I found some notes I wrote after reading Inside Out years ago: “wonderfully refreshing in the lack of happy-go-lucky churchisms, one of the few honest books I’ve found on Christian living.” I read it twice; once with a group. I would still recommend it without hesitation to anyone who claims to know Jesus.
The same page of notes included a reference to Finding God. My notes say, “the only Christian-psychology book I’ve ever found worth recommending. sensitive, uncompromising, and truthful.”
I should have written that it also (along with Anna Karenina) helped pull me from a year of despair that almost ended in suicide.
Larry Crabb has written a lot that I haven’t read, but I think I can summarize the premise of these two books as follows: Jesus died to save you from hell, not to make you happy on earth. If you want to be with him, then trust him and thank him and stop whining.
OK, the “stop whining” line is completely my own—Dr. Crabb is much too sensitive to say such a thing. But it’s got some truth to it.
Where in the Bible does it say that being chosen by God or loved by God means not suffering? Couldn’t it be that pain and problems and discouragement are just what salvation feels like?
