Book Review: Enemies of the Heart

I tend not to be a fan of books that claim to tell you how to get a grip on your emotions or change how you feel about things.  I’m too cynical for stuff like that.  I do, however, like most of what I’ve heard from Andy Stanley so I was eager to read Enemies of the Heart when it showed up on my doorstep.

This book is split into four parts and is super easy to read.  Stanley writes in a very conversational style so it’s easy to understand and you don’t have to spend too much time figuring out what he’s saying.  Throughout the book he lays out why we have negative emotions and behaviors that we don’t want to have, analyzes them a bit, and then suggests habits we can develop to help us break free from their control.

Stanley’s diagnosis for why we experience these negative emotions and behaviors falls right in line with a lot of what I’ve been reading and realizing lately.  That is, we do the things we don’t want to do because deep down we do want to do them.  The problem isn’t the behavior, the problem is our heart, because our heart is the root of our actions.  Jesus himself said all kinds of vile stuff comes out of our hearts.  We can’t blame others or society or our parents for our sins.  We sin because we have sinful hearts.  So Stanley says the best thing to do is focus not so much on our specific behaviors but to aim for the root of the problem – the grip these negative emotions have on our hearts.  Only if we uproot them will we be able to experience any real freedom.

What emotions do we need to be free from?  According to Stanley, our negative emotions and sins pretty much always fall under one of these four: guilt, anger, greed, and jealousy.  These are all a problem because they create a debt-debtor dynamic in our relationships, like this:

Guilt says I owe you.

Anger says you owe me.

Greed says I owe me.

Jealousy says God owes me.

Each of these emotions gets a chapter or two of treatment and as I read through it I found myself recognizing the truth in so much of what he said.  This debt-debtor perspective is really helpful and rings true.  I don’t particularly feel like I struggle with any of these but throughout the book I realized I struggle with all of them.

Books have the great luxury of being able to be brutally honest.  There are things in this book that you probably need to hear but you won’t hear them from anybody you know.  Maybe you can hear them from Andy Stanley. 

What is exceptional about this book is that after discussing the nature and harm of each of these emotions and their implications, Stanley offers specific habits we can develop to combat them at a heart level.  These aren’t just behaviors; they’re habits we can develop that over time will effect change in our hearts.

Of course, the Biblical perspective says that we cannot change ourselves.  That is, we need the Holy Spirit to work in us to change our hearts.  All of the stuff Stanley writes about is grounded in a good, holistic understanding of Scripture and he does a great job grounding everything in the grace of God and the ultimate truth that all of our debts were paid on the cross in Jesus.

I think this is going to be a go-to book for me over the years because of its immense honesty and practicality.  When I find myself looking at my life and wondering what the heck my problem is, I think I’ll be pulling this one off the shelf.  It is so not a “just be a better person” kind of book.  It points you back to the only real solution to your heart problems – God’s grace through Jesus.  And it gives you helpful ways to avail yourself of God’s grace, the remind yourself of it, and try to live in it.  Great book.  You should read it.