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It’s not a long book - just 155 pages in my paperback - with seven chapters. I read one at a time - sometimes just half a chapter - over ten days or so. I don’t think I found anything new in it, but I thought it well-written, the three authors blending their styles seamlessly. And it contains plenty to think about. The subtitle is, 'Trust God and others with who you really are', and that's what the book is basically about.
The first premise made is that most of us put on ‘masks’ when we’re with other people. Some more than others, of course. But it’s a rare person who is totally honest about who they are, all the time, and who doesn’t change their behaviour depending on who they are with.
It’s an overtly Christian book, not one intended for secular psychologists or people without faith. I expect anyone could benefit from reading it, but without a Christian perspective a reader would have to skip quite a lot. The point made in the first chapter is that God made us exactly who we are, and that he has dreams and plans for each of us. But the most important thing is to become our authentic selves, before God and before everyone else. Growing closer to God and more open is more important than any amount of success in careers or any other field.
There’s a lot about sinning, too: about sins we commit, and those committed against us. They don’t specify exactly what they mean by this, although there are some useful anecdotes, some of them quite eye-opening. Repenting means truly acknowledging that we have done wrong, and taking whatever steps are needed to put it right, if possible, and avoiding the same sin in future. But, as they explain, we can’t do this in our own strength. We need the grace of God, who loves us no matter what.
When sins are committed against us, including terrible childhood abuse for some, they encourage turning to God and telling him what happened, in direct language, acknowledging the pain, resentment, anger and everything else that resulted. They don’t suggest ever trusting someone again if they have hurt us deeply, but point out that the long-term emotional effects of something negative can even outweigh the initial crime. And only by forgiveness, with God’s grace, can we start to move forward.
There’s a lot more in this vein. I couldn’t relate to all of it - I was fortunate to have a mostly comfortable childhood, free of any kind of abuse. So it’s usually easy for me to forgive and move on from minor hurts or slights. I suspect some who have suffered a lot might find the advice difficult to take, even trite; the examples given of specific people tend to make it all sound rather too easy.
Quite a bit of the book is taken up with images of two rooms - one where the aim is to please God, and one where the aim is to trust God. The authors explain that many well-meaning, devout Christians do all they can to try and please God, and in doing so miss the point that God wants us to trust him. Only that way can we be free to be the people he made us.
I thought this image was a useful one at first, but it was taken rather to extremes in a way that can happen with metaphors. The implication was that we’re all actually in one or other of these rooms, relating (or not relating) to others there with us. There’s certainly some truth in the pictures, but there were rather too many literal-sounding details for my tastes; it started to feel rather forced.
Still, I found the book very readable, and thought about it sometimes during the day. I think it could be very useful for people caught up in trying to please God - and, very often, trying to please other people - as a starting point in becoming more authentic.
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