"Love Does" – Review


Tomorrow I’ll be giving away THREE copies of Love Does. Be sure to enter for your chance to win!


 
Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World
Bob Goff

Almost every party or family gathering has a Storyteller. You know the guy. He’s the one who draws people around him like a magnet. His stories are well-paced and he delivers them with surprise and humor and suspense.

Well, Bob Goff is that guy on steroids. If you read Donald Miller’s fantastic memoir, A Million Miles In a Thousand Years—and if you haven’t, you should—you probably remember Bob. He’s the guy who throws a neighborhood parade each year to celebrate the gift of today. According to Don, “Bob lives better stories than anyone I know.”

After years of pleading and begging from his friends to compile more of these tales, Bob finally sat down and did it. Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World (Thomas Nelson, paperback, 224 pages) is a collection of stories that reveal the biggest lesson Bob has learned, namely that love is not an emotion or a state of mind: it’s an action. It needs to be lived and experienced and Bob demonstrates that in nearly-unbelievable ways.

Like the night he snuck into the Library of Congress for the love of adventure. Or the week he parked himself on a bench, right outside the Dean’s office, until the law school finally let him in. Then there was the time he spent sixteen days in the Pacific Ocean with five guys and a crate of meat. And, lest we forget, his epic escape from a burning jeep right before it exploded.

I think my favorite story came when Bob encouraged his children to write letters to the leaders of every country in the CIA database. The letters, simple and innocent, concluded with an invitation to hang out. And surprisingly, it worked:

“We mailed the letters. Lots of them. Hundreds and hundreds of them. We waited a week or two, and then every day after school we would check the kids’ post office box for any mail. It wasn’t long before responses started coming. It was slow at first, maybe one or two a day. But then dozens started streaming in every day from all over the globe.

…..

“A day or two later, an envelope from the prime minister of Switzerland arrived, inviting the kids to Bern. Then a letter came from the president of Israel, inviting the kids to come to Jerusalem.

Over the following weeks, they didn’t just get one ‘yes’—they got twenty nine. Maria and I didn’t know what to do so we did the best thing we could think of. We began a family training program to spruce up on our manners. One of the yeses came from a real live prince, so we taught our kids how to bow and curtsy, too.

…..

“What would happen more often than not is the kids would begin in an official reception room and have an official meeting with the leader. But then the leaders would realize these were just kids who had no agenda other than to be friends and they would invite us back to their private offices where they could just talk as friends.

“The kids would ask questions about the leader’s families, how they got into public service, and what their hopes were for the future. The leaders would talk about their children and grandchildren, what they were doing when they were our kids’ ages, and their dreams of friendships between people from our countries.”

Love Does is filled with several marvelous stories like this, but a couple things did rankle me. First, each story is coupled with a spiritual insight, which each seemed a bit trite. The book may have been better served if the reflections were left to the reader, if each Good Story was allowed to stand on its own to let the reader make the spiritual connections.

Also, there’s a persistent “Jesus is good, religion is bad” undercurrent throughout the book:

  • “Jesus wasn’t a religious guy. To me, Jesus sounded like an ordinary guy who was utterly amazing.”
  • “I never wanted religion. I didn’t understand it and didn’t particularly want to either. To be honest, I thought religion was for wimpy guys who didn’t get into mischief.”
  • “I’d rather trade all the religious jargon for the chance to invite people into experiencing Jesus.”

Now, I understand the “religion” Bob critiques is not the religion I know. In Bob’s view “religion” means empty practices buoyed by righteous cliques and bitter gatekeepers. But that’s not true religion. True religion is vibrant and life-giving and rich. History shows that the holiest people have found Jesus precisely through religion, not around it. I think of someone like Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati, a prankster and adventurer in his own right whom Bob would have loved. Pier-Giorgio found Jesus through religion–through the Eucharist and the Church. So for the saints, religion is a path to God, not a barrier.

But despite those qualms, Love Does is simply a fun read. The book is light and capricious and filled with adventure. Bob Goff is one of those rare people who doesn’t just tell good stories; he lives them. And Love Does inspires you to follow his lead.

See Bob share some of his stories here:


Tomorrow I’ll be giving away THREE copies of Love Does. Be sure to enter for your chance to win!