53 pages • 1 hour read
Bob GoffEverybody, Always: Becoming Love in a World Full of Setbacks and Difficult People
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 10-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary: “Three Green Lights”
In Chapters 10-14, the author deals extensively with Christian service in the face of obstacles and human emotions. Goff begins Chapter 10 by describing the extensive amount of time he spends flying and in airports. He relates renting a plane he parked next to two military jets, the pilots of which told him they flew through the mountains to hone their skills. Goff notes he wanted to play it safe while the military pilots were intentionally taking risks to improve their flying. He correlates this distinction to faith: “[…] Jesus never asked anyone to play it safe” (87). He argues that playing it safe is an abandonment of faith. God never intends for us to “come back the same” but rather to grow “more dependent on Him” (87). Goff asserts that God puts “people who are becoming love” in “uncomfortable places because He knows most of us are too afraid to seek them out ourselves” (88).
In the second half of the chapter, he describes an absent green light in the cockpit indicating the plane’s front landing gear did not deploy. Eventually, Goff safely landed the plane with the wheel in place. Reflecting on the incident, he states, “It’s easy to forget that our faith, life and experiences are all the green lights we need” (90). Goff says that God wants us to depend upon Him and not spend so much time trying to figure out the big plan for our lives (91), and he says we should pay more attention to the green lights we already have. He writes, “Figure out what your next move is going to be, then make it” (91). Goff gives his personal definition of faith in the last paragraph: “The difference between the number of green lights we want and the number we get from God is a pretty good description of what faith is” (94).
Chapter 11 Summary: “Last One, Best One”
Initially, Chapter 11 deals with Goff’s travels through the Middle East to assist displaced refugees. It quickly shifts to an account of Goff unaccountably losing sight in one eye. Rather than seeking medical help, Goff continued his extensive trip. When he finally did get attention, numerous surgeries were required on his eye, and his vision remains impaired. He uses this topic as a springboard to discuss the human ability to detect—to see—the presence of God in our lives. As the surgeon could not give him assurances about fully recovered vision, Goff says we are not given any grand promises about what we will see, only that we will see more: “We’ll see what we spend the most time looking for” (97). He says he has come to believe that miracles and healing come in stages (98-99). He also asserts his belief that God always answers prayer, though sometimes we don’t recognize the answer. He writes, “Sometimes when we ask for an answer, God sends us a companion” (99).
He concludes the chapter with the inspirational story of the para-athletic Lex, who suffers from the same eye condition and has been blind since age eight. As a long-jumper, Lex has trained to run toward the voice of his trainer and jump at the right time (100). Goff says Jesus serves that capacity for his followers. He writes that Jesus is calling us “from the edge of eternity” and we should run toward Jesus as fast as we can (104).
Chapter 12 Summary: “Three Minutes at a Time”
Goff talks of learning about the death of his friend Adrian, a TSA employee, at the outset of Chapter 12. He befriended Adrian during regular, brief interactions at the airport in three-minute intervals. The chapter focuses on our awareness of our authentic identity and where that places us with God. Goff describes God asking Adam and Eve where they were so that they would examine their standing with God (109-10). He then turns to the incident in the Christian Bible in which Jesus asks “a few of his friends” “who do people say that I am” (110). Goff expresses the belief that we don’t evangelize others by telling them about Jesus but rather by becoming love and letting people experience Jesus in us. He says Jesus asks everyone if they know who he is. Jesus gives us, Goff asserts, an “invitation to everyone that they can trade in who they used to be for who God sees them becoming. He said we can each get a new identity in Him” (112). His TSA friend Adrian died suddenly of a stroke. Wrestling with the question about his sudden death at a pivotal moment in his life, Goff counsels, when you have questions such as why did someone die, you should wait for God to “whisper the reasons to you” (114).
Chapter 13 Summary: “Karl’s Dive”
Chapter 13 tells the story of Goff’s law school colleague Karl, who became a quadriplegic because of a diving accident. He injured his spinal column leaping head first into knee-deep water as a high school student (119). Goff uses a metaphor to describe Karl’s initial release from the hospital: “The discharge almost felt like he was being released to a prison as big as the whole world” (121). As a college student, Karl got involved with a campus Christian group and was empowered by the claims of Jesus. He decided “he could actually change the world using only his eyes and his mind” (119-22). Goff tells about Karl’s academic and legal excellence as well as his courtroom and literary legal triumphs. He compares Karl to the boy with five loaves and two fishes, saying the lesson is that we should “bring what we have to Him [Jesus], and He will make something amazing out of it” (123). In sum, Goff says, “People like Karl don’t think about what they’ve lost. They think about what they’ll do with what they still have” (125).
Chapter 14 Summary: “Land the Plane”
Goff begins Chapter 14 by describing his personal, inspirational haven, a remote lodge he and his family built in British Columbia, Canada. Because it is so difficult to get to, Goff learned to fly and bought a DeHavilland Beaver seaplane (127-28). He diverges from discussing the lodge to tell the story of his son Adam’s bout of high school “senioritis,” which Goff solved by allowing Adam to take half-day flying lessons (130). He describes flying the Beaver seaplane with Adam and deciding on the spur of the moment to land in a small alpine lake in a ravine (131-32). Goff lands the plane after a precarious descent and then tells Adam he has to fly it out of the canyon (132-33). After Adam has successfully flown the plane out of the ravine, Goff tells him that he has to turn around and land it again. Though successful, it was a nerve-wracking experience for Goff and a maturing experience for Adam (135).
The spiritual lesson from this anecdote, Goff writes, is that God leads us not to the safest route, but the one that demands the most growth. He was convinced Adam could accomplish the feat: “He didn’t need more words or to know what they meant in Greek or Hebrew” (135-36). Goff says God knows that “without risk we can’t grow” (138). He argues that this is why God has given us a dangerous, courageous, and purposeful” life (138). He ends the chapter by encouraging us to step forward and complete the tasks we know how to do but haven’t attempted (139).
Chapters 10-14 Analysis
Chapter 10 is a sermon dwelling on the need to take risks to grow in faith and in the ability to serve the divine. Goff uses his experiences as a pilot to illustrate his notion that growing in love means growing in risks. The key incident he uses to facilitate his reflection is the occasion of a missing green light on the dashboard of his rented plane, theoretically indicating that his nose gear had not engaged. Once again, Goff speaks for the divine, stating that God places us in positions like the one he found himself in during the flight. Goff says the Bible tells us that when our faith is tested, we have a chance to grow (87-88), although he does not identify the passage(s) from which he draws this quote. Having said that God puts us in untenable situations, he then says, “God doesn’t allow these kinds of things to happen to mess with our heads; He uses these circumstances to shape our hearts” (90). Clearly, the missing wheel experience was more than an emotional jolt. Goff was quite troubled as he circled the airport in the dark trying to find out if he had a front wheel, although it is up to each reader to decide whether God uses such events as constitution builders to increase the faith of followers.
In this chapter, Goff chooses to excuse the silence of God in the face of pain and trial by saying this is how the divine provokes growth and proves faith; this silence equally demonstrates the possibility of a sadistic deity or the possibility of no God at all, and therefore, again, it will be for each reader to decide what they believe. The final line of the chapter is another of Goff’s proverbs: “The difference between the number of green lights we want and the number we get from God is a pretty good description of what faith is” (94). This one is pertinent and meaningful because it focuses not on the presence and motives of God, but rather on the faith of the person who is suffering, uncertain, and in danger.
Chapter 11 is another one characterized by a shifting thematic focus. In commenting on the simplicity of the Peshmerga’s military plans to expel ISIS from Iraq, Goff makes the point that Christian people over-plan their actions: “If this is you, here’s how to fix it: make love your plan. There’s less to write down that way” (96). Goff’s non-profit organizations have brought lifesaving, tangible aid to thousands of people in war-torn nations; arguably, accomplishing these feats requires more planning than simply deciding to love.
The heart of this chapter deals with Goff’s serious vision problems he exacerbates by ignoring them to continue his Middle Eastern trip. He writes in the same dispassionate tone he used when discussing the death of his dear friend Carol. Just as he discusses his impulsivity without reservation, Goff does not acknowledge the gravity of failing to stop his trip and care for his vision. In this chapter devoted to the ability to see God, Goff imagines God everywhere, making divine lessons out of his own mistakes.
The final section of the chapter is devoted to the inspiring story of blind, world-champion para-athlete Lex, although Goff is not explicit in explaining how Lex embodies the lessons of the book. The author says Lex is “becoming love” without specifically giving an example of what that means in this case. Goff lavishes praise upon Lex, writing, “His faith doesn’t just inform his heart; it informs his whole life” (101), but Goff does not indicate what he means.
The loss of another friend, the TSA agent Adrian, sets the backdrop for Chapter 12. The chapter develops into a sermon on being aware of our authentic identity. Goff refers to another incident recorded in each of the synoptic Gospels: Peter’s Confession of Christ (111). Goff is referring to the account in Matthew 16:13-20. Goff implies that we don’t truly evangelize others by telling them about Jesus but rather by becoming love and letting people experience Jesus in us. He builds upon this point by saying we each “get a new identity in Him [Jesus]” (112). This is apparently a reference to the statement in Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come” (Revised Standard Version).
Goff devotes the start of Chapter 13 to the story of Karl, a former law school peer who is a quadriplegic. As the author indicates, Karl was not unlike Goff before the injury that disabled him. A constant prankster, Karl injured himself doing a spontaneous trick much like one of Goff’s impetuous hijinks. Goff’s admiration for Karl’s achievement is heightened by his recognition of the similarity and jarring dissimilarity of their personalities and lives. He compares Karl to a figure in the scriptures: the boy who presented Jesus with two fish and five loaves of bread, with which Jesus fed 5,000 people. This is another event recorded in the synoptic Gospels, Matthew 14:31-21, Mark 6:30-44, and Luke 9:10-17.
Of all the events related in Everybody, Always, Chapter 14’s account of Goff and his son Adam landing their seaplane in a narrow alpine canyon is surely the most harrowing and divisive. Those who revere Goff’s advice and adhere to his spiritual perceptions will find Goff’s actions to be an exercise in faith, rewarded in growth. Others will perceive Goff’s decisions and demands to be reckless, irresponsible, and needlessly dangerous—not only for himself, but also for the new pilot he forced to perform precarious maneuvers. As with the other notable events of his life, Goff assigns theological significance to this endeavor, although it arguably does not acknowledge his own willing decision to land, take off, land, and take off in the mountain canyon that day: “God isn’t always leading us to the safest route forward but to the one where we’ll grow the most” (135).
In reflecting on Adam’s accomplishment in safely taking off and landing in the dangerous setting, Goff boasts he knew this was something his son could accomplish. In saying so he makes a declaration: “He [Adam] didn’t need more words or to know what they meant in Greek or Hebrew” (135-136). Goff seems to be equating the criticism he may face from Bible scholars to the criticism his son would surely encounter from professional pilots who would warn that a novice flyer should never attempt a feat so dangerous. Goff seeks to be the authority who challenges the notion that authorities are necessary.
