Escape Routes: For People Who Feel Trapped in Life's Hells by Johann Christoph Arnold | Goodreads
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Escape Routes: For People Who Feel Trapped in Life's Hells
by
Johann Christoph Arnold
3.40 · Rating details · 25 ratings · 8 reviews
You name the hell...there is a way out. After decades of pastoral counseling, Johann Christoph Arnold still marvels at our capacity to make life miserable for ourselves and one another. This book, his tenth, maps out a sure way out of life's hells and toward a happy, meaningful life.
In contrast to the makeovers and quick fixes hawked by popular culture, "Escape Routes" ...more
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Paperback, 187 pages
Published November 1st 2016 by Plough Publishing House (first published 2002)
Original Title
Escape Routes: For People Who Feel Trapped in Life's Hells
ISBN
0874867703 (ISBN13: 9780874867701)
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· 25 ratings · 8 reviews
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Apr 13, 2011Yvonne rated it it was ok · review of another edition
Shelves: spiritual-enrichment-self-help
It's an easy book to read. Managed to finish it in a day amidst distractions and responsibilities. It touches on the issues that affect the human population today and gave ideas on how to resolve them with illustrations from real-life case studies. However, there was no deep substance to the book and the author sort of just touch-and-go on each issue. Perhaps, he was trying to cover too many issues in one book. 'Jack of all trade but master of none' can perhaps, describe this book.
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Jun 22, 2019Sadie Forsythe marked it as dnf
I started, but didn't finish this book. I was somewhat discouraged when I discovered that it is actually a religious book (I hadn't initially realized that), but I was still willing to read it. However, in chapter two about a women who had been raped and molested several times, starting in childhood, there came point in which she "contacted her father, who had physically and sexually abused her as a child, and wrote him a letter asking his forgiveness for the hatred she had harbored toward him up till then" and I "fuck this." If that's the sort of message this book is trying to send me, I'm not here for it. (less)
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Dec 26, 2016J.S. rated it it was ok
Shelves: religion, first-reads-etc
As a leader in my church, I sometimes counsel people who are dealing with the consequences of a life away from God. I often hear the cry that God isn't helping them because they're still essentially in the same place as when they decided to turn their lives around. The image that comes to mind is that they've been digging a hole for years - perhaps a lifetime - and upon finding themselves unhappy, they now want out. But just because they've stopped digging doesn't mean they're automatically *out of the hole* they spent so much time making. The consequences of past actions remains, and the perseverance to continue to right the errors of the past - and get out of the hole - requires further effort. I guess that's why this book initially appealed to me.
The book is organized into chapters dealing with various issues such as loneliness, despair, money, sex, etc. Overall, each chapter felt a bit shallow. The issues are described but the advice and counsel often felt a bit lacking. Nonetheless, the stories were nice and even kind of uplifting - kind of a feel-good read in many ways. (I rec'd a copy through a GoodReads giveaway.) (less)
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Feb 12, 2019Debra rated it did not like it
While I'm only 3 chapters in, I am going to stop reading. The book offers what can only be compared to a series of drunk logs of alcoholics and then one or two sentence about what recovery looks like. Yes, the examples are all pertinent to the author's description of people who feel trapped in life's hells. . . . but, the so-called escape routes are so short and non-descriptive that I cannot help but wonder how a reader could choose to escape their own hell.
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Jan 23, 2017Leslie rated it it was amazing
This book is more uplifting than the title suggests! Arnold is a intense, profound writer drawing from a broad base of wise sources (Henri Nouwen, C.S. Lewis, etc) and digs deep into the spiritual struggles people face. He uses many personal stories of those he has ministered to during his long career. His own background is fascinating. I'm interested in reading more of his writings.
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Jan 11, 2017Sharon Hardin rated it liked it
Inspirational stories of people who managed to move from horrible situations to happier, more fulfilling lives. There is not much new about the routes they took, with new faith and Christian teachings as the bases, but Arnold's writing is smooth, compassionate without being sugary. Each chapter or story by itself would be interesting and inspiring, but they flow from one to another to create an optimistic cumulative whole.
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Nov 23, 2016Richard rated it really liked it
Full of excellent advice and enables you to improve your outlook. Had a memorable experience as a result of the insight and good timing.
"Life's deepest fulfillment comes from valuing every human encounter, and showing love to everyone we meet especially if they are lonely, despairing, or beaten down."
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Nov 09, 2016Brian rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: personal
This would be good for anyone, not just teachers/parents, although teacher/parents have unique challenges that this book would apply to.
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Johann Christoph Arnold
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Escape Routes: For People Who Feel Trapped in Life’s Hells Kindle Edition
by Johann Christoph Arnold (Author)
3.9 out of 5 stars 18 ratings
You name the hell...there is a way out. After decades of pastoral counseling, Johann Christoph Arnold still marvels at our capacity to make life miserable for ourselves and one another. This book, his tenth, maps out a sure way out of life’s hells and toward a happy, meaningful life.
In contrast to the makeovers and quick fixes hawked by popular culture, Escape Routes offers a tougher prescription. Using real-life stories as travel guides, Arnold exposes the root causes of loneliness, frustration, alienation, and despair and shows how anyone, regardless of their age, income bracket, or social status, can find freedom and new life. The choices he presents are clear: "to be selfish or selfless, to forgive or to hate, to burn with lust or with love."
No matter what your problems, or who you are, this book will help you on your way, provided you’re ready to take its medicine.
,br>Arnold writes: “Call it life, call it hell: there’s not a person I’ve met who hasn’t been lonely, discouraged, depressed, or guilt-ridden at one time or another, if not sick, burned-out, or at sea in a relationship. Sometimes I know this because they have told me about their problems; sometimes I can tell just by looking in their eyes. That’s what got me started on this book—the fact that all of us have known some form of hell in our lives, and that insofar as any of us find freedom, confidence, companionship, and community, we will also know happiness.”
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Length: 187 pages Word Wise: Enabled Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
Page Flip: Enabled
Product details
File Size: 513 KB
Print Length: 187 pages
Publisher: Plough Publishing House; 2 edition (November 1, 2016)
Publication Date: November 1, 2016
Sold by: Amazon.com Services LLC
Language: English
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Biography
People have come to expect sound advice from Johann Christoph Arnold, an award-winning author with over 1.3 million copies of his books in print in more than 20 languages.
A noted speaker and writer on marriage, parenting, and end-of-life issues, Arnold is a senior pastor of the Bruderhof, a movement of Christian communities. With his wife, Verena, he has counseled thousands of individuals and families over the last forty years. His books include Their Name Is Today, Why Forgive?, Rich in Years, Seeking Peace, Cries from the Heart, Be Not Afraid, and Why Children Matter.
Arnold's message has been shaped by encounters with great peacemakers such as Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, César Chavez, and John Paul II. Together with paralyzed police officer Steven McDonald, Arnold started the Breaking the Cycle program, working with students at hundreds of public high schools to promote reconciliation through forgiveness. This work has also brought him to conflict zones from Northern Ireland to Rwanda to the Middle East. Closer to home, he serves as chaplain for the local sheriff's department.
Born in Britain in 1940 to German refugees, Arnold spent his boyhood years in South America, where his parents found asylum during the war; he immigrated to the United States in 1955. He and his wife have eight children, 44 grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. They live in upstate New York.
To learn more visit www.plough.com
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Customer reviews
3.9 out of 5 stars
3.9 out of 5
18 customer ratings
5 star 56%
4 star 15%
3 star 10%
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1 star 18%
Top Reviews
Norman S. Geske
5.0 out of 5 stars inspiring bookReviewed in the United States on January 2, 2017
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
stories about surviving and growing from hard times, good price, fast ship
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Dr. Lit.
4.0 out of 5 stars Reality checkReviewed in the United States on December 3, 2009
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
When reading the stories of people who stayed (most of the time, anyway) calm, cool, and collected in the face of huge obstacles, I felt humbled and couldn't help but thinking how much better I was off--for the most part.
Some of the stories came very close to my own story, uncomfortably so.
I realize that Arnold writes drawing on his faith-base, as a Christian. However, I do not share his beliefs and was at times put off by him repeatedly offering Christian faith as the only "out" of hellish situations.
4 people found this helpful
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Joy Casner
5.0 out of 5 stars Not really "diving in" to depression recovery but giving hope and showing a "more excellent way".Reviewed in the United States on April 12, 2017
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
This book takes every Christian to basic principals of life that are sometimes overlooked. Not really "diving in" to depression recovery but giving hope and showing a "more excellent way".
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Vernon Thomas Banks
5.0 out of 5 stars Five StarsReviewed in the United States on December 19, 2016
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Very good.
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Amazon Customer
1.0 out of 5 stars Not my kind of bookReviewed in the United States on December 7, 2016
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
A horrible, depressing book, absolutely of no value to me.
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Daniel L. Edelen
1.0 out of 5 stars A descent into incoherent, pseudo-Christian, simple-minded, left-wing nonsenseReviewed in the United States on November 5, 2016
Format: PaperbackVine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )
R.E.M. once sang that everybody hurts sometime, and this may be one of the greatest realities of the human condition. When you're entombed in that dark place of hurt, lostness, and neverending blues, you need a genuine light at the end of the tunnel.
Johann Christoph Arnold is a pastor with the Bruderhof community, an international movement of Christian communes. He offers that he might have some insights for people looking to escape their situations. _Escape Routes for People Who Feel Trapped in Life's Hells_ is his answer, a revision of his earlier 2002 edition of this small, 142-page meditation and essay on overcoming life's troubles.
The chapters of the book:
* Loneliness
* Against Despair
* Rescuing the Past
* Success
* Sex
* Crucibles
* Suffering
* Rebirth
* Travel Guides
* Angels
Anyone familiar with the works of M. Scott Peck (_The Road Less Traveled_) or Robert Fulghum (_All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten_) will be familiar with the style in which Arnold writes. Early chapter titles and opening paragraphs frame the problem, Arnold speaks to why it's a problem, we're introduced to someone experiencing that problem, that person speaks to his or her own experience of the problem, and Arnold jots down some thoughts about how this person approached the problem wisely and how we can too.
The book strives for deep—with its quotes from great minds and spiritual leaders, plus its high-minded, "spiritual" talk—but after a while the author's leanings start to come through, and the book becomes shallower and more nonsensical.
Readers start to see a thread that the plural Routes in the book's title is really only singular, as the answer to everyone's problems always comes down to "stop focusing on your problems and start helping other people fix theirs." While that's generally a fine line item in a total approach to dealing with misery, it can't be the entirety. However, after reading a few opening chapters, it quickly appears that this is all Arnold has in his spiritual doctor's toolkit.
And then it descends into nonsense.
About midway through _Escape Routes_, the book becomes less about other people and more about Arnold's ideology. At one point he criticizes Christians who believe "once saved, always saved." Clearly, he has an ax to grind against people who believe that it is not by works that one finds salvation. He then lumps Christians who claim to be "born again" into the pharisees' camp. His belief in works righteousness and the necessity of doing rather than being further muddies the book, as his roots in liberation theology (that sort of communist/socialist-Catholicism hybrid that once afflicted South America and drove the Vatican crazy in an attempt to stamp it out) start to manifest.
That Arnold is a "pastor" becomes headscratching. Of what or of whom? The book pulls from all the major thought systems and jumbles them into a single stew. The chapter on rebirth talks about personal conversion as a necessary escape route to a better life, but it's rebirth for rebirth's sake, as there is no clarity as to whom or to what anyone is being reborn, except possibly to the self. For a book that promotes that self-centeredness is at the root of problems, it's a contradictory conversion.
Christians will be baffled by the contents, as the general worldview of the book will not feel very Christian at all. Non-Christians will be put off by some of the spiritualized language, especially when it mentions God or leans too close to what they might think they know about Christian theology. In being palatable to everyone, Arnold drives away thinkers on both sides.
By the time he gets to the chapter "Travel Guides," Arnold is in full incoherence. He holds up the revolutionary and misery-bringer Che Guevara as an example for us all. Yes, indeed, what the heck.He also tells the story of his father, which in reading defies any understanding as a positive or negative example. And the chapter on angels...well, if it makes sense to you, please explain it for someone else.
To people who are struggling, "do more and do it for others" cannot be all there is to help them out from their pit. For many today, their pit consists of being stretched to the breaking point with things to do AND having to deal with their problem. Everybody hurts sometime AND they are running around in a frenzy of activity too. We all need better answers.
If Arnold is a Christian pastor, perhaps he should actually share the Christian message that the place to start with escaping one's troubles is to stop doing more and instead lay everything down because Jesus finished the work for us. That grace is really what people need, not another item on a to-do list. Works righteousness is a faux spirituality that ultimately hurts instead of heals.
In short, _Escape Routes_ is a leftover from an age when people thought _Jonathan Livingston Seagull_ was profound literature. If you are looking for a help in finding an escape route from your own pit, this book is absolutely not it and will likely lead instead to more misery. Skip.
13 people found this helpful
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Naomi Manygoats
3.0 out of 5 stars Might be interesting for those Christians with minor speed bumps along life's path.Reviewed in the United States on November 18, 2016
Format: PaperbackVine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )
I was REALLY looking forward to this book. For the past several years, I have felt trapped indeed in not just one, but several of life's hells. Then I started to read the book. It took me ages to read this very short little book. Because I just did not find it to be very interesting, and I do not feel like the author, although he has 40 years experience as a Christian councilor, relayed any information that actually was helpful to me. As he says himself, there is nothing new here.
Near the beginning, is a quote by the author's grandfather. "The sickness of the world lies in this isolation of the accentuated ego. An individual who feels no pain but his own cannot identify with the world's suffering. He cares only for himself, fights only for his own existence, an seeks only his own improvement and happiness. In this way, he increases the suffering of others. He is a parasite that endangers the whole. He has severed himself from the reality and unity of life. He has cut himself off from the whole, and must finallly perish." That is a typical attitude, from people who have suffered little in their lives, toward those who have suffered a great deal. It is solely the fault of the person suffering. They are just selfish, and do nothing for others. Really?
Then there is the chapter on Crucibles. Sure, everyone who has been flat on their back ill from a serious disease or condition knows that you CAN have inner growth through sickness. Honestly, you have little choice when you can barely get out of bed, except to think about why this happened, what you can do to change, etc. But it's interesting to me that so many Christians 'pick and choose' this attitude, and usually then say that sickness and suffering must be God's will. While totally ignoring that Jesus did not let ANYONE suffer one minute more, not to have inner growth, to learn a lesson, or to connect with God. He healed everyone who asked, and taught his followers to heal. He said we could all do it, that we SHOULD all do it. And when it fails, we are again blamed for our lack of faith!
The book covers Success, Sex, etc. We discover that money and success cannot buy happiness. Which makes me laugh really. What a new concept! (Did you ever notice just how much money is made by, and how consistently employed most church officials are who say this?) And if you have ever STRUGGLED with money (unemployment, under-employment, being robbed, in a very poor housing situation, worried about buying food or medicine), most of those people are not terribly happy either!
Finally though we get to solutions. Rebirth! Choose to make Heaven out of Hell. Choose to be selfish or selfless. Burn with lust or with love. And Travel! Great advice, if you have the money to do so, are healthy enough to make it to the front door, and the vacation time to travel.
The stories from real people's lives were short, and yes, these people suffered. But I didn't see tremendous turns around in their level of mental and sometimes physical anguish either. And no 'complex cases'. It reminds me of a professor I had who did corporate consulting, on the economics of a business he had never worked in, that he really did not understand at all. I think you can 'teach' all the things you 'learned' to say in your classes on counciling, but unless you have really 'been there' at the bottom of life's hells, you have little REAL concept of what people are going through.
I am sure there are some people who would read this book, and get a lot more out of it than I did. I think it would be more helpful if you only have the occasional speed bump in life.
One person found this helpful
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