Spiritual Maladies

To love is to live and to live is to love; this is God's intention for humanity. However, humanity falls ill along the way; its love of God and neighbor becomes diseased, infected with other loves, the love of money, of pleasure. . . . To these malaises God becomes our physician; he draws alongside us to heal and to restore us to fullness of life. The author enables us to rediscover this obscured face of God, the face of God our physician, full of compassion and very attentive--a God before whom it is best to lay bare all our ills in order to be healed.""In this important corrective, Daniel Bourguet reorients readers. Sin is not so much law-breaking behavior that requires a punitive judge as it is a spiritual malady of the passions in need of the Great Physician. From Cain's sin to Christ's ministry, we see grace as God's medicine for our sick world. This book is gentle, therapeutic gift.""--Brad Jersak, author ofA More Christlike God""Spiritual Maladies offers a helpful survey of holistic healing (body, soul, and spirit) in Scripture that is informed by perspectives from the early church fathers of the Eastern Church. Bourguet challenges Western Christian theologies that overemphasize God as judge and sin as transgression, integrating a therapeutic use of the law with a robust presentation of God as healer and sin as sickness. Bourguet presents God's treatment of Cain's anger as a case study in a way that models the integration of careful exegesis and contemplative insight at the service of pastoral care. His final chapter on the Eastern Christian understanding of the eight mortal passions is a valuable introduction to the diagnosis and treatment of spiritual maladies that will serve anyone engaged in holistic liberation.""--Bob Ekblad, Tierra Nueva and The People's Seminary; author ofReading the Bible with the DamnedandA New Christian ManifestoDaniel Bourguet has been a pastor in the French Reformed Church. He has exercised a range of ministries in the local church and in theological institutions. Hecurrently leads a contemplative life that involves prayer and writing; he also conducts retreats and receives visitors.