If God Is Love : Rediscovering Grace in an Ungracious World (Gulley, Philip)

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Summary: Wonderful Book!!!
Review: Finally,Christians that are teaching the Good News!!!
I have read many of the so called Christian authors who teach distrust and inclusiveness. I have always come away wanting!

I can Not wait till their next book!!!

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Summary: so the Bible doesn't exist?
Review: I am horrified that people might read this book and believe it. Satan is real and this is just another one of his lies to make people not believe in Jesus Christ and heaven AND HELL. This book would have gotten a 0 star if I could have. The theology is so wrong and it breaks my heart that they are trying to make a profit about "what they believe". Their belief does NOT change the Truth. The Bible is true, as is Heaven and Hell and Satan.

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Summary: If God Is Love: Rediscovering Grace in an Ungracious World
Review: Mr. Gulley has done it again!! His latest book defines what the Christian Faith should be!! A faith of love, acceptance, nonjudgemental and above all, a Christ centered belief. He articulates what many of us "real Christians" have known for many years that Christianity cannot be defined by the far-far Christian right!! Thank you, Mr. Gulley. You have given many faithful persons a wonderful weapon against bigotry, zealotry, and all the rest of the devices used by those who have decided to be God.

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Summary: Nowhere Near Harmony
Review: Philip Gulley's books about church life in Harmony, Indiana, are fun, and I bought this because of them. But this book is a challenge to traditional Christians, and by this I am talking about anyone who can join with the saints of every land and time to confess the Apostles' Creed in an attitude of assent and faithfulness. I give it one star because there is not a "No Star" option.

Gulley and Mulholland would have us believe that all will be saved. Oh? If God wishes to work out some salvific formulae for those who, in life, are violent, malevolent, inhumane, and who have no sense of what it is to be in harmony with Jesus of Nazareth, that is not for me to quibble with. However, the sacred texts of the Old and New Testament have led centuries of believers to a different conclusion.

I recall listening to a sermon, about a decade ago, by a populist Presbyterian pastor, who was at that time serving in an interim position in a large suburban American city. Typical of most large Presbyterian congregations, the members' theological stance ranged from very conservative to very liberal; however, the majority of the members were moderate to slightly conservative.

This interim pastor preached a sermon that sent the congregation into what Victorian reporters would have dubbbed paroxysms of apoplexy. Why? He presented the view that when one arrived in heaven, one should not be surprised to find [...] and Mussolini already there. Mmmm. Pause a moment and let that sink in.

[...], responsible not only for the destruction of millions of Jews and anyone else whom the Nazi's persecuted, but (it can be easily argued) the majority of all casualties of every nation who fought in World War II. And Mussolini, whose only hint of virtue was punctuality, as in, "He made the trains run on time."

Did the sermon send shock waves through the assembled hundreds of lifelong Christians? Yes. In fact, more than a decade later, that congregation is wondering what hit them. Conservative folks rose up in consternation to condemn the fellow. Some calling for his immediate removal. A few ultra liberal folks breathed a long and loud, "At last!" and began vilifying anyone who espoused the Christian belief that "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." It wasn't pretty; because it wasn't Christian in any sense of the word.

Back to Gulley and Mulholland...They start out by asking, "If God is love why are church people so hateful?" Hello? John Calvin answered that a long time ago in his "Institutes". [...] Or they could buy and read the standard text on what Christian's DO believe, Shirley Guthrie's "Christian Doctrine" for a good, basic discussion of the same concern. We are all sinful. Even after we receive Christ and seek to follow Him, we still sin, that is, make mistakes, big, small and in-between. It really isn't rocket science to understand that the church lady who is mean to the girls in the youth fellowship who dress 'inappropriately' is, herself, an immature Christian. Gulley and Mulholland have a whole section on that idea of needing to grow and mature in the faith. Immature Christians are prone to step on toes, insert mouth in foot and otherwise walk all over the feelings of others. Many never progress beyond the theological equivalent of pabulum. We are all "on the Way of Christ". We are all growing in the Lord. We are all immature and what the church calls prone to sin. We all stand in need of confession and forgiveness, no matter how old we may be.

Are there others in and out of the church whose choices have been so consistently wrong (need we say evil) that they lose all perspective on what is right and wrong? Yes, definitely. Does something happen to such persons, either temporarily or indefinitely to make it nearly impossible for them to come back from the far distant regions of aggressiveness, violence and self-serving? Of course. Are there persons whom theology and science would tell us "we know of no cure for that?"--not physical disease perhaps, but the dis-ease of spirit and attitude that leads persons to become sociopathic? Yes.

What will God do, in the end, for such persons? One shudders to imagine. Jesus was not joshing when he called the Pharisees "whitewashed tombs" nor was He using hyperbole when he separated sheep and goats. If Gulley and Mulholland want to go merrily skipping down a primrose path that is other than Christian -- that is their prerogative. But let them say so. Let them say, "Here we have parted company with believers of the past and present."

Finally, it must be said they sadly misuse most of the theologians they quote (Bonhoeffer writes extensively on evil and was himself sent to and executed in a Nazi death camp for trying to eradicate the world of an evil person, [...]). The book does Christians, seekers and nonbelievers alike a profound disservice--causing them to stumble. How sad -- for Gulley and Mulholland -- that it is selling so well.

The book does not address the problem of evil, the human condition or the reason for Jesus. It glances off all of them like a stone skipping across a pond. And then, just as the stone, sinks. Perhaps this book, along with Gulley's others, should be classified as "Fiction".


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Summary: Better read as biography, less as treatise on universalism
Review: What appeals to me most about this book and their first is the personal component of the authors' spiritual journies from wounds dealt them by fundamentalism at an early age. Not everyone responds to a bad fundamentalist experience with the theological stances these authors do. Frankly, I think the stories within these two books are possibly better seen as the authors' biographies than as theological treatises on universalism. The books seem to me to lack a strong forensic or philosophical basis for their teaching; there are serious questions they could pursue in a way as to make their point less anecdotally and more qualitatively. Obviously viewing their work purely as anecdotal doesn't allow a reader to entirely circumvent the beliefs they advocate, but I think an approach from them that was biographic as to their own journey of faith would perhaps yield very similar books with what they hold out now as dogma being more tentatively held out as questions.

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Summary: there are two authors
Review: While I agree totally with Leigh's Fleming's review of If God is Love, I would like to say that there are two authors, Philip Gulley AND Jim Mulholland. I know both of these wonderful people and have the honor to attend a Quaker meeting where Jim is pastor. I know the hours of collaboration that have taken place in order to bring this beautiful, challenging concept to fruition and I pray that the dedicated effort to share their journey with others touches the hearts of all who read this book.