Christina Langella (a “Brooklyn Blogger”) recently posted a review of Unpacking Forgiveness.
It has been encouraging to read several positive reviews in recent days. I found this review especially so. I can tell Christina read closely and put a lot of effort into this post.
If you are anything like me – and I trust that you are, you’ve picked up some baggage along the way. As we travel down this rugged road called life, the burden of past wounds, injustices, and relational strains can weigh heavy on us. I love how Shannon Popkin, a freelance writer who endorses Braun’s book puts it: “Unpacking Forgiveness”, “Offers a tender hand of guidance to those who ache to unpack what life has flung at them, and awakens a longing for the happiness that only forgiveness can bring.”
For several years now, I have been hitting a brick wall when it comes to the spiritual breakthrough necessary to get beyond – as Popkin’s so articulately describes, “what life has flung” at me. What’s more, it seemed that any outward attempt to deal with it, in a way that I thought was biblical, only complicated matters and inevitably added more weight to my already heavy load.
Much of what I heard from mainstream Evangelicals on the matter of forgiveness seemed so trite and clichéd. Even the sermons from well-known, and respected preachers all sounded so stale and commonplace. Nothing even remotely came close to addressing the painful, thorny issues of my heart that I so longed unload. Most, if not all, of the counsel that I received, (though sincere and well intended) did nothing to help. In many cases it only served to complicate matters and make them painfully worse.
A few weeks ago I read a familiar passage of scripture that came alive to me in a most peculiar way (Matthew 5:43-48). This was the beginning of my breakthrough that eventually led me to “Unpacking Forgiveness: Biblical Answers for Complex Questions and Deep Wounds”, by Chris Brauns.
Read the whole thing here.
