Are there valuable insights on forgiveness outside of Christianity? This overtly humanistic resource aims to bypass “all of the pious sounding statements” about forgiveness and “all the fruitless sermonizing about the destructiveness of revenge.” Using evolutionary social science, McCullough says the former doesn’t require supernatural faith and the latter isn’t to be vilified—both are explained as “age old solutions” to social problems when someone is harmed “significantly and intentionally by another.”
Unfortunately, no real solution is offered except a we’re-all-in-this-together ideology. Christianity is belittled, citing that a human Jesus created heaven and hell “to attract new converts and keep the converts [He’d] already won.” Those pages alone might make this a read for those who wouldn’t find their faith rocked by someone throwing stones—and calling it “justifiable revenge.”
Jossey-Bass, 2008, 320 pp., $24.95
