Love over Fear: Facing Monsters, Befriending Enemies, and Healing Our Polarized World by Dan White Jr. offers a compelling guide to conquering fear with love in an age of polarization. The book is a collection of stories of those who changed hearts and minds through radical love, and it teaches how to practice disarming compassion and discover the disruptive power of showing affection to monsters.

Author Dan White Jr. is a pastor, author, and speaker who has worked with churches and non-profits for over two decades. He is also the author of Subterranean: Why the Future of the Church is Rootedness.

Love over Fear challenges readers to examine their own biases and assumptions about people who are different from them. White argues that fear is the root of many conflicts and divisions in our society, and that love is the only way to overcome it. He shares stories from his own journey of learning to love people across various lines of difference, such as race, religion, politics, and sexuality. He also offers practical steps and exercises to help the reader cultivate a posture of love and empathy towards others.

It amazes me how people are afraid of things they don't even know. The most interesting thing about this book was to learn how a white male thinks about color people. Even when it just not talk about racism, I think is a topic we all must face and have an opinion. What are we going to teach our children? I have friends who are always making assumptions about certain people not just with fear but with certain hate, I feel sorry about those children, growing learning to avoid people they don't even know. The first time I heard my husband preaching, he was talking about love and how it is the most powerful thing we can do, it is a powerful verb, because it represents God itself. I think some part of the books can be misinterpreted and you need biblical wisdom all the time to discern the intentions of your heart. Loving, integrating, not judging, racism, are very popular topics right now and some people change the truth for self convenience or to fit in, to be socially or politically correctness. You will find the book useful if you need to see inside of you and find out how o you approach people who are and think differently than you. May live as God lived. Only by His power and grace that will be possible.

You cannot love real and raw people with the judgmental mind, because you'll always try to control them, fix them, or size them up before you give yourself in love to them. The "judger"inside us feels intolerant with the choice's others make. You can be a conservative judger or a progressive judger; looking, straining, recording the misdeeds or missteps of others.

This is not a text that is bent for the progressive or the conservative but for the Christian that is tired of being in a polarized world. A world that you cannot voice your opinions so what can you do? You can listen and hear and learn to love those that disagree with you. It is not about trying to change the other to your beliefs but to put the walls down so you can love freely. I think Satan has us where he wants us. A place that we cannot love the enemy of our differences.

As the author states and the text supports, our points of differences can either be walls or bridges. How can we build a better bridge. We seem to know how to build a wall. How can we stop the anxiety of those differences. Do you feel it? We can feel connection to others that think differently by knowing that they are created in the image of God as well. We must develop an affection first for the Lord that spills out to others.

If you are tired of living in a polarized world, I would highly recommend this text. It will give you a perspective of Jesus without compromising and more importantly it will lead you in a better way. The way of Christ. His righteousness not ours.

A Special Thank you to Moody Publishing and Netgalley for the ARC and the opportunity to post an honest review.

Dan White Jr. describes our current culture perfectly - polarization:
"Polarization takes people that have something in common, emphasizes their differences, hardens their differences into disgust, and slowly turns disgust into blatant hatred for each other." (pg. 77)

But the author does more than just describe what we all know and see around us. He gives practical solutions:
- Chapter 8 - "Compassionate Curiosity" - contains the pathway that we can tread: be interested, be inquisitive, be . interpersonal, be indistinct. This is something that I plan to utilize in my day to day interactions.
- Chapter 9 - "The Aikido of Forgiveness" - I love the metaphor of Aikido to describe forgiveness and then showing examples from Jesus' teaching (turn the other check, give your cloak, and walk an extra mile). Excellent Chapter!

This book is a game-changer and needs to be used in discussion within the christian community.

As a Pastor, I plan to use this book at our church to help build bridges within our city!