"If Jesus Had a Child" Book Review

If you read my blog, you know that I using give books positive reviews.  After all, as I've mentioned before, I get to choose the books I review, so why would I knowingly pick a dud?  Haha!  Sadly, I can't give "If Jesus Had A Child" a positive review.

I've read some really incredible books and some pretty good books.  I've even read some books I considered to be boring.  But even the "boring" books get "OK" reviews if they are useful.  After all, a person's writing style may be boring to me and interesting to someone else.  Dr. Wilkerson's book, however, isn't boring.  Its just not any good - at least in my opinion.

To begin with, there's the name.  At first I thought the book title was harmless.  We often like to consider how Jesus would act in certain situations and that's a good thing.  But in the intro to the book Dr. Wilkerson says,
"I have even ventured to 'quote' Jesus, paraphrasing words and thoughts I think He might have in response to a given situation."
This is a practice that I believe dangerous.  He makes statements like,
"Jesus would work especially hard at reducing power struggles between himself and His child and would look for opportunities for His child to exercise positive decision-making and to feel personally powerful."
While this statement sounds nice, he doesn't back it up with Scripture.  He seems to simply be placing his own words and opinions in the mouth of Jesus.  To me, it seemed very presumptive and lacking in actual scriptural evidence.

I'm going to be honest with you.  I didn't finish this book.  I hate saying that, because I don't like reviewing something until I've completed it.  But I just couldn't finish this one.  All of the discussions on boosting your child's "self esteem" and making them feel "powerful" and having a "democratic household" (where the kids are on equal standing with the parents) seemed too much for me.  His parenting approach seems very unbalanced - all love (Don't get me wrong.  Love is EXTREMELY important!) and no discipline or training.  The last straw for me (The moment at which I said, "I just can't read anymore of this.") was when Dr. Wilkerson stated,
"Misbehavior takes place only when children do not have their needs met."
(I'm sorry.  Anyone who has parented a two year old knows that isn't true!  They often misbehave - screaming and throwing tantrums - even when EVERY need is met - need for food or drink, need for love, need for attention, need for a clean diaper, and even the desires, like toys and so on. Children sometimes misbehave for no other reason than they are sinful, just like we are.)
and then...
"Part of the reason why Jesus had such great healing success is because He had such great intuitive understanding of how stress impacts psychosomatic illness,"

Once again, this statement may "seem" good.  After all, Jesus did have great understanding of ALL things.  Why?  Because He was God.  He was a successful healer (with a perfect batting average) because He was God.

I'm sorry, but I just can not recommend this book.   It seemed to me that this book was your typical secular parenting book with a Christian name thrown on it.

I received a copy of this book, free of charge, from BookCrash, in exchange for my honest review.