Dear friends,
This is a really special moment in my journey. I’m so grateful to share it with you.
Today I unboxed the first physical copies of my next book Reviving the Golden Rule: How the Ancient Ethic of Neighbor Love Can Heal the World. After years of working on this project, it felt surreal to hold it in my hands. (It will officially release on October 2 and is available for pre-order now.) My wife Lily kindly captured this milestone in this 2-minute video.
The opening section is called “Gratitude” and names many of you who have helped make this book possible, including my editors Colton Bernasol and Zach Gordon at IVP Academic. I want to give special thanks to Lily, my board, Graham Smith (happy early birthday!), and Beth and Hythem Shadid for their incredible encouragement in this long journey.
I love several things about this book, and I hope you’ll also find these aspects energizing.
Stories
Reviving the Golden Rule is grounded in real-world stories, both from my life and people around the world. A
ton of research went into this book. But it’s personal, accessible, and an invitation to something that matters intimately for every one of us. Shane Claiborne generously described it as “the perfect fusion of simple and profound.”
Othering
Reviving the Golden Rule begins by facing head-on the problem of “othering.” If this term isn’t familiar to you, it simply means our human tendency to see “others” like they’re unrelated or less than ourselves. It’s the root of our indifference, hatred, and violence.
I show how pervasive and dominant othering was in ancient culture. It normalized ethnic rivalry, enslaving people, and degrading women and children. I also show how it’s on the rise again and threatening our humanity today.
Healing
I then dive deep into the medicine that can heal othering. It’s hiding in plain sight, at the heart of our ancient faith: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
This moral vision is an invitation to see every person and all people as equally precious and morally connected to ourselves. It’s far more than random niceness. When we choose to embody this way of love, othering is slowly abolished. In the midst of World War 2, French philosopher Simone Weil said that it starts with simply asking other people, “What are you going through?” The next step is to genuinely care.
Of course, we’ll still have plenty of differences and disagreements to navigate. But neighbor love consciously and courageously resists seeing any other human as unrelated or less than ourselves. Dietrich Bonhoeffer called it “a new life in being there for others.” This is a life of connection and care.
Movement
Reviving the Golden Rule narrates neighbor love as a dynamic, unfolding movement across history and culture. It’s not an abstract, disembodied idea. This call to love others is alive and expanding still today. The book’s cover illustrates this so elegantly with expanding golden circles that swirl into one another and keep their edges open.
I’m delighted that the book walks readers through every passage in Scripture that directly addresses loving our neighbors as ourselves. It offers a one-stop-shop for what Jesus called the heart of God, the key to scripture, and the core of our flourishing. It will give you a robust understanding of the Bible’s rich moral vision.
It then guides you across twenty centuries of the neighbor-love movement. I start with Jesus’ commission to his disciples to cross every boundary and teach “all people” what he taught – this universal way of love. Along the way, I highlight some of our most inspiring exemplars of neighbor love like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Mother Teresa, and Óscar Romero. I also confront sobering cases where Christians have weaponized othering and betrayed neighbor love. These exemplars and failures have so much to teach us today.
Invitation
From beginning to end, “love your neighbor as yourself” is an invitation. It’s an invitation from our Creator and our own deepest longings to join a movement to heal our humanity, starting right where we are now. It’s not a box to check or a slogan to agree with. It’s a way of life to embody in all that we are, say, and do – however imperfectly. I introduce simple practices that energize this healing way in everyday life.
In the face of othering, I believe neighbor love is our most important spiritual and moral mandate today. Left and right, we’re being pressured to view some “other” group as the problem, as the “enemy.” We’re told that if we could just defeat “them” or get rid of “those people,” we’d be safer, happier, and right with God.
Jesus’ movement of neighbor love defies this us-versus-them division of humanity. It boldly refuses to be squeezed into attitudes, headlines, and systems of loyalty that organize around opposing people. In this movement, the only opposition are the mindsets, behaviors, and systems that harden our hearts and set us against one another.
Love’s insistence on seeing the neighbor in “the enemy” is what makes this movement so costly but also so hopeful in our world today. It invites us to reimagine our belonging. And also to design alternative ways of organizing our attention, resources, and systems that recognize the dignity of every person.
What’s Next 
Reviving the Golden Rule is releasing on October 2nd. You can pre-order it now on Amazon, BookShop, and wherever books are sold. You can also read chapter one for free here.
I hope this book encourages you to help continue this ancient, expanding movement today. I’d be so grateful if you’d help me spread the word about this book and its vision for human healing.
Yours with love and gratitude,
Andrew
