Between Two Worlds

Dan Phillips reviews Unpacking Forgiveness: Biblical Answers for Complex Questions and Deep Wounds, by Chris Brauns:

This is really an excellent book on many levels. For starters, who would think that a doctrinal book on such a complex topic would be a page-turner? Yet this is. Brauns masterfully interweaves real-life dramas and traumas as illustrative to his treatment of a subject. He'll set up a nightmarish situation, then turn from it to the Biblical teachings, and then return to the outcome of the scenario. Again and again I was reading, ran out of time, hated to have to put the book down, and hustled to get back into it — to find out how the incident developed.

Brauns' writing style is engaging and lively, yet the contents are deeply Biblical, Christ-centered, and challenging. He writes with passion, humor, biblically-instructed intelligence, and a pastor's heart. This is no lab-report issued from a research cell in a high tower somewhere above the city, where some brainiac theoretician bloodlessly relays his findings, and leaves the rabble to work out the details. Brauns gets right down into the details. His conviction is that "There is no wound too deep for God to heal; there is no question too complex for him to answer" (p. 23).

Read the whole thing.