Brains gorged on junk food

Junk food copy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Forget all that diet talk for a moment. There are basically three food groups:

• Food that’s good for you. Let’s call that good food.
• Food that’s bad for you. Let’s call that poison.
• Food that isn’t necessarily bad for you on its own, but it doesn’t actually help you out other than to fill you up – basically, just calories. Junk food.

We’re pretty happy with these categories. Good food is fine any time. No-one will judge you for munching on a stick of celery (unless you’re in a job interview. That would be pretty weird). Poison should be avoided at all costs. Junk food is generally not the best idea, but having it as a treat every so often isn’t a bad thing.

Now, how about if we apply these principles not to what goes into our stomach, but what goes into our minds? What do you and I fill our eyes and ears with?

• Maybe it’s good food, like documentaries, non-fiction books, stuff that actually expands our mind.
• Maybe it’s poison, like snuff films, pornography (images, videos, stories), stuff that actively turns our minds bad.
• Maybe it’s just junk food, stuff that isn’t actively harmful but isn’t helping anyway. Like Angry Birds, Facebook, pointless blogs, celebrity gossip magazines…

I’m not sure that I/we actually take as much care for our minds as we do for our stomachs. There’s definitely way too much junk food in there for it to be benefiting us.

And, just to throw something a bit controversial into the mix, what do we make of the border-line media like chick flicks (which are ultimately fantasies of perfect relationships that our partners can never give us), violent sports like boxing, romance fiction, Grand Theft Auto and so on?

Healing is a Choice by Stephen Arterburn

Ok, before we get into the meat of this review, let me say this: this book is nowhere near as controversial as the title sounds, which is a shame because I was hoping to be angered by a word of faith teacher telling me I should put my glasses away. But this book isn’t really about physical healing at all, it’s about psychological, emotional and spiritual healing, and takes the reader through ten key choices they should make in order to receive the healing that freely comes from God. Each chapter deals with one key choice and the accompanying ‘big lie’ that we’re told by society, and is followed by an in-depth, very useful and well-written small group discussion guide.

In terms of the book’s contents I must say it’s good. If you’re in a bad place and need some way to get better, this book is probably the best book outside of the Bible that I’ve read on the subject. It’s clear, helpful, sensitive, God-focussed, and is saturated in the truth that will set you free.

I think that’s a positive enough statement that I can now point out my minor concerns with it. Firstly, I’m genuinely disappointed by the title. That may seem like a small thing but if I see a book with the title ‘Healing is a Choice’, I want to be told how I can choose to be healed, and as someone who is aware of ways in which I could be physically healed, finding out that this book isn’t really about that left me feeling a little misled.

The second thing that frustrated me, and I find more concerning, is the amount that the book talks about community while hardly ever condoning the local church. To my mind, a large proportion of these ten key choices could be most effectively addressed within the context of the local church, but this important part just seems to be missing.

I got this book for free from BookSneeze.com. I’m not required to give a positive review.

Two things about children

Here’s one to get my biggest fans riled up again It turns out that twins in the womb interact socially with one another – read the full story here.

And over here, there’s an interesting little video showing the history of childhood over the past 30 years or so.