Biblical Psychology: Christ-Centered Solutions for Daily Problems (Signature Collection)

Let me begin my review by admitting that this book was nothing like I expected it to be. I expected a biblically based review on the psychology of mankind: man’s emotional make-up, needs, drives, and motivations to do what he does (and does not) while exploring what man is called to do by God and still can do, by God’s grace and workings in man’s life, even through his fallen state. There is some of this in Oswald Chambers’ (“My Utmost for His Highest”) works and in here but it’s lost to some degree in Oswald’s format. The first 100+ pages of this book are really theology; they are about description or explication of God and terms related to creation. The latter half deals more directly with man and his state of being but it is presented in a format that makes it almost esoteric. Chambers has chiseled man as God’s creation down into parts such as soul, spirit, body, mind and such and uses scripture to underscore his understanding and definitions. I found it hard to keep track of. Also, and while I did not purchase the book to look at Christ-centered solutions for daily problems, I found little instruction for these problems. Specific problems were given as examples of corrupted elements of man’s personality, but only usually in a single paragraph form, and usually by way of explanation of the element; there were no detailed solutions, and rarely solutions, but mere recognitions. Therefore I find the subtitle to be extremely misleading.

To hopefully give the potential buyer a better sense of what they’ll be looking at here is an excerpt from page 242 that has Chambers discussing how pieces of the puzzle fit together: “Soul and body depend upon each other, spirit does not, spirit is immortal. Soul is simply the spirit expressing itself in the body. When the body goes, the soul is gone, but the moment the body is brought back, soul is brought back, and spirit, soul, and body will again be together. Spirit has never died, can never die, in the sense in which the body dies; the spirit is immortal, either in immortal life or in immortal death. There is no such thing as annihilation taught in the Bible. The separation of spirit from body and soul is temporary. The resurrection is the resurrection of the body.” (Chambers was talking about the “domain and dominion of the spirit” here.) Much of the book is like this paragraph and deals in and addresses religious and Christian concepts. Though it is a biblical psychology and it may help a student learn how the pieces are connected to the whole but on the whole I don’t think that this book will be that helpful. I hate to say it but 2.75 stars. I wish I’d read something else.