Book Review: Unshockable Love

I think I like this book. Unshockable Love (Baker Books, 2013) by John Burke is really a book about the love of Jesus. Burke, the pastor of Gateway Church in Austin, Texas makes the case that too often Christians are prone to evangelizing with the model: bad news first, then good. Admittedly, I have typically operated from this mindset and I think it has its place at times. I once heard someone say that Jesus came to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable, or something like that. Some people, self-righteous people, often need to be shaken up a bit. Nevertheless, I think that he is right in suggesting not enough people hear the good news of the gospel. Early on in the book, he indicated that he intended to look at the life of Jesus and make a case, based on Jesus' own way of interacting, for how we should interact. He made headway toward this goal, though I expected it to be a more central part of the book. Rather, the book seemed to be filled primarily with stories of redemption that occurred through Gateway Church.  It seems that a large part of these stories of redemption was rooted in the belief that every person is an image bearer of God and, given grace, mercy, and the love of Jesus, will often flourish. The final 100 pages or so presents a model for how to put this into practice, though admittedly, I found this less engaging then the first half of the book. 

On the whole, I think this book gives an important message. Too often, we look like Pharisees, not Christ, in terms of how we relate to others. We are called first to love, and this book helps show the way.

I received a complementary copy of this book from Baker Books for purposes of review. I was not required to submit a positive review of this book.