Book Review: Healing Is a Choice

I finished this book last night and posted a review on GoodReads. Here is the review.

Healing Is a Choice: Ten Decisions That Will Transform Your Life & Ten Lies That Can Prevent You from Making Them by Stephen Arterburn
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Particularly for a evangelical Christians who are suffering from emotional traumas and hurtful pasts, this book can offer much that is valuable. The author takes seriously the need for the wounded to utilize outside help. It is not a lack of faith to seek outside help, for God works through human agencies to bring about healing.

The importance of the wounded to make difficult but necessary choices in order to progress in their healing is the main thesis of this book. The author summarizes these as ten decisions that must be made. In the version of the Kindle book that I read, a large bulk of the book consists of workbook exercises that an individual or group should work through in order to apply each step as they are presented. The exercises will take time, effort, and commitment.

Many of the steps do not require a particular faith perspective, but a number are strongly evangelical Christian. This may turn away some readers. In particular I saw how the author brings up repeatedly abortion as an emotionally damaging issue. This may or may not be the case depending on one's worldview, but a pro-choice reader may find the dwelling on this particular issue unnecessary and even offensive.

Another point that might cause unease or turn away some readers is a certain amount of gender-stereotyping that the author seems to make. This is particularly pronounced at the beginning of chapter 4 where he discusses dreams that a person may have had as a child and young person. In the examples he gives, he speaks of men having "big dreams to conquer something or to achieve greatness" whereas "it is very common for women to believe that they will grow up and marry someone close to being a prince." This may be a very common evangelical perspective, but it may sound sexist from a more egalitarian view.

What I see could be the biggest problem is the tenth step where the author writes, "Healing is God's choice as well as the timing of that choice and the method of the healing." With what follows the implication is that even after making the necessary decisions to bring about emotional healing, because it is in God's hands, you may or may not see it happen, ever. While I realize that healing may not occur after following the steps, and (as a Christian - though not evangelical) I do believe that God holds the power of healing, the weakness I see is that by laying all responsibility for the actual healing onto God, it lets the author off the hook if the contents of the book are wrong or insufficient. Or worse, the blame is on the wounded because they failed to follow the prescribed steps exactly and make the necessary efforts.

I do think there is value in the information provided by the author, but I would not rely solely upon it. I think wounded individuals should heed the advice given to seek outside help and obtain additional perspectives and tools to help them achieve the healing that they desire.

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