Faith That Hurts, Faith That Heals/Understanding the Fine Line Between Healthy Faith and Spiritual Abuse

Faith That Hurts, FaithThat Heals is an excellent guidebook tounderstanding what healthy faith is and is not. So many books of this type seek to destroy or eliminate theelement of faith in a person's life or they are, in fact, takingaim at one or more specific "ministries." Arterburn and Felton offer a view of religion that is liberating without insisting on unbelief. They encourage the reader to use the sense God gavethem to compare the gospel message to what they are experiencingin a church, fellowship, friendship, class, or marriage and family situation. They encourage the reader to question and reason. Jesus always questioned and always reasoned and neveraccepted that he should accept whatever was preached just becausesomeone said he should. In the spirit of Christ, these men encourage the reader to "come, let us reason." The authors address the claims of popular religion and encouragethe believer to understand that "grace is free but it ain't cheap." They also warn of the dangers of religious addiction andhow easy it is to focus on religion while avoiding what are thereal issues of a person's life. While all these issues and more are addressed, the good news of the book is that a person can recover from harmful addictive behaviors and become a healthy person with a healthy faith._Faith that Hurts, Faith that Heals_ should be required readingfor every believer.Donna Reagan at Warden Memorial Library

This book provides tremendous insight into an addiction: addiction to religion. Particularly helpful is the description of the structure of addictive religious groups. Read this book for a glimpse into the world of angry and power-grabbing religious leaders, steeped in denial; their hurting and victimized followers...and the ensuing results. The similarity between the illustrations in the book, and actual situations commonly found today will be clear. Not for the queasy or timid reader. This book will help you to clarify the distinction between faith and addiction. Challenging, informative, and highly recommended. For those who have been trapped in a destructive religious group of any kind, including an abusive church, this book will facilitate understanding and healing.

When people grow up with spiritual abuse, they woould definately benefit from this book.