STRESS:
The path to peace
By Simon Vibert
IVP. 190 pages. £8.99
ISBN 978 1 783 591 527
‘This is not a self-help book’ says the author in his introduction and he is right. So why have IVP given it a title and a cover picture – candles round a bath with white towels on a chair which suggest that it is?
The author is Director of Preaching at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and states that his ‘principal interest in the topic of stress is theological’. As a former GP for 30 years, and very stressed indeed during many of them, I have to say I thought it more theological than therapeutic, though if the reader appreciates this before they buy it there is much helpful material within it, but none than is not available elsewhere and more clearly marketed.
Having said that, this is a very God-focused book – never a bad thing in dealing with stress – and one of its emphases is that as our grasp of God enlarges our stress diminishes. There are chapters on whether being a Christian leads to more stress or less, on work, rest and worship, on letting God be king, taking a godly approach to ambition, and on remembering that God is for us.
The most helpful chapter in my view, however, is the one on dealing with anger – a common accompaniment to stress when we are dishing it out and a common precipitant of stress when we are on the receiving end of it. Vibert makes the helpful observation that stressed Christians are often disciplined people. ‘They can control their thinking; they can control their actions. But none of us can control our reactions.’ Anger is often a barometer of our true state of peace or anxiety and for me the self-help tips which followed were of much more relevance to the title of the book than much of the theological exposition of Romans 8 which concludes the book. A book, then, by a preacher for preachers. Stressed non-preachers may need to look elsewhere.
