The Healing Path, by Dan B. Allender. New York, Waterbook Press, 1999. pp.257
The
pandemic, political polarization, personal losses, trauma, and many other adversities
abound these days. Dr. Allender’s book is a timely balm for the soul. Every
believer in Christ longs for the shalom will find deep solace in the
healing path, in which Allender lays out God’s redemptive purposes for the human
malady of suffering through the triad graces of faith, hope, and love. ‘The
redemption of our hearts begins with our first cry and ends with our last
breath (107).’ In this existential landscape, every human story has a past, present,
and future. We traverse from our past to live at present, the threshold to the
future. The memory of our history and the dream of our future profoundly impact
our present existence. Christian faith, hope, and love undergird and fertilize earthly
life’s redemption over the mountains of joys, valleys, and deserts of betrayals,
pain, and sorrow.
Dr.
Allender is a Reformed theologian and counseling psychologist; he uses his
master storytelling skill to relate compelling real-life examples to drive home
his points. The book is organized into four parts: Part one deals with the inevitability
of suffering in life and the need to deal with it for healing. In part two,
Allender highlights causes of suffering, namely betrayal, powerlessness, and
ambivalence, as manifestations of loss of faith, hope, and love or desire. Part
three focuses on how God’s redemption works by growing faith, hope, and love in
us. Part four is the application of these principles of faith, hope, and love in
living radical lifestyles, touching others with the love of God, and walking in
the community of other kingdom workers.
‘To
live is to hurt’, but humans have devised ways to avoid life’s pain. Our
approach (or lack thereof) to suffering can lead us towards God and true joy or
move us away from Him. In our painful walk, through the valleys and deserts,
God divulges our heart idolatry that clings for escape/pleasure and security
and turns our hearts to the one ‘who leads us to safety.’ Allender contrasts
the psalmist’s confidence in Ps.23 to the desolation of the prophet in Lam.3, but
in the end, he waits in hope despite the seeming darkness (23-24). The healing path
is like embracing life: God, people, and circumstances, with an open heart, waiting
in anticipation and encircling others, and then letting go.
Betrayal,
powerlessness, ambivalence are evil onslaughts on our healing path of
redemption. ‘Betrayal is the breaking of an implied or stated commitment of
care…When we break covenant toward another and refuse to care, then we have
betrayed ourselves, our God, and that person. (53)’ Betrayal shakes the
foundation of trust and confidence in others and ultimately corrodes away our
faith, and memory of goodness - the faithfulness of God and His redemption. With
a lack of faith, we feel powerless caught in the web of the world, flesh, and
the devil, unable to move forward in the transformative path of redemption. ‘Everyday
faith and hope lead us to love, or betrayal and powerlessness drag us into
ambivalence and shame. (90)’
Human
memory and our stories shape our life of faith. Two stories from our past
compete for allegiance in our lives – one of betrayal and harm, and one of redemption.
‘The wager of faith is simple: Which stories will win my heart?... The wager is
won only when even the smallest story of redemption means more to us than the
greatest betrayal and loss…(128-131).’ Biblical hope dreams of the future beyond
the shattered remnants for a far more glorious rebuilding than before the loss.
Love- remembered (past), dreamt (future), enables us to live lovingly – i.e. ‘responsibly’,
in the present instead of closing our hearts.
The
path of healing leads us to live a radical life shaped by our unique stories to
be more and more like Jesus. We would engage in redemptive conversations with
others relating our past, present, and future to lead others toward the path of
healing. Finally, the journey toward healing involves walking with other sojourners
in community.
Allender
prosecutes his thesis that faith, hope, and love lead us in the path of healing
by contrasting the opposing tendencies that work against the graces of redemption.
Four common human traits of the response to pain are paranoic, fatalistic, heroic,
and optimistic to avoid it. Betrayal and powerlessness lead to ambivalence
which robs the freedom, sanity, pleasure of giving and receiving in life
interactions. To manage powerlessness, the routes we take are: self-righteous sufferers
– i.e. martyrs; or turn belligerent to make someone pay; or disengage and get
lost in the fantasy of winning a lottery or buying a new car, or, in countless vicarious other lives. By
exposing what is underneath the rocky soil where redemption cannot take root,
Allender furrows readers’ hearts to embrace the Gospel, others, and the path of
healing.
By
employing stories from life examples and Scriptures, Allender draws readers to
identify with the stories’ characters and their struggles to find the healing
path. The accounts of Katrina, who was raped by her tennis coach in her teens,
John, who was unfairly terminated from his job, and the author tells his own
stories of betrayal and redemption to lead us to listen and understand the
competing themes we give in. It is a life-long process to listen to the core stories
of our lives. And the ‘themes don’t smack us in the face when we look for them;
instead, we must actively arrange, rearrange, and create the order that makes the
most sense at any given point in our lives. Allender reminds God is a storyteller
who weaves His presence into Scriptures, tells ‘two core stories: the Exodus
and the Cross; all other human stories will mirror to some degree the drama of
his rescue and redemption’ (116-130). ‘God will woo us to the desert in order
to win us back to himself. (20)’
As
a pastoral counselor and theologian, Allender applies the gracious themes of
faith, hope, and love to heal human heartaches and pain. He challenges us to
embrace the immanence of the transcendent God in the pouring of His Spirit and His
resurrection power for us to lean into suffering by exercising faith, hope, and
love in the path of healing. Allender calls us to lean into our future like a
downhill skier leans down to gather momentum and speed. We are to look back at our
past in faith – our memory, dream of the future that is our hope to incarnate
the love of God in the present radically. Our ‘hope is leaning into the
unknown, risking our lives for a future promised in the Word’. The pleasures of
this world are scandalous windows to the glory of the next, and they grow our hope.
Allender cites the French Christian existential philosopher Gabriel Marcel at several
points to exhort living fully in the present moment with ‘response-ability’ –i.e.
‘the capacity to hear the call of abundance (or lack thereof) and pledge myself
to the good of others in that moment.’
It
is a dance of love. It is a life of freedom (Gal.5:1-6): ‘God gives us the
frightening freedom to find our own way after naming the path to follow Him.’ Similarly,
love in the healing path does not grasp and hold onto others but allows others
to respond or reject it. We embrace, encircle in anticipation, and then let go.
In the last section of the book, Allender challenges us to grow more and more like Jesus as we journey on in the path of healing. The challenge profoundly impacts readers after exposing our escapist tendencies and our human devices to eschew pain and suffering. The radical life we are called to live is wishing the redemptive purposes and the healing paths for our neighbors who are image-bearers of God. It invites others to live, engaging in redemptive conversations in the ‘agora’ – marketplaces, with people in pain by becoming ‘an actor in a new story that God is telling on behalf of us all.’ Finally, we live this dance of love in a community of ‘motley crew’ sojourners – family members, political enemies, and people of ‘wild’ backgrounds. The Healing Path is for all believers to journey on who dream of shalom amidst earthly life’s agony.
