RESTORED LIVES
Recovery from divorce and separation
By Erik Castenskiold
Monarch Books. 250 pages. £9.99
ISBN 978 0 857 214 805
This is a handbook of practical advice for those who have suffered the agony and pain of divorce and separation.
Sadly, the need for such material is increasing in the day and age in which we live and this includes those couples who are believers in the Lord Jesus.
The author is writing from his own painful experience. He has been used in divorce recovery programmes run from Holy Trinity Brompton, London. It is an empathetic and compassionate book, and yet there is a big ‘but’ which causes me real concern. There is a website that this book is based on, and it states: ‘Although the Restored Lives course was created and run from a church, it is for people of any faith or none at all’. That, sadly, is perfectly true. No Scripture references are found in the book, and, while there are passing references to the Lord, these are very few and far between, so you could easily miss them. One longs for a gospel application of the all-loving, life-giving, hope-inspiring God of all grace and mercy, and there is none. Any Christian comments that are there are a mere ‘tinge’, not even a flavour.
As a secular book, as far as it goes, the advice is positive, sensible and constructive, but as there is no awareness or sense of our utter dependency and reliance on the Lord and the gospel for transformation, one wonders how useful the advice really is. Not much I am afraid. The premise of the book is that there is healing and future hope, and it is with you. So in the end, its usefulness is marred and hindered by its being ashamed of the gospel (Romans 1. 16). This book, as the website says, ‘is for people of any faith or none at all’. No knowledge of the Lord or the gospel is passed on here, so one would hesitant to call this a Christian book at all. It could have all been so much more. www.divorcecare.org provides gospel-centred help for non-Christians and Christians alike, and is a much surer guide.
