Customer Reviews

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made: A Surgeon Looks at the Human & Spiritual Body

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If you're like me, you have occasionally wondered at the human body. You might have marveled at the birth of a newborn, or wondered how in the world all of your parts work together so well. I am NOT a biology person. I took one course of biology in high school, and that was plenty for me. But this book is *fascinating*. It tells you things about yourself that you would have never guessed. It makes an amazing case for a Creator who uses a specific design in human beings. It makes the case so well that I was overwhelmed at times, gasped, and told whoever happened to be in the room what I had just read.

This book will make you much more confident in your belief in a Creator. It will give you amazing real-life facts that back up the Biblical ones. I have not been the same since reading this book several years ago. I still remember the impact it made on me, and I can still share with others fervently that there is design here. And the design cannot be argued. If you think it can be, read this book.

Apart from the Bible, no other book has inspired me so much, and led me to a greater and deeper understanding of the awesomeness of our Creator! Dr. Paul Brand and Philip Yancey have beautifully and miraculously opened the eyes of the layman to see the wonder of the creation through our own bodies, and the relationship of the natural with the spiritual!!! I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I am using it to build a study of biology for school. Sit down with this book, and let Paul and Philip lift up your eyes and your spirit to see God in a way you probably never have before. Truly inspiring and revelational!@!@

Note: This review refers to an additional book, "In His Image" by the same author that I consider a "companion" to this one.

In both these books the authors take us into the world of medicine as seen through spiritual eyes. The parallels between our own bodies and the Body of Christ are fascinating to say the least. Read, for example, how when one area of our physical body is injured an urgent call goes out and hundreds of thousands of cells respond by plugging the holes in the walls, protecting the weak, cleansing the area and rebuilding itself. Read also how the body responds when there is rebellion loose within it. The list includes the workings of: (Fearfully and Wonderfully Made) cells, bones, skin, motion, (In His Image) image, blood, head, spirit and pain.

The reading style is very relaxed and everything is explained simply so that you don't need a degree in chemistry to understand what's going on. A special bonus is Dr. Brand's focus on his life's work with lepers which is interwoven throughout both books. If you've got an interest in how the physical body works and how it relates to biblical concepts, get these books - you won't be disappointed. -- Moza

I personally, like learning about the human body and the way it works. This book goes deep into the fine knitting of cells, bones, skin and the blessing of movement. It showed me how much I should appreciate the things that I normally take for granted. Such as if we didn't have that fine balance of cells in our body, we could either be destroyed by foreign invadors or by the one thing that destroys them!...our own white blood cells...resulting in Leukemia. I HIGHLY recommend this book to any reader. You don't know what you're missing if you don't pick this one up!!!

I have recommended this wonderful book to all my online friends just this morning. This link was sent to them for their review.

I believe that, just as the Old Testament is a shadow of the New Testament, our own bodies are a shadow of the Body of Christ. This book confirms my beliefs.

"Fearfully and Wonderfully Made" breaks down all ethnic and racial barriers, all Christian divisions, all personal inadequacies, and shows the relevance, the necessity, of EVERY PERSON in the Body of Christ. The descriptions of the human body (from cell and bone to skin and motion), and the wonderful descriptions of how each functions with the others in unity is beautifully explained! An even greater achievement is the author's ability to relate God's design of the human body to His design of the Body of Christ!

This is a wonderful book that I recommend highly to everyone!

As the title suggests, this book explores many facets of the human body which - as the psalmist acknowledged - is fearfully and wonderfully made. More than just an understandable discussion of the various body systems, this book also delves into the history of significant milestones in medical research, stories from Dr. Brand's career as missionary surgeon in India, and discoursive parallels between the biological body and the body of Christ. Thoughtful, illustrated, and smoothly written, this is an excellent book.

This is primarily a book about the human body and the startling complexity of what is under (and a part of) our skin. Four main areas of our bodies are discussed; the skin which holds us all in, our cells which make up an intrinsic little universe inside each human body, human bones and lastly motion. The insights into the physical human body are enough to make this book great for it shows that whoever or whatever created the human body was unfathomably intelligent. I prefer to believe that God was the designer and so this book causes me to be in awe of God, who I believe to be the creator of mankind. But for an atheist, this book would have to cause him or her to give great awe and respect toward chance. For if chance created our human bodies, it did one heck of a job. Though primarily about the physical human body, the authors are constantly making application to the spiritual body of Christ which, as the Bible tells us, is the entire group of people on earth who have believed in Jesus Christ. The Bible also makes a lot of comparisons between this strange group of people and the human body. Paul (one of the human authors of the Bible) tells us that God sees this group of people (I will refer to it as the church henceforth) like a human body, with many different parts, each part with a special function. In Yancey and Brand's book, they explore the different aspects of the human body and then show how these apply to the church. The analogies are insightful into how we as Christians are to function. In the introduction to the book Yancey writes, "In a sense, metaphorical symbols are the only way for us to grasp spiritual truths, which explains why the Bible uses them so lavishly... the human body expresses spiritual reality so authentically that soon the common stuff of matter will appear more and more like a mere shadow."

Yancey is a great author, and Brand is clearly a great doctor. The book is written as well as Yancey's other books and it is broken down into 25 short chapters. Each chapter has a specific point, and most chapters also offer an analogy about the church, the spiritual body of Christ. I read the book in 25 days, a chapter daily which was an excellent pace to be able to digest the book while still keeping it constantly fresh in my mind. I would recommend the book to any Christian eager to be astounded by the human body and the spiritual analogies that come from the mysteries of our physical bodies.

This book has been a great sourse of encouragement. I found the writing very readable and the message useful.

Dr. Brand's book can't help but leave the reader feeling as though they are disconnected with what is taking place around them. From a personal perspective, it's impossible to appreciate the complexity of performing even the most routine activities throughout the day. On a large scale, this book challenges all of us to consider what our obligations are to society as a whole, exposing what an isolated perspective most of us are able to maintain living in America. This is an excellent choice for anyone involved in a reading group.

One cannot read about the intricacies of the human body and the miracle that keeps us moving as each part works both separately and together. I borrowed a friend's copy, but had to buy my own to take notes.