JOSIAH’S FIRE
By Tahni Cullen with Cheryl Ricker
BroadStreet Publishing. 225 pages
ISBN 978 1 424 551 408
This is the very detailed story of an American Christian mother’s fight to get help for her son who has autism.
The author goes into depths on helps and interventions which won’t mean much to British readers. She is certainly passionate about all she does, but she refers to receiving help from characters she reads about in the Apocrypha and seems to be guided by what she interprets as providences along the way.
Her young son is described as having various spiritual or ‘heavenly’ experiences and she accepts these uncritically. Josiah is described as giving clear messages from God to his mother, which she acts upon, such as resigning from her job. Spiritual truths are taught from the story of Beauty and the Beast and the child’s writings on his iPad are viewed by his mother as authoritative. It seems that the Mom takes more notice of her son’s pronouncements than of the Word of God. Josiah writes that he is taken by angels in the spirit up to heaven and God shows him things, and that he sees and hears angels often. His mother says he has a prophetic gift.
I have no doubt in my mind that God can reach in to the hearts and minds of people with autism who can turn to him in faith. But I think that this book is going to be troubling to many, and bring false hopes to others. Not a good buy.
