Economy of Love was one of those items that sneaked itself into the checkout basket while ordering textbooks :P Shane Claiborne's books has always challenged me in my walk of faith and I had the same expectation for this one. It's relatively short as it was written for a group study setting so it didn't take that long to finish. I've been looking for books about money spending and knowing the value of enough so this automatically made it to the top of my reading list. Note: I did not follow the 5 week study, I simply just read through the material. Like any Claiborne book, the book is filled with colour, pictures, scribbles, and powerful powerful words.
Thoughts:
The book talks a lot about relational tithe, something that Claiborne and Anderson started. Essentially, it is the idea of "enough" and how they challenge people to realize that there is "enough for all our needs, but there is not enough for all our greed". They encourage people to build relationships to share financial resources and burdens. A good point made by the authors is that the sign of the early church is the ending of poverty. In Acts 2 & 4, the Bible says that all believers shared everything they had, and no one claimed any of their possessions as their own. There were no needy person. There was no poverty. People simply knew their neighbour's struggles without asking...
Overall I thought the book was a good read, however, a lot of the material was quite similar to Claiborne's book, Irresistible Revolution. I wished they emphasized more on relational tithe and how it has challenged/impacted people's lives. This wasn't really mentioned until the end of the book. If anyone has the DVD series.. let me know! I want to watch it! :)
For more information about relational tithe check here
Favourite Quote:
'Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed"
Mahatma Gandhi pg 66
Rating: 3.5/5
