The Power of Emotional Decision Making: Using Your God-Given Emotions for Positive Change

Reviewed by Jon David Gemma for Reader Views (5/08) When I first approached this book I had hoped to liberate my own emotional resolve. Yet, it appeared to me as a Christian approach to understanding our emotional selves. The author uses scripture and the word of God to express how God feels about our own emotions as we relate to each other and to Him. The author is skilled at influencing the thoughts of the reader to come to God and name their emotions as individuals work on relationships. This book is excellent for people who are active in the Christian community. This is also an excellent book for people who are seeking Christ to help solve their emotional states. This book helps identify emotions as people name them to uncover the deeper roots of their emotional situations. The writing of the author and the theology he uses to help the reader understand their emotions was very easy-to-understand. I would say that this might be a difficult read for those who have issues with Christianity, as something that their parents might have failed to preach wisely. Yet, the voice of the author is heartfelt and caring about traditional relationships that are the practice of the Christian faith. The book has a strong sense of moral in dealing with the emotional selves that desire healthy relationships. Unfortunately, I did not find that the book served the needs of gay and lesbian relationships, or how Jesus and God might address the emotions of those individuals that might prefer a new-age approach to emotional analysis. Or perhaps those that are not religious, or those that are from a different culture. This is an excellent self-help book for people who have or need to have the traditional values of their religious life reinforced into their life. Yet in reading this book, I was disappointed to find nothing relevant to the emotional lives of the gay community, or the diverse culture of our collective emotions. For this reason the author did not lead me to the voice of God as a loving and emotional concept in the heart of my own inner voice as I searched for something relevant to my own personal growth in our society. In any form of psychiatric practice, as we evaluate our emotional minds, love and healing should take a broad approach to the many walks of life that comprise the human being. I initially wanted to review the topic, but I was disappointed to find that the material was only relative to Christianity, or those that wished to reunite with Christ. This book was not relevant to the emotional scars of other cultures, or those that are touched with homosexuality in their desire to be considered as people who also experience a broad range of emotions within their relationships. Our religious beliefs are very diverse, and much to complex to narrow our emotional world to the world of Christianity. If the practice of psychiatry wishes to truly reach enlightenment, doctors should acknowledge the fact that their clients comes from all walks of