For our very survival and sanity, we need God.
We need virtue. We need character. "The good person brings good things out of a good treasure, and the evil person brings evil thing out of an evil treasure" (Matthew 12:35). Godly people make all the difference in the world by striving to match the politics of the earth with the politics of the kingdom of God.
By talking about uncovering the healing power of faith, hope, love, and prayer, this book uncovers at the same time the secret of sanity--the sanity that runs our lives at the individual level, as well as at the national and international levels. Sanity requires the rejection of the gods we've created by learning to focus on the God in whose image we've been created.
Billions of dollars are spent every year on the pursuit of physical "perfection." People do anything to become richer, more powerful, or more prestigious--with improved appearances and more pleasing "makeup" in all domains as if the only value that really counts is the most attractive picture we are able to show. In this very expensive race for the outside perfect masks, the pursuit of inner beauty can often be pushed aside when this inner beauty is by far more important than the outer beauty. Don't we know that "The Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7)?
In this book, Heal Your Life: Awakening to the Power of Faith, Hope, Love, and Prayer, Dr. Maalouf masterly invites us to reject the double lifestyle we are living and to genuinely consider living by the truth of the permeation and integration of theology and politics. "Politics," Pope Paul VI declared, "is the highest form of charity." And we can add that charity is the highest form of political sanity as well. Indeed, real politics takes action and contemplation. All our crises are rooted in our spiritual crisis first.
For our sanity and survival, God is needed. For our sanity and survival, the politics of the earth should match the politics of the kingdom of God, as this book explains.
