Struggling with God: Mental Health and Christian Spirituality
Ebook
'Remarkably beautiful and pastoral' JUSTIN WELBY, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY
'Brimming with wisdom and humanity' DAME SARAH MULLALLY, DBE, BISHOP OF LONDON
Struggling with God gets right to the heart of a great predicament for many Christians. When it feels as if our struggles are overwhelming - and our capacity for faith and hope and love is diminished - how is it possible to maintain, never mind nourish, our relationship with God?
The truth, as this deeply compassionate volume reminds us, is that Jesus came alongside people wrestling with mental health problems. Many familiar conditions, such as anxiety and depression, and more severe ones, including bipolar affective disorder and schizophrenia, are addressed by the authors here. Dispelling common myths and misconceptions, they explore the impact such mental health disorders can have on individual Christians, Church and society..
Each chapter includes biblical reflections relevant to its theme, prayers, questions to facilitate individual/group study, and pointers to further reading. In short, the book presents a Christian vision of spiritual and mental wellbeing through prayerful struggling with God.
Jesus came alongside people struggling with mental health problems; the road to recovery involves finding God with us in the struggle.
'This remarkably beautiful and pastoral study by three knowledgeable and outstanding scholars challenges clearly but gently almost every way in which, until the very recent past, we first made mental illness a category that separates and then tried to hide it away . . . There is a great need for the courage to love those who are ill, support their supporters, and form communities of all kinds which are welcoming and safe places . . . I finished the book with new attitudes and a sense of having once again seen potential beauty in the church which we have yet to realise but which is within our grasp.'
'Most people struggle at some point with their mental health. This book offers a fresh, hopeful and scripturally-rooted response, brimming with wisdom and humanity. The stigma which isolates individuals and denies their God-given image is rightly given short shrift. The church is encouraged to embrace the reality of people's experience as a gift, with a vulnerable openness to learning new things. Struggling with God beautifully draws out the resources of the Christian faith to address mental health challenges - our own and other people's - with intelligence, compassion and hope.'
'An essential read and resource . . . The theology has a strong true foundation, based both on lived experience of mental health challenges, as well as years of clinical experience and academic research. Particularly helpful are the bible reflections and prayers which are written with sensitivity and empathy.'
'John Swinton has clearly become the premier pastoral theologian of our time.'
- Title: Struggling with God: Mental Health and Christian Spirituality
- Authors: Christopher C. H. Cook, Isabelle Hamley, John Swinton
- Publisher: SPCK Publishing
- Print Publication Date: 2023
- Logos Release Date: 2023
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9780281086429, 9780281086412, 0281086419, 0281086427
- Resource ID: LLS:9780281086429
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-05-02T17:40:11Z