God Has Great Plans For You

By Joseph Michael Tabers

Catholic-ometer: 2 of 5

Enjoyability: 1 of 5

I suppose I've been spoiled recently; reading magnificent novels, and the lives of saints and popes.  Many masterpieces, in many ways, which can easily impress.  Still, it had to happen sooner or later, that I'd run across a book I really couldn't stand.

Because the positive aspects of this piece are so few and far between, let me get them out of the way right now.  Firstly, the book offers some wonderful advice, in very general terms.  That advice, however, could be fit into one paragraph, and to demonstrate this, I will now do so.

"Read the bible.  Pray.  Fast.  Practice mortification and sacrifice.  Build a devotional life, and a firm relationship with Jesus.  Read the catechism, and read about the lives of the saints.  In short, get involved with your Catholic Faith."

All of that is, as I've said, good advice, and I mention this up front, because it's by far the best thing in this book.  If this was subtracted from the book, though, I'm afraid it would be little more than a glorified self-help book couched in religious vocabulary.

The second biggest problem with this book is that it's peppered with self-referencing, self-quoting, and self-writing of "inspirational" poetry on the part of its author.  If he's not egotistical, he surely gives that impression through these writing methods, and even apart from that, I'm afraid that I found him annoying.  The author's personality is, by his own admission, immensely-optimistic, energetic and based on positive input and output.  He's a little orphan Annie type, and never really gets around to explaining what God's plans for you are, though he could at least have written a decent book about the faith from this perspective, and I'd have overlooked it.  However, this leads me to the book's biggest problem.

The single biggest problem with this book is that it assumes that "faithfulness to God and the church" and "optimism and positive thinking" are one and the same; an attitude that actually drove me away from the faith for quite a while.  It doesn't give the impression that the faith can help you be more upbeat; it gives the impression that if you're not the kind of person who's upbeat already, the church must not be for you.  That's the problem with the church of feel-good.  It only lasts until you realize you don't feel as good as the church wants you to.  Then, you decide you can't sympathise with these people, and you leave.

Not content with this, however, the book offers some plainly stupid advice like "pay more attention to what people do right" and "always be affirming."  Why is this stupid?  Well, for the Christian, it means not being able to follow the example of Our Blessed Lord, who talked about Hell nine times as much as Heaven, when he wasn't calling the pharasees names or taking a whip to some irreverent money-changers.

This book, and others like it, do much harm, spreading the public image of a wispy, effeminate Jesus who just wants to make you feel good.  That's about as untrue as you can get.  What Jesus wants is to hurt your feelings, if it means you get to Heaven instead of Hell.

With a near-total dearth of any substantive advice on the faith, this book really does nothing to earn the word "God" in its title.  I think what disappointed me most was that if this author wanted to write a self-help book, he could have done so without misleading people about the goals and objectives of the faith, and if he'd wanted to write a guide to faithful Catholicism, he could have done his research better.  Either way, this book fails spectacularly, and I can't, in good conscience, reccomend it to anyone.