Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: A Review

The modern-day church isn’t doing a good job with helping people to grow emotionally, but Christian spirituality requires this growth. This is the focus of Peter Scazzero’s book ‘Emotionally Healthy Spirituality.’ It’s a book I started noticing when I realized how many people are reading it. I heard so many rave reviews that I decided I needed to get it and read it myself. Here, I’ll share my key takeaways from each chapter. 

Chapter One: The Problem of Emotionally Healthy Spirituality

Scazzero begins with what might be the central issue of the book: “Christian spirituality, without an integration of emotional health, can be deadly…” (p. 9) He rightly points out that the church has neglected what he calls the ‘emotional aspects of my humanity’ and says “the phrase…seemed to belong in a professional counselor’s vocabulary, not the vocabulary of the church” (p. 15).

At this point, I was fully tracking with the author, but I became confused when he started to describe the issue in his ministry. As he states it, “something was desperately wrong — wrong with me and wrong with the church” (p. 15). After several pages, the author still couldn’t name what exactly it was that was wrong. Scazzero moves on to focusing on all kinds of solutions. He lists his ideas: More Bible study, deeper levels of community, prayer, spiritual warfare issues, worship, serving, prophetic insight, and the grace of God in the gospel. Yet, he says, “something is still missing” (p. 16).

This made me suspicious. The author just listed the God-given means of grace – but somehow, that isn’t enough? I remembered back to John Mark Comer’s book ‘The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry,’ where Comer describes a similar issue in his ministry. Despite using all the God-ordained solutions, he too comes to the conclusion that it isn’t enough. 

Same plot, different characters. Comer finally figures out his issue, declaring that it must be ”hurry”. Scazzero’s issue, he figures out, is emotional immaturity. What he needs is to fix this, and then his ministry will resolve.

What Scazzero is dealing with in Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, in fact, are genuine issues that do need to be resolved. My contention is that they ARE dealt with by the means of grace that the author outlined earlier, but Scazzero has a defective view of these means, as if they aren’t enough to adequately address the problems he is facing.

This actually leads to a confusing question throughout the book. What exactly is emotional immaturity? Is it sin? Many of the issues (though not all) that Scazzero goes on to describe are exactly that: sin issues which are dealt with in Scripture. But it’s confusing, because he doesn’t deal with them that way and supposedly, developing emotional maturity was not addressed in the previous practices that he had tried.

I could summarize this and say that, in Scazzero’s view, these issues are not dealt with in Scripture. But that isn’t fair, because he spends much of the book pointing out biblical solutions to these issues. Honestly it’s confusing, because you can’t quite tell what he thinks they are or how much the Bible addresses these things. In fact, after he lists ten symptoms of emotionally unhealthy spirituality, I wrote this note in the margin: “All 10 problems are addressed by Scripture – Contemporary Christianity isn’t talking about these things.”

So, it’s good that he’s talking about them, but he hasn’t introduced them well or made clear what he is dealing with.

We get a hint about his mindset, though, on page 20. It’s a pie chart with the title “Different Parts / Components of Who We Are” The pie is divided into five parts: physical, spiritual, intellectual, social, and emotional.

Aha! Lightbulb moment. Now the reader can start to understand his deeper thinking. Why does Scazzero separate the emotional into its own slice of the pie? The Scripture teaches that humans have two parts: the body and the spirit (2 Corinthians 7:1). If you want to be technical, you can subdivide the spirit into both soul and spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:23). Christians should not see the emotional as separate from the spiritual.

This was a clue that the book is blending unhelpful psychological elements with biblical teaching. Another clue was on page 35: “Anytime we can listen to our true self and give it the care it requires, we do it not only for ourselves, but for the many others whose lives we touch.” But what is ‘our true self’? The author doesn’t define it, but this is a concept straight from pop psychology. It is definitely not a biblical concept, and as Carl Truman has exhaustively shown in his (admittedly technical) book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, this is a thoroughly secular concept.

Chapter Two: Know Yourself that You May Know God

The subtitle of this chapter is “Become Your Authentic Self,” and it begins with a list of quotations from famous theologians. Paul says, “Put off your old self.” Augustine prays, “Grant, Lord, that I may know myself that I may know thee.” And Calvin opines, “Our wisdom…consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.” These are good quotes, and they had me excited.

But from here, the book takes a dramatic turn. It immediately begins to talk about how we have to understand our uniquenesses, our personalities, and the differences between our own desires versus the expectations of others.

A philosopher once pointed out that until a few hundred years ago, the great question of philosophy was ‘what is it that all humans have in common?’ In other words, what is at the core of human nature? Then, with the rise of modern psychology, the question completely changed, becoming ‘what is it that separates humans from each other, what makes them unique or different?’ The great theologians of the Christian church studied human nature to the point of exhaustion, seeking to understand who we are. Augustine’s quote, and Calvin’s quote (listed above) are both about that question – Who are you? What does it mean to be a human? he answer is that you are sinful, vile before God, and in need of a Savior. What these men emphatically did not mean is, ‘What is your unique personality? What separates you from others? What is your enneagram type?’

Yet Scazzero completely misses this. He quotes these theologians as if they wanted us to understand our ‘authentic selves,’ when they had no idea of the concept. Even the idea of the ‘authentic self’ is completely foreign to biblical thought, an idea imagined by the modern psychological movement, and debunked in detail by Carl Truman.

To be sure, there are lots of good points in this chapter – avoiding peer pressure, doing the right things, etc. But Scazzero doesn’t seem to realize that, like a fish in water, he is blind to the psychological jargon of the world that this chapter swims in. He even goes so far as to talk about Jesus living “faithfully to his true self” (p. 56).

Chapter Three: Going Back in Order to Go Forward

In chapter three of Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, Scazzero discusses the idea of generational sin patterns. We can’t deny that this is a reality, which the Bible discusses. The sins of fathers often become the sins of children, and God is one who visits the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation. From this, we rightly have a desire to break patterns of generational sin.

What is questionable is the method that Scazzero recommends for how to identify and deal with these sins. He describes (and demonstrates) creating family trees of sin patterns. If you’ve taken biology, it’s a genogram of the sins that your fathers and forefathers were guilty of.

Such a method may identify long-running patterns of sin in your family history, but it isn’t helpful for two reasons. First, the Bible never emphasizes the value of seeing the sins of other people, but it does emphasize our own sins. While you may have a family history of a sin struggle, it is ultimately something that you must deal with as an individual. The charts and genograms take the focus off of repentance and place it on knowledge. But we don’t have to know where the sin came from to deal with it biblically. 

Second, and more important, such charts can start to make us feel like victims of the sins of others. In a later chapter, Scazzero mentions the story of a young lady who spends three weeks thinking through these things. He says “[she] was becoming increasingly aware of how much she had lost in her childhood, teen, and young adult years…[she] looked terrified. For the first time in her life, she was turning toward her losses, not avoiding them.” (p. 123). While we shouldn’t ‘stuff’ our feelings (see chapter five), this sort of ‘unearthing’ of our families histories isn’t helpful. As this woman experienced, it made her terrified and likely tempted her to think of herself as  a victim. While I don’t want to discount the difficulties of the author’s childhood, even he seems a little weak on this point himself (see p. 88). From personal experience, I’ve known people who were severely messed up by this way of thinking.

Chapter Four: Journey through the Wall

This chapter discusses the ‘wall’ of suffering which many saints experience, referencing something more serious than  regular trials and suffering. It points out the beneficial effects of going through such a so-called wall. While the chapter relies heavily on the quotes of Roman Catholic thinkers with questionable theology, there is little that is seriously controversial in this chapter.

Chapter Five: Enlarge Your Soul through Grief and Loss

This chapter is also relatively uncontroversial. Scazzero talks about the value of not ‘stuffing’ our emotions away, but dealing with them honestly. This is in line with the example of many of the biblical writers. Yet, Christians often feel that they can’t be honest and vulnerable before God with their emotions.

Chapter Six: Discover the Rhythms of the Daily Office and Sabbath

Christians have an unfortunate tendency to keep themselves too busy, to not rest, and to view devotions more as an item on a checklist rather than a means of nurturing their relationship with God. This chapter seeks to address those problems.

Scazzero encourages Christians to have ‘Sabbath’ in their lives, but he misses the significance of this word. Sabbath is not simply a time to rest, or even a 24 hour period of rest. Sabbath refers to ‘seventh,’ and that is because it is a reference to the seventh day of the week, Saturday. The author misses this and just encourages Christians to take a 24-hour break at any time during the week. He even says, “The apostle Paul seemed to think that one day would do as well as another (Romans 14:1-17).” (p. 154). No! Paul is saying nothing of the sort. Paul is saying that some people observe the Sabbath, and some don’t, and that’s okay! Even a superficial reading of Romans 14 shows that the author has entirely missed the point of this chapter.

He also refers to the Sabbath as “a command from God” (p. 151), and implies that believers must observe the Sabbath. But Paul says that the Sabbath is part of the Old Covenant, which believers are no longer under (Colossians 2:16-17). While I agree that rest is important in the Christian life, putting Christians back under the yoke of the law is not the way to encourage this.

Scazzero also teaches about the Daily Office, which is similar to daily devotions. He rightly observes that we don’t practice ‘abiding in Christ,’ and his solution is the Daily Office, which is basically a modified version of daily devotions. While I appreciate his desire to teach believers to abide in Christ, I think that the better solution is simply to instruct them in how to do devotions well, rather than introduce a new practice or call it by this different name, as if something more than regular devotions is needed.

He also teaches about the Daily Office, which is similar to daily devotions. He rightly observes that we don’t practice ‘abiding in Christ,’ but his solution is the Daily Office, while I would recommend that we teach believers to change the way that they do their personal devotions. I appreciate his emphasis on mindfulness, but it gets downright syncretistic when he says things like, “As you breathe in, ask God to fill you with the Holy Spirit. As you breathe out, exhale all that is sinful, false, and not of him” (p. 148).

Chapter Seven: Grow Into an Emotionally Mature Adult

Chapter seven is a less controversial chapter, discussing the importance of learning to be emotionally mature so as to love others well. While there may be better ways to approach this topic, the chapter gives some useful insights.

Chapter Eight: Go the Next Step to Develop a Rule of Life

The final chapter of the book is helpful as it encourages people to be intentional in their lives. This is a good chapter for the book to end on, since intentionality is important. I appreciate the emphasis on taking time to think through a ‘Rule of Life’ and how to implement it.

Conclusion: Psychological Christianity

There are many helpful thoughts in the book, and people appreciate it because it addresses many issues which modern Christianity tends to avoid. We too easily separate the emotional from the spiritual, and ignore the fact that the Bible addresses the whole person.

Ultimately, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality fails to succeed because it addresses spiritual issues through the grid or framework of psychological Christianity. Although this way of thinking has been thoroughly debunked already (and even shown to be a syncretistic mixing of modern psychology with the Bible), it’s hard for people to identify, and Scazzero seems to be oblivious to the fact that he is floating in an ocean of this thinking. While his topics need to be addressed, they should be done within the context of biblical thought patterns, not modern psychology.

Enjoying this content? Subscribe to receive it directly in your email, once a week.