An earnest, step-by-step guide for helping overstressed Christians back into a relationship with God.
A jeremiad against the evils of perfectionism.
Stough (Healing Letters, 2010) takes a stern but compassionate look at modern society’s drive toward perfectionism, which she views as a kind of impiety. She initially surveys some of the fears of modern life—a backpack may now be a bomb, or a broody schoolboy might be contemplating a massacre. It’s “culturally numbing,” she writes, “and leaves parents scrambling for alternative educational choices.” The resulting pressures, she says, prompt many in secular societies to strive to work harder than ever and attempt to fix everything themselves. Perfectionism, she writes, is quickly becoming “anxiety’s new drug or spirituality,” but “it doesn’t fix anything.” In fact, she observes, it’s counterproductive, as it makes people think they’re taking care of problems “when really they’re adding to it with its slew of negative side effects.” At heart, she views this reaction as one of pride, and it brings out some of the text’s most strident preaching: “Like Lucifer,” she warns, “your pursuit of greater perfection will lead to the fall of your kingdom.” This well-meaning book aims not only to be an antidote to such perfectionism, but also a workbook to help readers find their way to a loving, accepting friendship with God. As such, she urges readers to take their insecurities and imperfections before the Lord, looking to Proverbs: “In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.” Each chapter includes excerpts from her journal, effectively personalizing her own struggle to overcome self-indulgent perfectionism: “There are only two choices,” she writes, “pleasing God or pleasing self.” Christian readers feeling overwhelmed by the demands of modern society will find Stough’s book to be a clear call for them to take a moment to stop and remember the basics.
An earnest, step-by-step guide for helping overstressed Christians back into a relationship with God.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5127-0585-0
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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