There are many good books being written for biblical counselors these days, for which we are thankful. But sadly, there are also countless bad books seeking a place on your bookshelf as well. Many books are carefully written by thoughtful authors who have something profitable to add to the corpus of thought in our circles. We want to sell and promote these titles.
However, we have found that books marketed to the biblical counseling world sometimes fall into one of these categories:
- Many books, written by well-meaning authors, are just not well written and are a chore to read.
- Some books simply say things that others have already said before—but usually not as well.
- Our greatest concern, however, are those books that claim to promote biblical counseling but in reality promote an eclectic mix of secular psychology, poor theology, feeling orientation, straw men, and anecdotes. Often these titles will even have the term “biblical counseling” in the title. Sometimes these books will boast endorsements by well-known personalities whose names are either being used without their permission or who did not really read the book before offering their endorsing blurb. These books are the bane of our movement.
Now, just because you do not see a specific book listed here, please do not conclude that we believe it falls into one of the above categories. It could be that we are just unaware of the book. We don’t get out much. It is also possible that we just have not had an opportunity to review it yet.
Finally, you should know that we do list some books on our site that we do not like. Why would we do this? Because it gives us an opportunity to post our review along with the book explaining why we don’t like it. We do not believe we are the final word on what you should or should not read. We are just glad for the opportunity to tell you what we think about books. Thoughtful readers will, of course, agree with our assessments.