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A review by dullshimmer
Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God by Francis Chan
fast-paced
1.0
I was expecting to really like this book at least based on what I expected from it. I was expecting something like Philip Yancy's What's So Amazing About Grace, Brennan Manning's Ragamuffin Gospel, or even something like Tim Keller's The Prodigal God. It was going to be about how God's love may seem crazy, but how it is real and is life changing if we accept the grace that God presents. These expectations proved to be very wrong.
I just found so much wrong with this book. One of the biggest negatives of the book is that it is heavy on the guilt and shame. The first seven or eight chapters (out of ten) are constantly using phrases about making God angry or God being disgusted with us. It's about us not doing enough or being good enough, not about a God that loved us while we were enemies. A God who was willing to sacrifice themselves/Jesus in order to bring us back into relationship. That's not what Chan is really focused on here.
To be fair this critique isn't unwarranted, but the way that Chan approaches this is so heavy handed and poor that it's hard to imagine too many people responding positively to it. Maybe Christians used to the idea that you have to feel guilt and shame to do better might respond, but those who aren't in those churches or traditions will find little here to inspire. Chan even acknowledges that guilt and shame isn't the answer to the problem, but it doesn't stop him from using this very method for the majority of his book. This acknowledgement makes the book worse, since it shows that Chan knew better, but still chose to use that kind of rhetoric in his book.
There are also a number of other problematic aspects of the book for me. He tends to have a very strong secular/sacred divide going on. You wouldn't want to die being caught at a theater watching a play or watching TV or something because that's obviously not Godly or spiritual enough. It's a weird argument. There are many aspects of normal life that are okay. While it makes for a good story, most of us aren't going to drop dead after proclaiming the Gospel. I think that God is going to look at more than just where we were when we died, but that's something Chan brings up a few times in the book.
Chan also really loves to use and overuse the lukewarm idea. It got quite old and while he maybe didn't use it as badly as I've seen some use the image, I'm still not sure he's using it exactly in the right context. It's not so much about an attitude, but about the usefulness. Chan is kind of talking about that in what we're doing with our lives, but dips into attitudes fairly regularly as well.
Even when chapters start to get better there are still some issues around. Chapter 9 talks about some inspirational stories by people who have lived following Jesus in radical ways. While this is great in many ways, I always struggle with these short snippets of people's lives being used in this way. Did these people do great things? Yes, sure. Were they somehow perfect? Doubtful. Paring away so much of their lives until only the part you want to display remains can be inspirational, but it can also be a bit reductive.
All this to say, I didn't enjoy this work at all. It has some decent points that are worth brining up, but doesn't do this in a very loving way or by focusing all that much for God's love for us. It comes up, but it is definitely not the focus of the book. I would recommend any of the books I mentioned above for books that deal with God's love and grace, and if you're looking for something a bit more challenging us to break out of aspects of our life that may be too comfortable, I would recommend Shane Claiborne's The Irresistible Revolution. He brings things up in a much more approachable manner and without all the guilt and shame usage that Chan seems to like.
At this point I'm pretty sure that I'm just not a big fan of Francis Chan, at least as a writer. This is my third book I've read and I haven't been impressed by any of them. This was by far the one I liked the least, but he just seems to favor a very aggressive confrontational style that doesn't always look a lot like the way that Jesus interacted with people. I just really couldn't recommend this book to anyone. Which is too bad, because I was expecting a much better book here.
I just found so much wrong with this book. One of the biggest negatives of the book is that it is heavy on the guilt and shame. The first seven or eight chapters (out of ten) are constantly using phrases about making God angry or God being disgusted with us. It's about us not doing enough or being good enough, not about a God that loved us while we were enemies. A God who was willing to sacrifice themselves/Jesus in order to bring us back into relationship. That's not what Chan is really focused on here.
To be fair this critique isn't unwarranted, but the way that Chan approaches this is so heavy handed and poor that it's hard to imagine too many people responding positively to it. Maybe Christians used to the idea that you have to feel guilt and shame to do better might respond, but those who aren't in those churches or traditions will find little here to inspire. Chan even acknowledges that guilt and shame isn't the answer to the problem, but it doesn't stop him from using this very method for the majority of his book. This acknowledgement makes the book worse, since it shows that Chan knew better, but still chose to use that kind of rhetoric in his book.
There are also a number of other problematic aspects of the book for me. He tends to have a very strong secular/sacred divide going on. You wouldn't want to die being caught at a theater watching a play or watching TV or something because that's obviously not Godly or spiritual enough. It's a weird argument. There are many aspects of normal life that are okay. While it makes for a good story, most of us aren't going to drop dead after proclaiming the Gospel. I think that God is going to look at more than just where we were when we died, but that's something Chan brings up a few times in the book.
Chan also really loves to use and overuse the lukewarm idea. It got quite old and while he maybe didn't use it as badly as I've seen some use the image, I'm still not sure he's using it exactly in the right context. It's not so much about an attitude, but about the usefulness. Chan is kind of talking about that in what we're doing with our lives, but dips into attitudes fairly regularly as well.
Even when chapters start to get better there are still some issues around. Chapter 9 talks about some inspirational stories by people who have lived following Jesus in radical ways. While this is great in many ways, I always struggle with these short snippets of people's lives being used in this way. Did these people do great things? Yes, sure. Were they somehow perfect? Doubtful. Paring away so much of their lives until only the part you want to display remains can be inspirational, but it can also be a bit reductive.
All this to say, I didn't enjoy this work at all. It has some decent points that are worth brining up, but doesn't do this in a very loving way or by focusing all that much for God's love for us. It comes up, but it is definitely not the focus of the book. I would recommend any of the books I mentioned above for books that deal with God's love and grace, and if you're looking for something a bit more challenging us to break out of aspects of our life that may be too comfortable, I would recommend Shane Claiborne's The Irresistible Revolution. He brings things up in a much more approachable manner and without all the guilt and shame usage that Chan seems to like.
At this point I'm pretty sure that I'm just not a big fan of Francis Chan, at least as a writer. This is my third book I've read and I haven't been impressed by any of them. This was by far the one I liked the least, but he just seems to favor a very aggressive confrontational style that doesn't always look a lot like the way that Jesus interacted with people. I just really couldn't recommend this book to anyone. Which is too bad, because I was expecting a much better book here.