Max Lucado-Style Examination Of John. With a title like this, the easy assumptions are that the book is going to be some kind of fluffy bullshit “self help” slop that never actually helps anyone or that it is going to be so “inclusive” of everything that it excuses everything and just make everyone feel better about themselves, no matter how horrible they may be.
Except that is about as far from what we actually get here as is possible to be.
What we actually get here is an insightful look through the Gospel of John that shows elements both of the Gospel as a whole and of specific stories herein that even I, who have studied this Gospel extensively throughout my own 42 years and counting and even preached my one “official” sermon on one of the very passages Butler spends a chapter walking us through in this text, had never known before. Even Lucado, for all his awesomeness, hasn’t exposed some of the elements of these stories and this book the way Butler does here, at least not in anything I’ve read from Lucado. (Though Lucado *does* have an even stronger look at what was going on at the Feast of Tabernacles, in a vivid description I’ll never forget and have often retold…even though I don’t remember which of Lucado’s books it came from.)
Butler exposes here more clearly than I’ve ever seen anywhere just how much the Gospel of John was written explicitly to show people just how much God loves them, in a way that the people – particularly his fellow Jews – of the era would understand much more deeply than is obvious millennia later and in a completely different language and far different culture. In revealing all of this rich detail, he does for the overall Gospel exactly what Lucado did for the Feast of Tabernacles – he makes it *so much more real and vivid*. Even as someone who truly has studied this very text off and on almost literally since he could read at all – I’m fairly certain John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but shall have everlasting life” was literally one of the first things I could read at all, growing up in Sunday School and the Church nearly as much as I was in public school -, Butler reveals elements that make the book so much more alive even *for me*. Details like the entire structure of the book being a common way to structure Jewish tales even as far back as the time of Moses, that the frequent references to time were as much about story as about connecting those particular stories to particular periods of Holy Week / Passover – the days when Christ made His ultimate sacrifice. These are literary details that one may expect a Southern Baptist church to gloss over, perhaps, but I even took a Junior level collegiate class in Scriptural Literature as an elective in college and never learned this! Granted, this was a public college and not even a private school, much less an actual Seminary, but still! *Scriptural*. *Literature.*, and I didn’t learn about this *literary* technique! I had to learn about it over 20 yrs later in a random book by some preacher most people have never heard of!
Now, about the assumption at the top that this would be some kind of bullshit that excuses everything? Nah, Butler aint about that. Butler was pilloried barely two years ago for his book Beautiful Union: How God’s Vision for Sex Points Us to the Good, Unlocks the True, and (Sort of) Explains Everything, because he *dared* look at all aspects of sex from a Biblical, conservative Christian viewpoint. He got a *lot* of fire over that book, including one “reviewer” infamously going in and rating any book with his name attached to it at one star on Goodreads, even a book literally titled at the time “Untitled [I forget the year number here now] Joshua Ryan Butler Book”, which given when I saw that she had done this, I suspect he hadn’t even started writing yet at that moment! Yet here Butler references the exact same take on these same issues and has similar types of takes on many more.
And yet, like Lucado, Butler aint exactly about making people feel judged either. He’s not going to hesitate to call out sin… but he also does it in a caring manner that makes it clear that we are *all* sinners in need of grace, he more than any of us.
If you don’t like Christians or anything to do with Christianity… why are you reading a book that literally has the name of Jesus in the subtitle? Seriously, if you’re that bent out of shape for whatever reason – and maybe there is legitimate trauma there even… just ignore this book. If there is trauma there, get the help you need for it. But don’t bother reading this book until you do, because it is just going to piss you off – it is literally a book that talks about Christ on every single page, and you’re not ready for that. If you’re this type of person, just ignore the book – don’t bother reading it, and because you’re not going to read it, don’t be like that other asshole I told the story of above and rate one star something you never actually read. Yes, I know, it gives you that dopamine hit for a minute or two, but that’s it, just a shallow high that you’ll need something else to get that feeling in five minutes.
For those more open to Christianity – again, for whatever reason, even at just a comparative religions type level – check this one out. Even if you don’t agree with Butler’s takes on sin and the various societal and personal issues he discusses here, like I noted above, there’s a lot of legitimate learning here that even I didn’t previously know, despite my own extensive studies of this particular text. I might even go so far as to say that even if you have some Doctorate level degree specifically on the Gospel of John… there’s probably *something* in here even you wouldn’t be aware of.
Read this book, then write a review and let the rest of us know your own experience with it. This has been mine, and I’m interested to see what yours is like.
Oh, and that star deduction despite everything I’ve said above? As with so many others – even Lucado, maybe *especially* Lucado – there is rampant proof texting (citing Bible verses out of context as “proof” of some argument) here, even in a book whose overall narrative structure is walking through a single book of the Bible. I wage a war on this practice, and my only real “weapon” in that war is a star deduction on every review I write where the book uses it.
Very much recommended.
This review of God Is On Your Side by Joshua Ryan Butler was originally written on July 31, 2025.
