The church I attend held a book club this past summer. I was extra excited to join this club! I’ve always wanted to be part of a book club and had never had the opportunity. We read a book each month between June and September, and had an opportunity to get together twice per month to discuss the books as we read through them. I hope we’ll get to do this again next summer, but for now I thought I’d write a bit about my biggest takeaways from each book.

I’ll start with our June book, “Love Over Fear” by Dan White Jr.

Dan spends the first bit of his book setting up the groundwork of what fear is and how it affects us. He discusses fears that are rooted in a scarcity-mindset, a need for security, and a reluctance to embrace people whose way of life may oppose our own. He describes a fearful person as someone who “may even appear loving, but suspicion will interfere with the impulse to love someone unalike, different, or foreign…” (pg. 26) These fears drive out love and polarize us against those who differ from us. Dan uses Biblical teaching, anecdotal stories, examples from current events, and practical advice to persuade readers of their responsibility to push past this fear in order to better love our neighbor and to map out a better response to fear than “fight, flight, or freeze.”

I think what struck me most about this book was the comparison of “Law Culture” and “Relational Culture” in chapter six. Dan explains how the United States has a law based culture. We have laws to govern behavior, and if you break the law you are punished. He explains how over-reliance on the law takes away from our ability to relate as humans in situations where there may be disagreement or offense. If you break the law – I don’t have to talk with you or hear you out, I can view you as a criminal, find satisfaction in your punishment, and not think about you ever again.

Dan describes the Peace Circle method used by some Native American tribes to handle criminal and civil matters. Judges are viewed as healers and trials are viewed as ceremonies – the “plaintiff” and the “defendant” will be able to hear each other out with the support of the community and with the purpose of reconciliation – not punishment.

I’m not really sure why this section of the book was what struck me the most. It reminded me of something one of my co-teachers and I used to do in our classrooms called the “Work It Out Bench.” As far as I know, it was my co-teacher’s idea. Whenever her students would argue about something, she would send them to the “Work It Out Bench” where they had to talk and resolve their problem – she and the rest of the class would help mediate (our class sizes were small at this particular school). I saw her do this one day, and immediately stole the idea for my classroom as well. As a teacher, I live by this idea of restoring students to good standing instead of “punishing” students when they misbehave. And I’ve found that using a restorative approach with my kids is way more effective for behavior management than using a punitive approach. If it works in the classroom, why can’t it work in life?

Dan’s comparison of law and relational culture also reminded me of another story that may have gone viral in Black social media. I can’t remember all of the details, but the gist of it will remain the same. A woman (I assume she was a Black woman) saw a couple of young (Black) boys stealing hygiene items from a Wal-Mart. She noticed that they were being watched, so she pretended to be related to them and paid for their items. Afterward, she had a talk with them about what they were doing. At first she was giving them the business. Babies, where are your mothers? You trying to get yourself killed? You really want to lose your life over some deodorant? At least that’s how I imagined her getting on their case. As it turned out, the boys were brothers and their mother was either very sick or had already died. They were living with older relatives who were also not well and/or underemployed. The whole family was under a lot of stress. The boys’ basic needs weren’t being taken care of but instead of putting more stress on their family members, the brothers decided that they would take care of themselves. The woman gave the boys her number and told them to think of her as their auntie from that day forward – that she would do what she could if they called her and needed help with some of their basic needs.

This woman could have minded her business and allowed these boys to get caught – That would have been the “law culture” thing to do. And having done so would have almost certainly ruined those boys lives by setting them on a path from which it’d be hard to return. This woman could have let fear rule – what if these boys really were criminals and because of her intervention they ended up harming her? Instead, she did the “relational culture” thing. She sought to look deeper into their situation and restore them to good standing in the eyes of those who’d been following them around the store. Then, she took it a step further by offering her support for the boys in the future. She let love rule.

On one hand, I can understand how it makes sense for everyone in a group to be clear on what’s acceptable for the group and what’s not. On the other hand, relying too heavily on the law makes it easier to demonize and/or dehumanize people. If those boys had been caught, they’d be labeled as criminals for simply trying to take care of their basic needs. No one would see all of the circumstances (illness/death, poverty, not wanting to add stress to their family) that brought them to the Wal-Mart to steal. As a result of being labeled “criminal,” they might get caught up in the system and have a hard time finishing school, being hired, or being able to move on. Chances are, over time they’d have to break more laws in order to survive in a society that would have labeled them “law-breakers” and cast them aside. The trauma they would experience as a result of going down this path would be passed on to any future generations of their families.

Another flaw of law is that it doesn’t fix the problems that cause people to break laws. Law can only manage behavior (and poorly, at that). Being relational goes a longer way toward healing a person so that he or she is less likely to commit an offense in the first place.

I think my biggest takeaway from “Love Over Fear” is that I have to look for ways to be more relational. I fit into some weird middle space where I’m definitely not ‘law culture’ minded, but I haven’t fully achieved the ‘relational culture’ mindset, either. I’m a really non-judgmental, open minded, and (secretly) empathic person – I would never intentionally choose not to love someone, but I certainly don’t feel like I would make the cut if “loving your neighbor” were a competition I were trying to win. It’s difficult for me to think of concrete ways to love people on the spot – unless those people are kids. Its always after the fact that I come up with ways to love others, and I’m always finding myself thinking – “Why didn’t I just [insert considerate action]??”

I also appreciated Dan’s explanation of compassionate curiosity. He outlines a list of four traits we can adapt to invite the types of conversations that lead to helping us better know and serve others.
Two of these traits – I think – I do a pretty good job with just by nature of my personality. The other two traits I could stand to work on a bit. Check out the book for more detail on compassionate curiosity!

“Love Over Fear” was a great choice for kicking off the book club. It was an easy yet reflective read, it was well organized in terms of how the content flowed from one chapter to another, and I enjoyed many of the stories shared within its pages.

If you’ve read it, let me know what you thought!