The Book of Love

“This book is as timely as it is significant. In our current season of cultural confusion and division, many of us long to explore how God’s love shapes–or reshapes–our experience of Scripture. In The Book of Love, Richard Beck guides Jesus-followers back to the core message and calling of the Bible.” –John Barton, Institute for Faith and Learning at Baylor University and author of Better Religion

“When I learned the lyrics ‘The B-I-B-L-E, yes, that’s the book for me’ as a young child, I had no idea that my life would be spent studying, teaching, wrestling with, and preaching from that book. Now, after all these decades, Richard Beck’s work–informed by the best biblical scholarship and the author’s own faith journey–articulates so well what I’ve learned: The Bible is a book about the God of love who is persistent in his loving ways. I will be passing The Book of Love along to my children and grandchildren!” –Mike Cope, director of Ministry Outreach, Pepperdine University

“Richard Beck’s The Book of Love masterfully demonstrates how reading Scripture through the lens of God’s radical love challenges both conservative and progressive assumptions. His insights on gratitude over grasping, weakness as strength, and love’s social transformation offer profound wisdom for those seeking to live as authentic Christ-followers in a divided cultural landscape.” –Claire Davidson Frederick, director of the Saunders Center for Joy and Human Flourishing, Abilene Christian University

”‘You can’t read the Bible scared.’ Richard Beck is dead right about that. But we can’t find our courage alone. We need friends–witnesses we can trust, reliable guides who can show us how these not-safe texts might still be good for us. In The Book of Love, Beck offers just that kind of help. Writing with the candor and compassion born of hard-won confidence in God, he steadies us, heartening us for the risk we must take, assuring us that the darkness we fear in these words is, in truth, the hiding place of the Spirit–upper rooms already prepared for Christ to appear and eat with us.” –Chris Green, professor of public theology at Southeastern University and bishop of the Diocese of St. Anthony (CEEC)

“Beck’s writing reflects a deep love for the God revealed in Scripture, and that love makes space for readers of any faith background to wrestle with big questions: “Is God truly for us?” “What exactly changed on the cross?” But also, “What changed because of the empty tomb?” Because these questions are asked in love, the conversation remains open, hopeful, and deeply human. That makes The Book of Love a work worth reading, sharing with friends, small groups, and congregations alike.” –David Sessions, Minister of the Word, Northside Church of Christ, San Antonio, Texas

“If we could walk into a library that gifts us not only wisdom and peace but the permanence of God, we would enter its doors every day. The Bible is that good and beautiful library, but each of us brings baggage to it: fear, confusion, anxiety, and doubt from bad readings that abuse the text and manipulate its message. We need reliable guides, the community of Spirit-bearing Bible readers of the past and present. In The Book of Love, Richard Beck helps us join that community of readers, who have looked to Jesus Christ as the key to unlocking its perplexities and mysteries.” –The Rev. Kenneth Tanner, author of Vulnerable God: Reviving the Wonder of God-with-Us in Our Humanity

“Like a great work of art, the Bible’s central message comes powerfully into view when we look at its words from a distance. The Book of Love calls readers to a common-sense reading of Scripture that doesn’t get lost in the weeds but distills the essence of God’s word to us as a message of love.” –James Wiser, dean of libraries, Kansas State University

Richard Beck is professor of psychology at Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas, where he also lives. He is a popular blogger and speaker and the author of several books, most recently Hunting Magic Eels: Recovering an Enchanted Faith in a Skeptical Age. His published research also covers topics as diverse as the psychology of profanity and why Christian bookstore art is so bad. Beck leads a Bible study each week for inmates at a maximum-security prison.

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