Many of you have heard of this book by the popular blogger, Jen Hatmaker. For the Love was a book I was really excited about reading. Several of my friends read this book and loved this book. The "blurb" for the book is as follows:
The popular writer, blogger, and television personality reveals with humor and style how Jesus' extravagant grace is the key to dealing with life's biggest challenge: people.However, I had really mixed feelings about this book. Let me say this: I LOVE Jen Hatmaker. All you have to do is visit her blog and you will fall in love too. And her voice is as funny and inviting in For the Love. So why my mixed feelings? I feel like it is all over the place. One chapter she is really digging into my soul and talking about Jesus, and then on the very next page she she starts a chapter on her yoga pants. It just wasn't cohesive, and my brain struggled to catch up.
The majority of our joys, struggles, thrills, and heartbreaks relate to people, beginning first with ourselves and then the people we came from, married, birthed, live by, live for, go to church with, don't like, don't understand, fear, struggle with, compare ourselves to, and judge. People are the best and worst thing about the human life.
Jen Hatmaker knows this all too well, and so she reveals how to practice kindness, grace, truthfulness, vision, and love to ourselves and those around us. By doing this, For the Love leads our generation to reimagine Jesus' grace as a way of life, and it does it in a funny yet profound manner that Christian readers will love. Along the way, Hatmaker shows readers how to reclaim their prophetic voices and become Good News again to a hurting, polarized world.
However, I did laugh throughout it. And there were a few chapters that really resonated with me, namely the chapter about calling and the chapter about our front porches/community. But overall I was hoping it would have more depth, I guess. I wanted more of what her subtitle suggested: Fighting for Grace in a world of Impossible Standards, and more of her pointing people to that grace. However, it is very light on bible references, and heavy on sarcasm and "love God, love People." Don't get me wrong: I agree with "Love God. Love people." And I love sarcasm. But it just felt like the inconsistent subject matter and the lack of depth were too much for me. I still think it's a decent book to read if you're already a Christian, but I feel like some people may get hung up in her snarky chapters where she airs some grievances and then have a hard time coming back to a chapter about how we should love people.
I was maybe being too critical because I really wanted to like this book. [However, I would recommend her books Interrupted or 7 far and above this one].
Note: I received a copy of this book in exchange for review. This is my honest opinion.
2 comments:
I posted a very similar review on my blog--this book had some great concepts, but it was all over the place and hard to take too seriously. I loved some of the thoughts though, especially the thoughts about how to help those we've termed "less fortunate" and all that means.
I'm glad you did a review on this book. I initially loved it, until I realized I was skimming the meaty chapters in favor of the funny ones. I've gone back a few times to read through it and I'd agree. It was a little all over.
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