Breaking the Power of Negative Words: How Positive Words Can Heal by Mary C. BushaMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Mary C. Busha does an admirable job at both challenging and encouraging her readers in this quick-moving, easy-to-read, helpful book. I began it a little skeptically, not wanting to wade through the false flattery of another ‘you are so wonderful’, ‘you deserve better’, ‘you can just surround yourself with positive thoughts and things will all be turned into sunshine and roses’, ‘you are a fabulous human being and are in control of your own sparkling destiny’ ego-fluffer of a self-help manual. Though Ms. Busha does weave in the message that all human beings are wonderful creatures, she does it from a carefully Biblical standpoint, noting that humans are wonderful because of the skill and love of their wonderful Creator, not because of some natural goodness’ of their own. I appreciated how Ms. Busha continuously pointed her readers back to God, using teaching from the Bible as foundation stones and reasons for every message she sought to convey. The words we speak to others, the words we speak to ourselves, the words others speak to us, the mindset we have towards those who have hurt us with their words, forgiveness, wisdom, choices – all these issues she presents and discusses from both a practical standpoint and a spiritual one.
There were a few negatives that I found with this book. First, in spite of her seemingly extensive experience with scripture, Ms. Busha mis-applies several verses. In one example, she cites Proverbs 3:15 as if it speaks of a beautiful woman, when by reading a few verses before, we can see it is metaphorically describing the attribute wisdom. The beautiful description in this verse can most certainly be obtained by a Godly woman, but I feel that Ms. Busha is hasty/careless, or even intentional in her misuse of several verses, perhaps being more concerned with finding scriptures that seem to support her points, than with finding verses that actually support her points.
Second, I also was alarmed and saddened to come to the last few pages of the book, and find that Ms. Busha used a story involving a woman ‘pastor’, with no hesitation or acknowledgement of the fact that the practice of women pastoring goes directly against Biblical teaching.
Third, Ms. Busha uses a story to portray ‘sympathetic words’ (versus ‘faith-building’ words) as negative words. In this particular story, perhaps sympathetic words were not the best choice, but in general, words of sympathy certainly have an appropriate place in efforts to lift others up! Perhaps it appears I’m splitting hairs, and that readers should be able to make the connection automatically, but I feel that she should have been more careful of her presentation if she was trying to make the point ‘be discerning about what kind of encouraging words to use for individual situations’. The point came across more as, ‘speak words of strength, don’t speak words of sympathy, to those who are suffering’.
Lastly, and least important (but still necessary to mention to complete my honest review), there were a small handful of grammatical and punctuation errors, as well as instances of incorrect term usage.
Overall, I would recommend this book – I just would recommend it be taken together with a Bible and a dictionary as helpful references.
I received this book from Revell Reads free of charge, in exchange for my honest review.
