Review: Reckless Love: Jesus' Call to Love Our Neighbor by Tom Berlin

Title: Reckless Love: Jesus' Call to Love Our Neighbor
Author: Tom Berlin
Publisher: Abingdon Press
Publication Date: April 16, 2019
Edition: ebook
Genres:

• Nonfiction
• Religion

My Rating: 4 of 5 stars

author and Pastor Tom Berlin explains that to love your neighbor as yourself is the way to more deeply love and serve God. Each chapter illustrate how, as followers of Jesus, we can begin to do this: Begin with Love; Expand the Circle; Lavish Love; Openhearted Love; Value the Vulnerable; and Emulate Christ. He offers real life examples of how Jesus taught the disciples this concept and applies it to our time.

A paragraph from the book explains the principle far better than I can. "One look at the group Jesus first assembled as his followers tells us that something is lost when sameness is the defining characteristic of a church. Jesus’ example teaches us that something is wrong when we leave out people who differ from us and only feel at home when everyone is the same. His goal is not to make us more of what we are, but help us to become what we can be. That requires us to expand our understanding of what it means to love our neighbor."

What I found so wonderful about this book is how the author reveals the simplicity of the Gospel. It is not a hard and harsh set of rules one has to obey, as some preach. It is really the essence of who God is. God is love. And, by loving my neighbor as myself, I am loving and serving God. I also appreciated Pastor Berlin's discussion of racism, the enslavement of African Americans, and the dishonorable treatment of indigenous people by Christians--and how that was then and still is not acceptable. As he so aptly points out, we are all God's children. He created each of us. Pastor Berlin also affirms my belief that Jesus is the first and foremost advocate for economic and social justice, and we need to be also.