A Review of Dutch Sheets’ “The Essential Guide to Prayer”
Actually, Non-Essential
I hate having to come out and more or less hate on a book, especially when I got the publisher to send me a copy of this book via Kindle when the ability to do so wasn’t enabled on NetGalley (where I plucked this book from, digitally). However, I see these reviews that I write as a bit of a warning, and I have to, alas, warn you that unless you’re an extreme ring-wing evangelical, The Essential Guide to Prayer won’t be for you. Not that the book doesn’t start out promisingly. Originally titled The Beginner’s Guide to Prayer and published in 2001, this title is all about the importance of prayer by intercession, or praying for other people. (And, I suppose, people praying for you.)
This book begins with the warm fuzzies, claiming that God is a friend as much as He is a father. So far, I can definitely get behind that message. Throw in some Biblical references and talk about how important it is to pray on the behalf of others, and it seems that this was a book that would fuel my liberal Christian heart. Alas. Get about halfway through the book and stories of people praying that their deceased loved ones would rise from the dead, having just passed on moments before, and then seeing their prayers turn true was enough for me to drill a nail into the coffin of this book.
I don’t have a problem with people who believe in miracles. Heck, some of the miracles, if not all of them, as outlined in this book probably happened. I’ve just come to learn that the most convincing miracles are those that don’t require a great deal of proof to back them up. It’s not that Dutch Sheets is a guy who needs to back up everything, but it seems as though these miracles prove themselves in a forward fashion, instead. These miracles prove that God is real and He’ll listen to your prayers.
I find this kind of belief to be dangerous, because what happens when God doesn’t bring back your favourite cat from the Great Beyond? Sometimes, God doesn’t answer your prayers — or, at least, answers them in a different form. So to read a book with a theology that essentially tells us that God performs big, big acts and will do so in your life if only you pray the right way is just inherently wrong. I can’t phrase it more diplomatically than that.
What’s more, and what’s more disturbing, is that by the end of The Essential Guide to Prayer, Sheets is using his pulpit to exclaim that Islam is wrong and only Christianity is the one true religion. And then people wonder why terrorists are busy blowing up concert halls with kids inside. The teaching is just abhorrent. In fact, a few examples of the miracles performed by God and Jesus in this book seem to be more about a conversion experience from Islam to Christianity than it is one of God answering personal prayers.
Let me be clear: I wanted to give this book a chance. I wanted to like The Essential Guide to Prayer. I thought that it would deeply teach me how to pray better. I think I got a little more than I bargained for. Essentially, what this book winds up being is a warning about all the things that are wrong about Christianity: its moral superiority, its inherent belief on the literal, its denunciation of everything that goes against it. You know this book has got a complex when it takes on the Dalai Lama and claims victory over him.
You know, a true Christian would believe that every other person of another religious persuasion has a right to believe what they believe. I might not believe it, but that doesn’t give me the right to attack them for their beliefs. Heck, you might learn something from another spiritual practice. It’s entirely within the realm of the possible. However, when you get someone like Dutch Sheets who moves beyond proclaiming that Christianity is awesome over into how it is more awesome and true than any other spiritual foundation — well, I have a problem with that.
So you can see that I have a fundamental thorn in my side with The Essential Guide to Prayer — or whatever title you want to slap on this book and re-release it under. Essentially, if you have a problem swallowing everything that Sheets says, the problem is probably you for being a doubter. I’m not a doubter, though I do have questions about my faith — which I feel is a healthy thing to have. There’s, however, an “us versus them” mentality that seeps into this book, which I find very odd for a self-help book on discovering the power of prayer.
I wish I could laugh off this book. The problem is that there’ll be readers out there who’ll swallow Sheets’ reasoning hook, line and sinker. And that, to me, is a very, very, very sad thing to realize. I wish I wasn’t so dead set against the book. The core of the book is good in that, sure, praying on the behalf of others may bring about healing and such. Using it as a launching pad to acknowledge the overtly supernatural and as a springboard for attacking other faiths? Not cool. Not cool with me at all. So that’s pretty much all I have to say about The Essential Guide to Prayer. If you’re a true Christian in tune with Christ’s humility, I would advise that you steer clear of this tome in its entirety. It’s offensive and off-putting, and it’s too bad because it didn’t have to be this way.
Dutch Sheets’ The Essential Guide to Prayer: How to Pray with Power and Effectiveness will be published by Bethany House on June 20, 2017.
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