A review by sarahs_readingparty
Love Walked Among Us: Learning to Love Like Jesus by Paul E. Miller
3.0
In Goodreads terms, I liked this book. The principles and the use of scripture and the story of Jesus' life... excellent! The illustrations, personal examples and the writing... a little painful at times. The author clearly loves Jesus and knows the Bible well. I was encouraged and challenged to love others well and to follow in Jesus' examples.
However, the painful points I mentioned were quite painful. I wondered if the illustrations were all real - based on friends, maybe? Some seemed contrived. What bothered me about the personal illustrations is that many of them did not paint his family members, particularly his wife, in a pleasant way. I get this is a book about learning to love like Jesus... and we ALL could use some growth in that area!! Maybe everyone in his life approved of his using illustrations about them in this book. I don't know. If he had included a caveat about that, the book would have been 10000% better in my opinion. He did include stories of his struggles, but probably because he's a man and I'm a woman I reacted more strongly to his stories and was almost insulted. His marriage does not sound like mine. Some seemed to really get at very traditional gender norms that acted like "I'm doing my wife a favor whenever I do any household chores." There was a section about love as an exchange that went something like this: "if my wife asks me to vacuum while I am watching the news, I'm sacrificing my free time for hers." More context could have made this example A-OK! But without it, it could be interpreted as a woman begging off her duties for no reason. Also, the writing just seemed awkward at times. I did read the revised edition but still some parts sounded off.
Overall, I still learned from this book and was challenged by it (not just in fuming about his gendered examples! I am not really super feminist but those aspects of the book did bother me!).
However, the painful points I mentioned were quite painful. I wondered if the illustrations were all real - based on friends, maybe? Some seemed contrived. What bothered me about the personal illustrations is that many of them did not paint his family members, particularly his wife, in a pleasant way. I get this is a book about learning to love like Jesus... and we ALL could use some growth in that area!! Maybe everyone in his life approved of his using illustrations about them in this book. I don't know. If he had included a caveat about that, the book would have been 10000% better in my opinion. He did include stories of his struggles, but probably because he's a man and I'm a woman I reacted more strongly to his stories and was almost insulted. His marriage does not sound like mine. Some seemed to really get at very traditional gender norms that acted like "I'm doing my wife a favor whenever I do any household chores." There was a section about love as an exchange that went something like this: "if my wife asks me to vacuum while I am watching the news, I'm sacrificing my free time for hers." More context could have made this example A-OK! But without it, it could be interpreted as a woman begging off her duties for no reason. Also, the writing just seemed awkward at times. I did read the revised edition but still some parts sounded off.
Overall, I still learned from this book and was challenged by it (not just in fuming about his gendered examples! I am not really super feminist but those aspects of the book did bother me!).