Good Grief: A Fresh Review of God’s Healing for Life’s Losses

Note: Melinda Lancaster posted the following review of God’s Healing for Life’s Losses at her site Thinking Out Loud on Purpose.

Excerpt: “Upon receiving God’s Healing for Life’s Losses, my plan was to: read it, do a short review, and move on. God had another plan. The book “read me” and as a result exposed my misconceptions concerning God and grief. It also caused me to review, at length, my relationship with God. Taking me on an unexpected path towards healing God’s Healing for Life’s Losses has become a real game-changer. It has continued to work in my life long after I put it down.”

Full Review: Good Grief

Losses—we all experience them along with the accompanying pain. They penetrate our lives in various forms and magnitudes with little or no warning. Some are short-lived while others lead to long seasons of suffering and grief.

Suffering and grief are something we are all familiar with. Yet, these two words are NOT typically “hot topics” in most Christian circles. As a matter-of-fact they are infrequently dealt with. I find that somewhat astonishing given the fact that 1,185 of the 1,189 chapters of the Bible, in some way, touch on the subject of suffering or death.

It is also confounding to see, with so much of Scripture dedicated to the subject, how frantically we search for ways to quickly dismiss grief. Whether we downplay our pain with positive platitudes or frantically numb it with a frenzy of activities the issue remains the same. We need a framework or “theology of suffering” to deal with our pain if we are to experience God’s healing. Many believers do not have one.

A Biblical Primer

In his latest book, God’s Healing for Life’s Losses, Dr. Robert Kellemen has penned a primer for sufferology that allows for such a framework to be constructed. While walking with the reader down the path of grief, which Kellemen is deeply and personally acquainted with, he offers something that has been sadly lacking–a Biblical approach that goes far beyond the traditional model. By going “the way of the Word”, instead of the way of the world, this small but power-packed book gives the readers permission to grieve freely, in a biblical manner, while providing the necessary tools.

I was not at all surprised by the author’s ability to bring spiritual light to this subject but I must say that I was amazed by the masterful way in which he so carefully and compassionately unpacked the eight biblical steps or markers on the road to healing. With the precision of a surgeon he cuts to the “heart of the matter” removing infected notions and cancerous beliefs so that real healing can occur.

The Book “Read Me”

How do I know this? I experienced it personally. I must say, that I was not prepared for the impact that God’s Healing for Life’s Losses would have on my life. No stranger to loss, over the past few years, I’ve encountered grief of my own. I thought that I was handling it when in fact I was hiding from it. That is until the opportunity to review my friend’s book came along.

Upon receiving it, my plan was to: read it, do a short review, and move on. God had another plan. The book “read me” and as a result exposed my misconceptions concerning God and grief. It also caused me to review, at length, my relationship with God. Taking me on an unexpected path towards healing God’s Healing for Life’s Losses has become a real game-changer. It has continued to work in my life long after I put it down.

Handling Grief Biblically

Having studied the subjects of suffering, grief, and loss over the years I’ve read countless books by an array of Christian writers and God’s Healing for Life’s Losses has surpassed them all. It is by far the most condensed and concise book on handling grief in a biblical manner that I’ve ever read. In my opinion it is also the most helpful.

I look forward to using it as a ministry tool and highly recommend it as a gift to all who are experiencing a loss of any kind. There is no way to adequately convey how much spiritual help is packed inside, but if you read it I believe that you too will be amazed!

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Tags: Blog Tour, Book Review, g, God's Healing for Life's Losses, Grief, Grieving

Good Grief, Bad Science, and All-Sufficient Scripture

Yesterday, the New York Times published a fascinating Op-Ed piece by Dr. Allen Frances called Good Grief. In the article, Dr. Frances reports that a startling suggestion is buried in the fine print describing proposed changes for the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM V). If this suggestion is adopted, many people who experience completely normal grief could be mislabeled as having a psychiatric disorder.

Bad Science

It’s important to note that Dr. Frances is no enemy of psychiatry or even of the DSM. He’s the former Chairman of Psychiatry at Duke University, and was the Chairman of the task force that created the DSM 4.

Frances paints an alarming portrait of what could happen under the suggested change.

“Suppose your spouse or child died two weeks ago and now you feel sad, take less interest and pleasure in things, have little appetite or energy, can’t sleep well and don’t feel like going to work. In the proposal for the D.S.M. 5, your condition would be diagnosed as a major depressive disorder.”

With practical insight, Frances then explains:

“This would be a wholesale medicalization of normal emotion, and it would result in the over-diagnosis and over-treatment of people who would do just fine if left alone to grieve with family and friends, as people always have. It is also a safe bet that the drug companies would quickly and greedily pounce on the opportunity to mount a marketing blitz targeted to the bereaved and a campaign to ‘teach’ physicians how to treat mourning with a magic pill.”

Good Grief

According to Frances, and I agree, the DSM 5 is proposing a radical expansion of the boundary for mental illness that would cause psychiatry to intrude on the realm of normal grieving. The bereaved would lose the benefits that accrue from facing grief honestly and candidly. Grieving is an unavoidable part of life—the price we pay for having the capacity to love other people deeply. Frances is right when he states, “It is essential, not unhealthy, for us to grieve when confronted by the death of someone we love.”

More importantly, grieving people, rather than turning to the Christian community for sustaining comfort and to Christ for healing hope, would instead be tempted to cling to a quick medical fix. Rather than facing suffering face-to-face with Christ, depths of grief could be masked by prescription drugs.

Though Frances does not approach this issue from a scriptural perspective, he does see the harm that can come from a medical approach to a personal, relational, spiritual issue.

“…there would be the expense and the potentially harmful side effects of unnecessary medical treatment…. After recovering while taking a useless pill, people would assume it was the drug that made them better and would be reluctant to stop taking it. Consequently, many normal grievers would stay on a useless medication for the long haul, even though it would likely cause them more harm than good.”

This is not to say that medication is never appropriate during bereavement. Grievers with severe and potentially dangerous symptoms could still be treated and diagnosed without the medicalization of every grief experience. As Frances puts it:

“For the few bereaved who are severely impaired or at risk of suicide, doctors can already apply the diagnosis of major depression. But don’t change the rules for everyone else. Let us experience the grief we need to feel without being called sick.”

Frances saves his most passionate plea for last.

“Turning bereavement into major depression would substitute a shallow, Johnny-come-lately medical ritual for the sacred mourning rites that have survived for millenniums. To slap on a diagnosis and prescribe a pill would be to reduce the dignity of the life lost and the broken heart left behind.”

All-Sufficient Scripture

While I would not choose the phrase “sacred mourning rites,” I am convinced that God’s Word provides all-sufficient wisdom that guides us even in the chaos of grief, suffering, and loss.

In God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting, I journey with readers through eight biblical aspects of the grief and growth process. Rather than “sacred mourning rites,” I like to think of these as God’s GPS: God’s Positioning Scriptures. They provide scriptural and spiritual grief and growth directional markers on our healing journey.

Through candor (honesty with myself), complaint (honesty with God), crying out to God (asking God for help), and comfort (receiving God’s help) we learn that it’s normal to hurt and necessary to grieve. We move from denial, anger, bargaining, and depression to God’s personal comfort.

Through waiting (trusting God with faith), wailing (groaning to God with hope), weaving (perceiving God’s plan with grace), and worshipping (engaging God and others with love) we learn that it’s possible to hope and supernatural to grow. We move from the world’s goal of “acceptance” to God’s loving purposes of faith, hope, and love through grace.

We must not replace good grief with bad science. Instead, we should face grief face-to-face with Christ using the wisdom of God’s all-sufficient Word.

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What are the dangers of replacing good grief with the quick fix of a medical approach?

Tags: Allen Frances, DSM 5, God's Healing for Life's Losses, Grief, Grieving