How To Love Your Neighbor by Amy Lively

"How to Love Your Neighbor without being weird" by Amy Lively is a book about sharing the Lord with the people in your specific neighborhood.  I picked this book to review as I thought it would be interesting and a good read.  But it ended up rubbing me the wrong way.  I am not saying that we are not love the people that live near us but this book takes the Good Samaritan story about loving your neighbor and making it sound like that it is just about loving the people that live around you.  Which it is about loving everyone around you and far from you also.  It is an interesting read but it did not really give me very many tips.  One of the big things that really kinda of bugged me was the insistent attitude that you must invite and get to know the people in your neighborhood.  Well not everyone lives in a safe neighborhood where you can just go and invite your neighbors over to you home. Sometimes we forget not everyone can live in nicer neighborhoods where you can do that.  Even small towns can have neighborhoods where there is drug dealers and neighbors shooting at each other. I have seen both of those as a child and teenager in my neighborhood and I lived in a small town (population of about 1,800 people).  Yes we knew our neighbors but we also knew some we just would not invite over for coffee.  Even as an adult I have lived in areas that it would not have been safe to invite people over.  I could not just move so I could be in a nicer neighborhood.  Sometimes loving your neighbor is knowing they are there and praying for them otherwise you could be risking your family's safety.  The other point of the book that rubbed me the wrong way was the constant use of the Message paraphrase it is not a good paraphrase at all so any book that uses it a lot bothers me also.  This book was so not for me.  Before you write me off as though I have never done something for the women in my neighborhood I did at one time lead a women's Bible study at the home of one of my neighbors.  So yes I have done some of the things she does recommend for us women to do even though I am a major introvert.  I will say for some people this book may be helpful but it was not for me.

I was given this book from Bethany House Publishers for my honest review.