Right on the front cover Pastor Brian Tome reveals his agenda for Free Book*: "I am fanatical about freedom. And I'm fanatical about coming at you hard in this book." In an effort to come at the reader hard, Tome spends the first couple of chapters making lots of extreme statements just to let the reader know how fanatical he really is. Frankly, he got off on the wrong foot with me, coming across as rather proud of just how free he is. I kept finding myself asking, "Did he really mean that?" or "Did he really need to say that?" For instance, Tome likes beer. I have no problem with that. But that seems to be his favorite liberty to flaunt, so he brings it up on a number of occasions. (The second most mentioned freedom is riding his Harley without a helmet.) It's as if he has a particular group of people in mind whose skin he is trying to get under. This group he calls the "Bible Thumpers" and most of the time they are an easily spotted straw man. I'm not sure how many times he contrasts his freedom to the bondage of Bible Thumpers, but it's more than I could have counted on one hand. The statement that bothered me the most was his claim that "we don't need another book about the cross. But another book about freedom? Yes." I'm wondering how he thought he could write a book about freedom in Christ without the cross being a central theme. (See Colossians 1:22 and Hebrews 2:15 for starters.)After the first couple of chapters Tome settles down and offers a few valuable chapters. In the chapter titled "Evicting the Squatters", Tome uses the imagery of letting squatters make themselves at home in your backyard as an effective metaphor for how Christians allow sin to make itself at home in our lives. The chapter "Blahs, Break, Blues and Blessing" was also quite insightful. In it Tome uses the Iraelites' progression from slavery in Egypt to victory in the Promised Land to show how believers can progress through these four B's. In "When Grace Meets Truth" Tome unpacks these twin attributes in the life of Jesus and shows the need for both in both abundance and balance in the Christian's life.
There were times when I really wanted to make this book a five-star recommendation. But there were simply too many one-star moments for me to be able to do this. I say this as one who could stand to experience some of the freedom Pastor Tome writes about, not as one who has gone further down the road of liberty than he has. I truly believe when he has walked down that road a little longer himself, Tome will be able to rewrite this book and be just as fanatical about freedom but a lot more wise in how he expresses it.
