BROKEN LENSES

A Christian guide focuses on leaning on God during life’s rock-bottom moments.

The heart of Bernath’s sequel is a holistic call for readers to embrace the kinder and more uplifting aspects of the Christian faith. In a series of brief chapters, she draws on aspects of her own life, including intervals of heavy drinking and a rape she suffered during her college years, in order to illustrate the kinds of setbacks and tragedies her readers may likewise encounter. Throughout her book, she encourages her readers to follow the healing tenets of the Christian faith they share and to let those precepts guide them in dealing with other people. At one point, she asserts: “When we devalue those around us, we don’t treat them as God treats them. Devaluing others makes it that much easier for mistreatment or abuse to occur too—whether the abuse is physical, sexual, verbal, or in any of its other forms. The destruction in this world that comes from abuse results from someone not seeing another as valuable as God sees that person.” Each of the manual’s chapters offers open, lined space for readers to include their own thoughts and experiences. All of the heartfelt sections continue the narrative throughline of God’s wide-ranging compassion. Bernath deftly illustrates this mercy by sharing the fact that God “made himself real to me in a tangible way,” helping her to overcome the nightmares that plagued her childhood. “Darkness has no power over light, just as Satan has no power over God,” she writes. “Satan’s darkness cannot overcome God’s light.” Readers familiar with this kind of Christian inspirational literature will be better able to reconcile the contradictions here—by the author’s own theology, if God is always watching, then he observes myriad serious crimes and doesn’t intervene. Likewise, when she claims “God will never ask us to do something he isn’t also willing to do,” she’s overlooking the fact that God isn’t willing to worship someone. Still, her upbeat message of hope and compassion will appeal to Christian readers.

A positive, emotional, and straightforward manual on Christian coping strategies.