This book does have some good points. As Christians we should ideally be working on maturing in our faith, it is good to be sure that you've actually given your life to Christ (and haven't just inherited Christian culture from your parents), and God did create us to bring glory to himself - he's perfect, so he gets to do stuff like that.

BUT, I am not this book intended audience, and this book is a dangerous mess.

Even if he hadn't told us, it wouldn't have been that hard to guess that MacDonald has an anger problem. He just comes across at times as so very angry with other people who are "twisting" the gospel in various ways. I do agree with him on some points, if you think that God's grace gives you license to sin Paul does have some words for you, but he just came across as so cynical, so negative, so angry, and not really showing any of the fruits of the spirit. I was really surprised that this guy is allowed to disciple other people. He actually equates (on page 194) the Lord's Prayer and Hail Mary, and says those are those are not the prayers to be praying. I know a lot of people really don't like liturgy, but the Lord's Prayer is in the BIBLE! It is Jesus showing us how to pray. It is never wrong to pray the Lord's Prayer.

Besides that, he is literally all over the place. One minute he is kicking positive thinking to the curb, saying it's a horrible idea and he thanks God that people are disproving such folly, and the next minute he is saying we can only truly change if we believe we can. Sounds a bit like positive thinking to me. He repeats this cycle with almost every other self-help formula on the market today. While I guess his views ultimately come across as middling, which is the water I like to swim in, I really feel like the book would have benefited from more restrained language.

Finally, he lists extreme quietness as a sin you might want to work on.

So yeah, this book was hard for me to read. Really got to work on my own anger issues. I am hoping that these thoughts will be helpful to others or even myself - I would love to hear from anyone who thinks I'm wrong, as long as we can keep it constructive. Yes sin is something serious that we need to work on, despite the fact that I like to think about how much God loves me (even though I don't deserve it) I still believe that. ( )