3. "Well I was expecting this book to be all about God's love for us, But I found the book to be more about my love for God."
4. "Yet, noticeably lacking from this treatment of Christianity is Jesus - at least Jesus presented as a Redeemer and Savior. Little time is spent on the "crazy love" that God has shown us in the cross, and that....well....it's just crazy."
Note: I am not finished reading the book. I know there are also some really good things about this book (I will post those later). But, until then, does anyone else have thoughts on the book?
PS: This is not meant to be a place of argument, I am just looking for other feedback because of the above mentioned thoughts.
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