Customer Reviews

Repenting of Religion: Turning from Judgment to the Love of God

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My inspiration for reviewing this book came not so much from its impact on my own life - though that was significant - but from the negative reviews which only serve to reinforce Boyd's thesis.

One reviewer writes:
"Too lopsided on one aspect of God's character ... Does not balance personal skew with God's holy wrath against sin."

These words exemplify the essence of Boyd's concern, as stated in the chapter titled 'The Center is Love:'

"Even as I write these words, I can hear someone saying, 'Yes, we must love. But we must balance love with truth. ... Love has its place, but we must not forget God's wrath.' ... We have to wonder where anyone got the idea that love in any way competes with truth, holiness or biblical doctrine. Love is the central biblical truth; it is the essence of all holiness." (p. 57-58)

Boyd in no way infers or states that we should gloss over sin in our own lives and the lives of others, but in discerning evil, or sin, we should be motivated by the love of Christ that lives within us, not our need to draw worth from our power to judge others, a desire rooted in our fallen, or 'old man.'

As Boyd so clearly states, our focus on hatred of sin is often rooted in our desire to play God, by deeming who is worthy of love and who is not, based on their love-ability. This, simply stated, is heretical to the very nature of the God, who IS love, and portrays a skewed image of Abba Father that believes the divine's hatred for sin, not his lovingkindness, sent him to the cross.

All the writers of the New Testament clearly state that all we do should be done in love, and even our acts of apparent harshness, discipline and discernment need be motivated by what is best for the others involved, not a sense of righteousness. Boyd captures this sentiment wonderfully and saturates this thesis with countless scriptures and a theology that, while unsettling to our paradigms, is sound to those who have tasted of the grace of God.

The further accusation of antinomianism is baseless, and, as is so often the case with those who are quick to toss about this term, indicates a failure to understand its actual meaning. Antinomianism is the belief that God's grace, as evidenced through the cross, eradicated the law by destroying the reality of wrong and right, good and evil, and this belief is a a lie; it IS heresy. Boyd's thesis far from antinomian. Like the Apostle Paul, he is simply stating that its power to either condemn us when we fail to fulfill its demands or its ability to ascribe to us worth when we fulfill is demands IS DEAD.

While we still seek to discern sin and the lies that bind us, the law and its power died to us at the cross, and the only thing that matters now - the only law that binds us, is the law of liberty, or as Paul states, faith expressing itself through love.

This IS the gospel. We no longer view God, ourselves or the world through the grid of the law, but through God's love, and God's love is selfless and always seeks the best for the other, and so, as Boyd states, we must discern those things that harm us - the lies we believe and the sins that bind us - but never to establish our goodness before God, as our goodness is found only in the person of God through Christ.

I believe Boyd expresses well the truth that love need not be balanced with truth, as if his lovingkindness, grace and tenderheartedness and his truth, holiness and majesty are opposites, but these are all many expressions of the essence of God who is love. Boyd quotes philosophy professor Peter Kreeft to drive this point home:

"God is not half love and half wrath, or 99 percent love and 1 percent wrath. God IS love. Wrath is how his love appears to us when we sin or rebel or run away from him. The very light that is meant to help us, appears to us as our enemy when we seek the darkness (p. 59)."

Boyd further states: "All the attributes of God are to be defined by Christ. In the crucified Messiah we see God's just and holy wrath against sin, but we see it as a manifestation of God's love. ... Everything that God does, even his expressions of holy wrath, are done out of love (p. 59-60).

And at the risk of overquotation, let Boyd's word best summarize the heart of this writing: "Hence, as those who are called to live in such a way that people can know God by knowing us, we are called to love. We are only balanced in our understanding of love when we understand that it is the one thing we must live in - to all people, at all times, in all situations, without exception. If we do this, everything else we need to do will get done. If we don't do this, there's simply nothing else worth doing (p. 60)."

While one may not agree with all the practical applications of Boyd's thesis, the doctrinal and spiritual soundness is unquestionable in light of the apostles' writings and the living expression of God's love as found in the life of Christ.

Please do yourself a favor and disregard the majority of the negative reviews of this astonishing book.
These only confirm the main premise of Mr Boyd's argument:
a large number of American Christians have been mainlining juice from the fruit of the wrong tree for years now.
Thus, they have lamentably and tragically and ironically allowed themselves to become a 'community of accusers,'
whose perverse aim is the 'moralizing of life,' which is the total antithesis of what Jesus initiated!

With this book as well as a previous one (The Myth of a Christian Nation),
Mr Boyd is prophetically addressing serious flaws and downright sins in present-day churches.
He makes the most compelling and scripturally persuasive case as to
what has turned so much of Christianity into an aggressive and cold-hearted pathogen amidst a culture that
desperately needs Christ-like lovers--whose love is as reckless, extravagant and promiscuous as that of Jesus.

I could refute many of the false arguments and objections raised below by quoting from the book.
Instead I say: buy it and read it; this is a well-balanced argument and thoroughly faithful to the Spirit of the Word.
It will answer much that has baffled you and confirm what you have known was not right in many a congregation.

But I will address one legitimate observation:
the seeming contradiction of a book that forbids judgement judging the judgmental attitude of others.
Here's a quote from the book that I believe settles this issue:

"Jesus' religious reputation was tarnished in the eyes of religious people
because he did not honor many of the religious taboos of his days.
Walking in unity with God, Jesus possessed a joyful freedom--indeed, a recklessness--
that was scandalous to those whose worth was derived from their supposed ability to judge good and evil
and their willingness to separate themselves as good apart from those they judged as evil...

"But Jesus wasn't concerned about his reputation.
He did what he was called to do and let others matters at the hands of his Father.
Jesus came to heal the sick, not to placate the religious sensibilities of those who thought they were healthy.
To heal the sick, you have to love the sick, which means you have to fellowship with the sick.
And this means you have to ignore what those who (mistakenly) think they are healthy, think about you!

"... Far from tiptoeing around them,
Jesus sometimes seemed to go out of his way to confront religious leaders who lived from a variety of forbidden fruit.
While he demonstrated only compassion toward ordinary folk,
and especially toward those ostracized and/or judged by the religious establishment,
Jesus publicly expressed anger toward self-righteous religious leaders--the Pharisees, scribes, and Sadducees.
Though these people were 'the most moral of people, lived the best of lives,
and were perfectly obedient and virtuous, they substituted their own morality for the living and actual Word of God [Jacques Ellul].'
They were experts on eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

"Jesus aggressively intended to stop these leaders because they shut the door of God's gracious kingdom on people,
placed heavy loads on people's shoulders, and lured people down their own path of destruction.
With their highly refined moralism, they incarnated the serpent's lie about how to be God-like.
Consequently, Jesus had to publicly confront these religious forbidden-fruit eaters...

"It is important to notice that RELIGIOUS SIN IS THE ONLY SIN JESUS PUBLICLY CONFRONTED.
The religious variety of the forbidden fruit is the most addictive and deceptive variety.
Instead of acknowledging that the knowledge of good and evil is prohibited,
religious idolatry embraces the knowledge of good and evil as divinely sanctioned and mandated.
It gives the illusion of being on God's side even while it destroys life and hardens people in direct opposition to God.

"Religious sin is the most destructive kind of sickness...."

Amen!

I am still mulling through my own actions after reading this book.

I was a fan of "Letters From a Skeptic," and was pleasantly amazed to find this title and see how Boyd beautifully expounds on Bonhoeffer as well as the Scriptures in God's mandate to humanity to fulfill the Greatest Commandment, to love God and neighbor. There has been much debate on what this looks like, and Boyd paints a narrative from beginning to end, walking through the Scriptures and paying attention to what Jesus' way of life could look like today.

If the church of Jesus could grasp one iota of this argument, it would be better for it, something I believe this book is trying to accomplish.

There will be those in conservative evangelical circles (I include myself there, although I am moving further away) who will be upset by the reading of this book, which Boyd suspected as outlined in chapter 11. Boyd is not soft on sin, but he is hard on judgment.

If you were to ask a question of anyone here about what the #1 thing Christians are known for, would they say love? I would wholeheartedly think they wouldn't (a Barna survey in August 2004 said that 91% said "hates gays."). Boyd presents a clearly detailed, biblical philosophy, with heavy influence from Bonhoeffer, about how we are to love others as Jesus loved with holiness, accountability, and the integrity of the Scriptures not being compromised. He outlines in detail how most of us in the modern American church are not familiar with first-century church context and how they confronted each other on sin issues.

Chapters 11 and 12 are worth the price of the book alone, but every chapter of this book is priceless. This is a book that every pastor and Christian leader should have close by. It is a detailed outline through the Scriptures on how God has wired us to love without conditions through Jesus Christ. Even if you disagree, pick it up and read it yourself, it is a must read.

Controversial pastor/theologian Gregory A. Boyd known for his strong and honest opinions in theology reveals his true pastoral heart for a non-judgmental vision of the Church. With the passion of an evangelist and the conviction of a prophet Boyd claims that "the Christian religion has to a significant extent become the defender of and promoter of the Fall rather than the proclaimer of the Good News that alone can free us from the Fall." This is because the Church eats from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and therefore stands in God's place of judging rather than loving others. Boyd offers some very keen incites from Jonathan Edward's Triune Creationism, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology of the fall, and about the nature of the human heart's longing for self-righteousness.

However, at times Boyd falls on his sword by unashamedly making the same kind of judgments of Christians he seeks to condemn them for; probably born out of response to his legion of critics. He becomes very ambiguous at times when trying to distinguish loving intervention with judging others, which leaves him more or less against the practice of Church Discipline. He also blurs a distinction between the sin of gluttony and being overweight, and then awkwardly tries to contrast them with homosexuality.

Nevertheless, Boyd makes his case for a clarion call for believers to repent from judgmentalism and practice love and mercy towards not only other believers, but sinners as Jesus would.

I love the title of this book. It provoked my imagination right away.

Though the early chapters of Boyd's book were a bit too academic in tone for me, I knew it was foundational in laying out his argument for the supremacy of God's love. Boyd is actually not being a renegade radical in this regard. There have always been amongst us those who would remind us that God is love (from Mike Bickle to Bernard of Clairvaux and quite a few in between). I have no disagreement with this message at all. As for those readers who think this message is a distortion of God's character, well, Jesus got in trouble all the time because of how loving he was to the wrong kind of people.

If you are looking for a book to gain greater insight into the loving nature of God this is a good one to add to your library.

As for Boyd's argument that gluttons are welcome in church, but homosexuals are not, I think he's simply telling it like it is. I think Boyd's message was clear : we've let judgementalism (religion) stifle our identity to be lovers of God and lovers of one another.

Even if one does not fully agree with Dr. Boyd's full premise, this book will certainly make one stop and think. How loving are we being in this body of Christ? How welcoming are we to all men as Jesus asked us and demonstrated for us to be? I certainly will read this book again. As I read, I began to get a glimmer(dare I say from the Holy Spirit?)of how much I judge and lock out others from the experience of being in Christ. I feel this is an important book and if humbly read, can draw one closer to the life of the Trinity.

As a longtime fan of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Cost of Discipleship, Ethics) and Soren Kierkegard, it is refreshing to see someone take their contributions seriously. I especially appreciate the perspective of a more liberal and liberated and libertarian Christian church of divine inclusiveness and celebration of diversity, tolerating what conservative evangelicals brand intolerable. A breath of bracing air into the pathological lungs of the Body of Christ, designed by the Creator to Love not pass judgment on so many things. The only thing worse than religionless Christianity is christianly religiosity.

Love is Good. Judgment is Evil. It's that simple.

This book will rocked my world. I found it challenging in its call to love without judgment. Drawn partly from the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, it is rich in insight and powerful in its call for us to desist from practicing religion and enter into relationship. A worthy read!

This is an excellent thesis which explains how many honest believers in Jesus Christ have been suckered into eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (judgmentalism) rather than the tree of life (the love of Christ). "Taking a stand against sin" should begin as a private matter in each believers' own life... treating their own sin as tree trunks, and others' sins as little specks. When we engage in judgment, we indicate that we do not trust the Holy Spirit's ability to deal with people and conform them to the image of Christ.

While a previous reviewer exclaimed that Boyd's repetitiveness is an insult to the reviewer's intelligence, I happen to appreciate this characteristic of his writing style. It is clear that he wants people to understand the message, because he goes up many different sides of the mountain (so to speak) to reach his conclusions. Also, by placing a mini-review at the beginning of each chapter, you are reminded of the foundational principles from the previous chapters... which is helpful if you are reading the book over a period of several days.

All in all, a very good book... and worth the $10-$12 you'll spend on it... particularly if it drives you to release the love of God shed abroad in your heart to a lost and dying world...

Greg Boyd is truly a fantastic author who speaks with great authority about the truth of Christianity and concerns that afflict the majority of Christians. This book is written with an almost philosophical eloquence that brings to life the real meaning of the fall of man. There are a lot of negative reviews about this work but like someone already noted above, this sheds light on the very thing that Dr. Boyd discusses in this work. People are so fixated on "what should I do to get to heaven?" They become slaves to the rituals where they're taught to repeat over and over and you receive eternal life. We Christians have gotten this reputation to be close minded and obviously judgemental because we feel that we have the right to judge others according to OUR preceived ideology of good and evil but WE'RE also in the FALLEN state! Our moral compass is so diswayed because we are truly looking through the lens of sinners. We all need to show everyone around the love that Christ showed us on Calvary and stop this infighting. I HIGHLY reccomend this work.