by Mark R. McMinn

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review by Gerald Wilson

AS ONE WHO HAS SPENT his own times away from home—both physically and spiritually, I appreciate the consideration Mark McMinn gives this important topic in his latest book. This is an easy read thanks to McMinn's open, conversational style. Following a brief introduction, the author divides his material into four sections: Contours of Home in which the universal human longing for a place of love and security is laid out; Looking Back where the reader is encouraged to face the past as a step toward a hopeful future; Looking Around describes how home can be found in a renewed understanding of self and in restored relationships with others; Looking Up completes the series by grounding our sense of home in our present relationship with Jesus and our future anticipation of heaven. Each of these sections contains several chapters in which McMinn develops aspects of the common theme.

As you may begin to see from this description, McMinn envisions “home” as a metaphor for an experience of “secure love, known most fully in the embrace of God” (6). In this secure embrace we are empowered to become the whole persons we long to be. Becoming these whole persons involves coming to terms with our pasts, learning to live whole lives in the present, and drawing redemptive power from a hopeful future.

McMinn is not a theologian, but he does draw fruitfully from theological thinkers like C.S. Lewis, J. I. Packer, Henri Nouwen, and Arthur O. Roberts. While these are not scholars at the forefront of contemporary theological inquiry, they are all thoughtful practitioners with gifts of articulating complexities to the laity. This is a gift McMinn also possesses. His genial prose draws the reader along and clearly presents a program of spiritual growth and recovery. McMinn excels particularly when he shares stories from his personal experience and those of his clients and acquaintances. These stories have the ring and pain of truth. They resonate with the hurts and joys we all experience and they offer hope of restoration and redemption.

The strength of this book, in my opinion, lies in the first six chapters, and particularly the three chapters in the second section, Looking Back. The first three chapters awaken in readers a realization of their own longing for the kind of secure love McMinn describes. We learn that such an experience is still possible for us regardless of how far from home we have wandered or been driven. The third chapter encourages us that coming home involves a redemptive “turning” that is partly our own responsibility, but is at the same time the result of God coming to us with outstretched arms.

The section Looking Back impacted me most, probably because of my own struggles to come to an understanding of myself and who I am in the eyes of God. My personal wandering from home was painful to myself and others and only ended when I could run no more. What McMinn talks about here in chapters 4-6 draws most deeply from his psychological training and knowledge. But, knowing Mark as I do, I realize how much his personal spiritual journey away from home and back again floods these pages with a deep experiential understanding that issues forth in grace. We have had opportunity to talk together about our struggles—his and mine—and to acknowledge the redemptive power of God's grace that has drawn us both back home time and again. One thing that will raise questions here is his insistence that remembering the past is essential to growth into a healthy future. I agree with him that trying to forget the past is a recipe for disaster. Twelve Steppers say, “We will learn not to regret the past.” That is a brave statement, but also true. We need to come at last to a redemptive understanding of how God can turn our past—no matter how dark and painful—into the foundation of good. I do wonder, however, whether I feel quite as strongly about whether God remembers our past misdeeds. Scripture clearly indicates that redemption means that God removes our sins and remembers them no more (Jeremiah 31:34; Hebrews 8:12). I would be interested in how McMinn responds to this idea of divine forgetfulness in relation to our own need to remember.

I find the final sections of the book less affecting. They are true enough and accurately catch and express our need to develop a redeemed understanding of ourselves and restored relationships. These are sound chapters and reliable; I just do not find them as powerful as the earlier ones. The final chapter on heaven I find least satisfactory of all. Perhaps it is because all talk about heaven is necessarily speculative and what excites McMinn about this eternal future may not be what grips me or you. I also think that most people today are less concerned about a return to Eden (3) than power to face the next few minutes, or months, or years. What gives us hope, I think, is the kind of love that watches at the window and comes running down the road to meet me.

The whole book could have used a concluding chapter that brought us back from the ethereal regions of heaven to the present where we all live day by day. It is a minor criticism overall, but the book ends less with a “bang” than a “whimper.”

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