Designed to Heal: What the Body Shows Us about Healing Wounds, Repairing Relationships, and Restoring Community

Reviewed by:

Connor Salter, Professional Writing alumnus from Taylor University, Upland, IN.

Title:

Designed to Heal: What the Body Shows Us about Healing Wounds, Repairing Relationships, and Restoring Community

Author:

Jennie A. McLaurin and Cymbeline Tancongo Culiat

Publisher:

Tyndale Momentum

Publication Date:

August 2021

Format:

Hardcover

Length:

272 pages

OVERVIEW

One of the human body’s great traits is that it can heal itself instinctively. Biological functions take over without being instructed, creating necessary scar tissue to protect flesh or coordinating different body systems to fight infection. Medical doctor Jennie McLaurin and scientist Cymbeline Culiat argue that some of these bodily functions aren’t just important to our physical health. By looking at how they work, we can see parallels between physical and spiritual healing. They describe a variety of healing mechanism, including:

• The four phases of healing
• Stopping bleeding
• Inflammation gone awry
• Necessary rewounding
• Scarring and maturation
• Impaired scarring

In each case, they consider how the way that the human body heals itself can also apply to spiritual healing. They work in personal stories to make their points, as well as insights from medical studies and others’ experiences with Christian communities.

One struggle with writing about medical science for popular audiences is that medicine is a deeply technical subject. It’s much easier to give “pop medicine” ideas that are reduced or taken out of context. The authors here manage to pull a difficult task off: they describe medical terms in context, while also breaking their ideas down into simple terms that layman readers can understand. They also carefully pick medical topics that also apply to psychological healing, community connections and so forth. It would be easy to oversell their thesis, pick random medical subjects and stretch their explanations to make points about forgiveness, the six degrees of separation, and so forth. Instead, they are careful to pick subjects like scarring, fresh injuries and inflammation that directly fit the psychological subjects they are discussing. Occasionally they provide personal anecdotes (stories about handling estranged family members, etc.) that add a human dimension to the abstract ideas.

Overall, the book hits a wonderful balance between explanation and storytelling, research and readability.

ASSESSMENT

Rating (1 to 5 stars)

4.5 stars

Suggested Audience

Readers interested in understanding the biochemical and psychological process of healing, and the intersection of those two ideas.

Christian Impact

The authors cast their ideas about healing in a Judeo-Christian context, emphasizing the need for talking about trauma, yearning for justice, and seeing healing within a communal context.