SPIRITUAL FOCUS ON BOOKS February 21, 2005 Issue

To go with grace

PATRICIA KADICK

POSITIVE RESPONSE TO THEIR FIRST collaboration inspired authors Philip Gulley and James Mulholland to write If God Is Love: Rediscovering Grace in an Ungracious World. Readers had thanked them for presenting in If Grace Is True: Why God Will Save Every Person the idea that God actually does love everybody—however difficult that idea is for some to admit. If God Is Love is Gulley and Mulholland's attempt to delve into that idea by asking: "What could our world look like if we took seriously God's love for all people?"

Filled with vignettes from their individual lives, though shared as one voice, the text in If God Is Love flows from a consideration of the significance of theological belief, to chapters about embracing and living grace, and about gracious religion and Christianity. Some readers may not agree with some of the opinions expressed in the book—that grace is accessible to all or that heaven and hell are locations to either reward or punish. Others may be resistant to later chapters that deal with national and international situations. Yet for me these individual stories and personal revelations are shared without a preachy or holier-than-thou tone. They are revelations, offerings from the heart, that invite the reader to take and nurture the ideas—or not.

Like true storytellers, Gulley and Mulholland bring you right along with them, making you feel you're on a path of your own self-discovery. I was moved by the story of a woman named Mary, whose love for God filled her life and taught the authors that knowing God, rather than getting to heaven, is the ultimate prize. And I was moved as well when the authors discussed how they could see beyond one prisoner's heinous crime to the man God loved.

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