Before I begin I want to express my gratitude to WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing for providing me with free books to read and review. Knowing that I will need to provide a fair and honest review has made me a better reader and has provided me with books that very often I would not have read otherwise. Patrick Morley’s Man Alive: Transforming Your 7 Primal Needs into a Powerful Spiritual Life is the latest. Reading Man Alive left me with mixed feelings.
I believe that if you are to read Man Alive on your own what you will get out of it greatly depends where you are on your spiritual journey. Overall, I was not very challenged by this book. However, there were some quotes and ideas that I did find insightful. One of my favorites: “The starting point for cycle breaking is to own your stuff. No doubt the sins against you are real, perhaps tragic. But it’s what you do next that counts. Will you take responsibility for yourself.” (p. 98) I am not sure if it is irony or not but my favorite quote from the book actually comes from Christian writer and psychologist Larry Crabb: “’Biblical counseling must insist that the image of God is central to developing a solid view of personality; that our sinfulness, not how we’ve been sinned against, is our biggest problem; that forgiveness, not wholeness, is our greatest need; that repentance, not insight, is the dynamic in all real change.’” (p. 95) Also, I really enjoyed chapter 7 “To Love And Be Loved”. This chapter gave ten useful suggestions for how to love your wife better that I can and will certainly use. Morley also has 10 suggestions on how to love your children which, if I had children, I believe would be very useful as well. However, excluding chapter 7 and the few quotes that I liked most of this book was not very deep—I really feel like it just scratched the surface with most things.
Despite not being very challenged by Man Alive I could not help but frequently thinking about the book being used in the context of a small group and its potential to spur really great conversation. Moreover, I think this context is primarily what Morley was aiming for with the book to begin with. Each chapter ends with discussion questions which I found useful for the most part. However, if I was leading a group I think I would add a few questions about the reading itself. For example: Did you agree or disagree with what Morley had to say in this chapter and why?
I would not recommend this book to a friend for a solo read, but would definitely recommend it to someone thinking about starting a men’s group—for that it would work really well!
No comments:
Post a Comment