Jacqueline A. Bussie - Love Without Limits: Jesus Radical Vision for Love with No Exceptions

Praise for Love without Limits

God is love. Love your neighbor as yourself. I want to embrace these biblical dicta, but so often I hear them as clichs. In a way equaled only by C. S. Lewiss The Four Loves, Jacqueline Bussies dilation of love wakes me up so that I might see, practice, and receive love. In this moment when so many of us find it hard to love the neighbor with whom we disagree, Bussies work seems especially urgent.

Lauren F. Winner, author of Wearing God

Love without Limits is a beautiful, exquisitely written, and deeply moving proclamation of revolutionary love. A courageous triumph of solidarity over censorship and hate.

Valarie Kaur, founder of the Revolutionary Love Project and author of See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love

In a world as balkanized as the one in which we find ourselves, Bussies words light the way toward practicing a love so deep it subverts the social order, so radical it scandalizes the powerful, so vast it excludes no one. A love, it turns out, that couldnt be censored.

Chicago Tribune

This is a book about love, but not just any love. Its about a cosmic love, deep-faith love, break-down-walls love. Every page pulses with that same radical love. Read it and let the contents pour into you and make you better.

Eboo Patel, author of Acts of Faith

In Love without Limits, Jacqueline Bussie offers us a no-nonsense, no-excuses, love-without-exceptions instruction manual. Written with a warmth and earnestness that invite readers to settle in and stay, this book gives us permission to think in new ways about old stories while reminding us to open up to loving even the most rejected parts of ourselves and others. Love without Limits is folksy, generous, and wise.

Sheri Reynolds, author of The Rapture of Canaan

Jacqueline Bussie is one of the most insightful and inviting thinkers in the church today. I love the way she seamlessly integrates head and heart into this vibrant treatise on what has always been at the center of Christianity and yet has so often been ignored: love.

Nadia Bolz-Weber, author of Pastrix and Accidental Saints

If you believe, as I do, that love is the heart of Jesus message and should be the point of the Christian life, then youll be surprised to see how few books there are that aim specifically to help you become a better practitioner of love. And youll be thrilled when a book like this comes alongwell-written, inspiring and practical, deeply engaging with Scripture, and joyfully celebrating the primacy of love.

Brian D. McLaren, author of The Great Spiritual Migration

I want to press this book into the hands of every Christian who has despaired of our faith being choked by narrow moralism, prejudice, nationalism, and all those who sought Jesus and were greeted by a door slammed in the face instead of a seat at his banquet table. Jacqueline Bussies a gifted preacher with the voice of a friend who will grab you by the shoulders, look you in the eye, and say, no matter what your family of origin says, no matter what your church says, no matter what you say, you are beloved. Full stop. The Good News is good news for every single one of us, or its no good at all.

Jessica Mesman Griffith, author of Love & Salt, curator of the online spiritual community Sick Pilgrim

Love Without Limits is more than a book; it is a profound and witty guide to a way of lifeno, not just a way of life, but the way of life Jesus outlined for us in his life and teachings, if we would only pay attention. Over and over again this gracious book reminds us that love without limits is not only our goal, but is possible if we have the courage to attempt it and to pay, if necessary, the price. I love this book. It has become part of me.

Anthony S. Abbot, author of Dark Side of North, Pulitzer Prize nominee, winner of the North Carolina Award for Literature, North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame 2020 Inductee

This is a memoir, but its also a theological examination of the depths of love.

The Presbyterian Outlook

Like no other book, Love Without Limits gives graciously to my students, embodying a vision of Christian living and loving that successfully strains the bounds of traditions many of them inherit. Jacqueline Bussies voice connects like few authors I have taught in over twenty years in the undergraduate classroom. I have repeatedly witnessed this books transformative effects on learning minds and yearning hearts, and commend it to all who educate and who seek edification.

Caryn D. Riswold, Professor of Religion and the Mike and Marge McCoy Family Distinguished Chair in Lutheran Heritage and Mission at Wartburg College, author of Feminism and Christianity: Questions and Answers in the Third Wave

Jacqueline A. Bussie

Broadleaf Books

Minneapolis

LOVE WITHOUT LIMITS

Jesus Radical Vision for Love with No Exceptions

Copyright 2022 Broadleaf Books, an imprint of 1517 Media. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Email or write to Permissions, Broadleaf Books, PO Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1209.

Broadleaf Books edition published 2022. Previously published 2018 by Fortress Press.

Cover design: Cindy Laun

Print ISBN: 978-1-5064-8144-9

eBook ISBN: 978-1-5064-4689-9

While the author and 1517 Media have confirmed that all references to website addresses (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing, URLs may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

To my beloved husband, Matthew Myers (19682021)

I loved you without limits

You loved me without limits

You were the bravest person Ive ever known

You were my best friend since age fourteen

You were my greatest champion

You were the champion of everyone who needed one most

You were my blanket on lifes coldest nights

You were the pillow on which my cheek rested

You were the light behind my eyelids

You were my lifes garnish

You were my home

You were my revolution

You were my compass

You were my music

And you still are all of these things and always will be

Even though you were taken from mefrom all of ustoo soon

And this world is infinitely less without your huge, huge heart

F or me, writing is prayer. A form of healing. A stethoscope that brings my ear one inch closer to Gods heartbeat... and one mile closer to the worlds hurt and hope. I thank you for reading this bookfor listening with me. Our world needs your ears.

Three years ago, when I first wrote Love Without Limits, I never wouldve expected that a book could have its own lifecomplete with heartache, rejection, failure, solidarity, and joy. Or that my own life could so deeply be tied to it. I guess thats what can happen when an author tries to trace none other than the outline of her own heartand the hearts of those she lovesonto a books pages.

As many of you know, Love Without Limits was censored by its original multinational Christian publisher. When I refused to delete affirming true stories about my LGBTQ and Muslim friends from the manuscript, the publisher rejected it, then demanded I pay back my entire advance in order to buy the rights back for my own book.