Nov 11, 2009 0
The Year of Living Like Jesus: Short and Long Reviews
There is no doubt in my mind that Ed Dobson, a former pastor and author of The Year of Living Like Jesus, has some tremendous insights for the church today. Who can’t respect someone with a few years to live because of ALS who devotes a year to live like Jesus?
The simple fact that Dobson has set out on this project is reason enough to admire him. In addition, his attitude throughout the book is one of both compassion for others and a personal passion for the Gospel. Dobson has so much to teach us, and yet I was disappointed by this book because it promised far more than it delivered.
The Absurdly Short Review
Do you believe Christians should only vote for Republicans? Read this book. Did that question strike you as a silly one? Then read Shane Claiborn’s Irresistable Revolution and Jesus for President instead of this book. Not sure yet? Then read this:
The Long Review
While I can’t give this book a positive review, I can’t say enough good things about Dobson. The book reads like a personal journal, and therefore I don’t want to take away from the gains he made in his one-year project. A lot of good stuff happens in this book, but to put it bluntly, the book’s presentation as a year of living like Jesus doesn’t work. Perhaps he could have just listed a few lessons learned after immersing himself in the Gospels rather than claiming he was “living like Jesus.”
The first sixty five pages alone drag on with insignificant details and fretting over silly things like whether to use electronics during a plane’s take off or whether he should eat shrimp. Such passages zeroing in on minutiae are far too common throughout the book. In addition, any project like this needs parameters and Dobson doesn’t really set up hard and fast ones to follow, which could have saved a lot of ink and paper later in the book as he confronts the limitations of his ALS.
Was he going to follow all of the Old Testament? Was he going to live like Jesus in light of Acts 15? He doesn’t really tell us, and so he does a little of each, spending a lot of time worrying about what to do and talking about the Jewish customs he picked up along the way.
In addition, while Dobson wants to focus on praying more so he can be like Jesus, I can’t quite figure out why he’d pick up the Rosary and the prayer beads of the Eastern Orthodox. While his openness to these things is admirable, it’s hard to see how they fit in this book, which brings us back to his project’s parameters and the way it has been marketed.
The book’s main problem is that it still presents living like Jesus in a fairly tame form where we have to think a little harder about how we vote, make ourselves a little bit uncomfortable by picking up hitchhikers, give away a few things, and read the Bible more. These are all good steps that I want to honor, but when I read about the folks living sacrificially in the communities of folks such as Shane Claiborn and Mark Scandrette, I can’t help but feel this project didn’t quite go far enough.
Though Dobson is careful to set his own course in order to distinguish himself from A. J. Jacob’s The Year of Living Biblically, I think the book would have benefited by interacting with some other Christian leaders beyond the few clergy he sought out. Wouldn’t it have been amazing for a former assistant to Jerry Falwell to sit down for a chat with someone like Jim Wallis or Shane Claiborn?
Dobson is honest about some of his failings, such as not visiting someone in prison or giving up more of his possessions, but at the same time there is a failure throughout the book to tackle some of the teachings of Jesus that many American Christians would find most difficult to stomach. If the publisher knew Dobson hadn’t done these things, then why not present the material in a slightly different light?
It was nice that Dobson gave away some suits and even sacrificed his preaching gig at his gated community in Florida, but his example of trusting his wealthy friends to buy him dinner didn’t exactly strike me as the kind of thing worth recording in a book about living like Jesus.
Dobson takes admirable risks at times and reaches out in wonderful ways to those outside the church, but there are plenty of awkward moments where he uncritically mentions his corvette and his gated community without wondering how the story of the rich young man could apply to them. He very well could have justified either of them, but his lack of attention to them makes them a glaring oversight that makes this book a bit difficult to digest at times.
I have really struggled to review this book because it does some things well, but also has some glaring weak points in light of the way the material is presented: a year of living like Jesus. The bar has no doubt been set high, but in reality we have a series of journal entries from a gracious and compassionate brother who benefits greatly by devoting more time to prayer, scripture reading, and attempts to live like Jesus.
As far as the benefits of this book, pastor Dan Kimball notes that Dobson has a passion for those outside of the church and has a lot of great stories to share from his year of trying to live like Jesus. Just taking a gander at the comments on Kimball’s blog you can see how some Christian brothers and sisters can’t stomach a discussion in politics beyond abortion, and to the extent that Dobson helps broaden the pro-life agenda and add nuance to our discussions, his book has made a valuable contribution to Christianity.
This book was reviewed as part of Zondervan’s blog tour.
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