Book Review - The Year of Living like Jesus: My Journey of Discovering What Jesus Would Really Do by Ed Dobson
Category Book Review Ed Dobson The Year of Living like Jesus: My Journey of Discovering What Jesus Would Really Do
One of the first books I read and reviewed as part of the Amazon Vine program was A. J. Jacobs' The Year of Living Biblically. It somehow seemed fitting to also select Ed Dobson's The Year of Living like Jesus: My Journey of Discovering What Jesus Would Really Do when it showed up as a selection on Amazon Vine. Whereas I thought Jacobs stayed true to his premise in the book, I felt Dobson missed the boat on that criteria. That's not to say that there aren't things to learn in Living Like Jesus. I just don't think the actual journey lived up to the title.
Ed Dobson is an evangelical pastor with ALS, and he's to the point where he can see the end of his life in the next two to five years. He made a decision that was pretty radical in its intent.... he would spend a year living like Jesus would live. Remove all the religious trappings, remove all the labels that seem to put Jesus in a box, and come as close as you can to doing what it was that Jesus actually did. Go to places where "religious people" are not generally found, share with others, love others... Definitely not the type of lifestyle that's common these days. Along the way, Dobson had to reexamine many of his beliefs, go counter to prevailing attitudes in the circles he moved in, and generally change his entire lifestyle to accomplish his goal.
Being that there was an immediate comparison to Jacobs' book (Jacobs even wrote the forward), I was set to expect a story of how one would attempt to follow Jesus' teachings to the fullest in today's culture. But the execution got muddled right from the start. Do you choose to "live" like Jesus, placing yourself in a Jewish culture and trying to do the things that Jesus did in his day-to-day existence (keeping Jewish law, going to synagogue, etc.)? Or, do you choose to live "like Jesus", and follow his teachings and his words? It seemed to me that Dobson ended up doing a little of both, and the confusion detracted from the book. He spends a lot of time fretting about eating kosher, wearing tassels, and growing his beard out. Later in the book he seems to move more towards applying the teachings of Jesus, but the shift didn't work in terms of how the book was working for me at that point. There were also pages and pages devoted to why he voted for Obama over McCain, and how that upset his evangelical friends and colleagues. Yes, there was the discussion of how he made his decision based on his experiment, but the whole exercise went on for far too many pages given what I *thought* his year of living like Jesus was going to entail.
I was also completely confused by his continued exploration of praying the rosary, using Orthodox prayer ropes, and other forms of religious tradition along the way. Yes, he was trying to focus more on the value and emphasis that Jesus put on prayer. But Jesus wasn't praying with rosary beads nor using any other devices and gadgets. He also wasn't trying to see if he could read completely through the gospels once a week or recite a small prayer thousands of times a day. Dobson's continued focus on these rituals seemed to go *completely* against his book's premise, and as such I thought the book largely failed.
Had this book had a different title or been framed differently, it would have worked much better. Dobson did learn quite a bit about himself and his attitude towards others, the value of prayer, and how Jesus would have lived in a culture like ours (and in the process would have upset the very groups today that think they know Him best). And there *are* flashes of humor along the way as he learns what certain Jewish traditions entail (such as the tassels he would wear on his undershirts). But overall, I still couldn't get past what I felt was a mismatch between the title and the content of The Year of Living Like Jesus.
Disclosure:
Obtained From: Amazon Vine Review Program
Payment: Free
One of the first books I read and reviewed as part of the Amazon Vine program was A. J. Jacobs' The Year of Living Biblically. It somehow seemed fitting to also select Ed Dobson's The Year of Living like Jesus: My Journey of Discovering What Jesus Would Really Do when it showed up as a selection on Amazon Vine. Whereas I thought Jacobs stayed true to his premise in the book, I felt Dobson missed the boat on that criteria. That's not to say that there aren't things to learn in Living Like Jesus. I just don't think the actual journey lived up to the title.
Ed Dobson is an evangelical pastor with ALS, and he's to the point where he can see the end of his life in the next two to five years. He made a decision that was pretty radical in its intent.... he would spend a year living like Jesus would live. Remove all the religious trappings, remove all the labels that seem to put Jesus in a box, and come as close as you can to doing what it was that Jesus actually did. Go to places where "religious people" are not generally found, share with others, love others... Definitely not the type of lifestyle that's common these days. Along the way, Dobson had to reexamine many of his beliefs, go counter to prevailing attitudes in the circles he moved in, and generally change his entire lifestyle to accomplish his goal.
Being that there was an immediate comparison to Jacobs' book (Jacobs even wrote the forward), I was set to expect a story of how one would attempt to follow Jesus' teachings to the fullest in today's culture. But the execution got muddled right from the start. Do you choose to "live" like Jesus, placing yourself in a Jewish culture and trying to do the things that Jesus did in his day-to-day existence (keeping Jewish law, going to synagogue, etc.)? Or, do you choose to live "like Jesus", and follow his teachings and his words? It seemed to me that Dobson ended up doing a little of both, and the confusion detracted from the book. He spends a lot of time fretting about eating kosher, wearing tassels, and growing his beard out. Later in the book he seems to move more towards applying the teachings of Jesus, but the shift didn't work in terms of how the book was working for me at that point. There were also pages and pages devoted to why he voted for Obama over McCain, and how that upset his evangelical friends and colleagues. Yes, there was the discussion of how he made his decision based on his experiment, but the whole exercise went on for far too many pages given what I *thought* his year of living like Jesus was going to entail.
I was also completely confused by his continued exploration of praying the rosary, using Orthodox prayer ropes, and other forms of religious tradition along the way. Yes, he was trying to focus more on the value and emphasis that Jesus put on prayer. But Jesus wasn't praying with rosary beads nor using any other devices and gadgets. He also wasn't trying to see if he could read completely through the gospels once a week or recite a small prayer thousands of times a day. Dobson's continued focus on these rituals seemed to go *completely* against his book's premise, and as such I thought the book largely failed.
Had this book had a different title or been framed differently, it would have worked much better. Dobson did learn quite a bit about himself and his attitude towards others, the value of prayer, and how Jesus would have lived in a culture like ours (and in the process would have upset the very groups today that think they know Him best). And there *are* flashes of humor along the way as he learns what certain Jewish traditions entail (such as the tassels he would wear on his undershirts). But overall, I still couldn't get past what I felt was a mismatch between the title and the content of The Year of Living Like Jesus.
Disclosure:
Obtained From: Amazon Vine Review Program
Payment: Free
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