I only made it about 20% of the way through this book before I unfortunately decided to stop. If nothing else, this book is interesting and maybe encouraging if you’re going through a health issue, but it didn’t necessarily feel scriptural to me and it isn’t what I was expecting.
I would have loved to see more scriptures or examples of miracles from the actual Bible along with the stories Dr. Siegel has seen in his years of medicine. Not to say that these stories aren’t true or that they can’t stand alone as evidence that we serve a powerful God, but it was feeling like a rattling off of unexplained medical stories and was almost lacking some more substance.
I did not love the way this was written and while I’m sure Dr. Siegel hasn’t studied writing or anything, I was sort of surprised at the way this at times was reading as… unprofessional? “After the MRI, they are sitting there waiting, and…” It very often seemed like a person telling their friend a story. It was authentic in that way, but not necessarily my cup of tea in a nonfiction book.
Lastly, if you’re not already a believer, I don’t know that this is spreading a totally true picture of God. Some of the language used can be tricky. An example is this - “God performs the miracles he wants, not necessarily the ones you are asking him to do.” - while I agree to this to an extent and believe that sometimes what we need doesn’t always look like what we think it will, I would struggle with some of these statements if I was reading this without knowing what I know about God. He also mentioned about how God essentially repays our kindness with miracles, but miracles aren’t limited to ‘good or kind people.’ I guess I feel that statements like these can be misleading of His character and makes it seem as if He isn’t a God who listens to us or wants to give us the desires of our hearts.