I am fairly settled in my faith and how it informs my actions in the world. Yet, like a lot of others, I struggle to respond to myself with the same compassion, kindness, and love.
If you struggle with treating yourself and others with love and compassion, get Rabbi Brian’s Highly Unorthodox Gospel, which is subtitled “A Book About Love. For Others. And Self.”
Its author Rabbi Brian Zachary Mayer’s stories are kind, compassionate, and sometimes downright hilarious. They recognize the humanity in all of us and lead us toward a way of living that is, above all else, kind, compassionate and filled with love for others and ourselves.
Note: As you read this book, the concepts of kindness, compassion, and love will fill your consciousness. Just know that.
Gospel of Rabbi Brian 5:3: Love is transformational, and love is unconditional positive regard. Love is seeing people for who they are and as they want to be seen. And love is for ourselves, too. Love requires accepting and understanding. Love is an action, chosen according to the recipient’s desires. Love is our birthright, yet it needs to be practiced. And we need to choose love. Again and again. Wastefully. (Page 189)
Mayer has provided exercises to help the reader reach a place of understanding more deeply about oneself and one’s relationship with God as well as understanding more clearly about how one interacts with other people. These exercises allow readers to understand the simple and open relationship that is to be had with God that will, if we allow it, inform our relationships.
This “Highly Unorthodox Gospel” is indeed entertaining. The perspective Mayer provides helps tremendously. I found myself laughing — usually at myself as I put my life in the “blanks” and saw how unrealistic my beliefs were around certain things. Because of Rabbi Brian’s perspective, I could trace the beginnings of those beliefs back to my childhood. Most importantly, I never felt my faith, as a Christian, threatened in anyway by the contents of this book.
If you are struggling with a specific aspect of faith, peruse the contents, flip through the book, and it’s more than likely that you will catch sight of something that feels as if it were written specifically for you. You are invited to wallow in this book! Have fun with it. I encourage you to take the time to read the “not footnotes” notes Rabbi Brian provides.
Most importantly, you will find compassion, kindness, and love within the pages of this book. So much so, that you will find more than enough to share with others as well. Enjoy!
Rabbi Brian was kind enough to answer a few questions concerning the writing of this book, which was released late last year and has sold more than a thousand copies already.
1. What inspired (triggered) you to write this book?
I didn’t really plan to write a book. I started a blog in 2016 and started writing newsletter articles — 40 articles a year. When the pandemic hit, I thought about taking my favorite writings and putting them together. And, then massaged and massaged and massaged the words until a book started to appear. Countless edits later and a book came out.
2. What was the biggest thing you learned, or the most unexpected thing that surprised you, while writing it?
I learned that it’s not that complicated. If we want to live in a world of more love and less hate, we need to treat others with more love and less hate. And we have to do the same for ourselves.
3. What do you hope LGBTQ+ people of faith would take away from the book? What about allies?
The word heretic has its roots in the Greek word meaning “someone who chooses.” And we all have the choice to choose our faith — what we do and what we don’t believe. I hope that LGBTQ+ people of faith feel validated in their choice to ignore (and if possible forgive) those who make absurd claims about morality based on a book that doesn’t even itself portend to be the word of God. We all get to choose what we believe and as so long as it includes compassion, kindness, and love, it is true faith.
Also, I wrote Section 2:4 of Rabbi Brian’s Highly Unorthodox Gospel and called it “An Apology.” In that I attempt to apologize on behalf of those who have purposely perpetrated harm in the name of religion and religious education. I hope that section might help give LGBTQ+ people a bit of solace.
4. What impact do you hope the book has on society? Is there a part of society that needs this book more than any other?
I hope to convince enough people to be 2 percent kinder so that the world heals. As Jimi Hendrix said, “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.”
5. How do you think your own journey would have been different had this book been around when you were younger?
I wouldn’t have been as scared.
6. These are some pointed titles… Are they for shock value, or for giving people the opportunity to deal with the reality of faith? (I loved the part of Section 3, “The Book of Malarkey,” titled “3.2 God’s Penis.”)
I make the point explicit in that section that words are just words. And, if you take issue with my speculating about God’s shama-lama-ding-dong and you don’t take issue with the image of God as male, you are complaining about the wrong thing.
7. Finally, and hopefully not the least: How do you view this book — as an exposé of our biblical faith, or an attempt to rescue us from biblical abuse?
The book is an insider’s tell-all guide to unlearning religious untruths and a guide to having more love in one’s life (and the world).
Spiritual director, author, wife and mother (not always in that order), Daphne Reiley has published two books — A Tapestry of Love, The Spirituality of Caregiving (co-authored with Rev. Dr. Joseph LaGuardia), and Love, Then Listen, Sharing My Son’s Journey Toward His True Gender, published by Nurturing Faith — with a third, Relentless Love, scheduled for release in Spring 2025.