![The Bad Habits of Jesus: Showing Us the Way to Live Right in a World Gone Wrong by [Sweet, Leonard]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/519qNWTncYL.jpg)
The Bad Habits of
Jesus: Showing Us the Way to Live Right in a World Gone Wrong by Leonard
Sweet details habits uncovered by Sweet and crowd sourced by his colleagues
that traditional society would find rude.
Additionally, many of the habits would also have been found unacceptable
by Jesus’ own contemporaries. Sweet
provides context for Jesus’s bad habits including being late, not being specific,
spending too much time with children, partying and just intentionally being
rude to others. For each of these habits
Sweet provides an explanation of the habit and the benefit that Jesus and his
followers can gain from the habit.
Honestly, I have a mixed mind about this book. I totally understand how these bad habits can
at times be good examples can provide good benefits. For example, being late can also be seen and
described as slowing down instead of rushing, providing time to mediate and
allowing one to better interact with creation.
But there is an elephant in the room to me, which is for some people
with the habit of being late they are simply rude. And being rude is not always a positive! Additionally, Sweet discusses Jesus being
intentionally offensive to teach lessons and challenge the status quo. He himself provides examples where his digression
led him to be offensive to others. But
for me this explanation seems like permission for Christians to be purely
offensive. I see plenty of postings on
Facebook and other places, one which was beyond shocking I saw this week, where
in the name of being truthful, Christians are simply being petty! Quick fact everyone, I changed my opinion due
to Facebook said no one ever! So in the
end, the book is really uneven to me; jumping between strong teaching to
lessons that need further development and caveats which I believe Sweet could
easily provide.
The Bad Habits of
Jesus: Showing Us the Way to Live Right in a World Gone Wrong by Leonard
Sweet is a book that those who enjoy Sweet’s numerous writings will likely want
and enjoy. For me however, I would warn
against generalizations, I am a historian.
Being late can definitely be a sign of slowing down one’s lifestyle. Or it can just be a message to others, you do
not matter. In the end, Jesus played all
these situations perfectly…but he was God.
Review Copy Provided
for Purposes of Review
