| People of the Lie�The Hope for Healing Human Evil By Dr. M. Scott Peck (Author of the Road Less Traveled) Media Review Comments � Source Unknown When on "Saturday Night Live" the Church Lady really gets herself worked up, she inevitably names "Satan," her eyes flashing in momentary ecstasy. The performance may serve as a caveat to all those of religious bent, reminding us how easy and false it is to see everywhere not God's hand but the devil's, invoking him as responsible for our own failures. Equally false perhaps is the waffle about Satan as "merely symbolic" It is just this rationalization that has spawned young people's fascination with the possible existence of Satan: they would prefer him to be real because they would prefer something to be real. But the truth is that there is nothing fascinating about evil; to suggest that there is may be the unacknowledged lie of our time. Evil is ultimate emptiness, and Satan is the great bore. What all this comes down to is that it is almost impossible to discuss evil as a force in our lives without falling pretty quickly into one trap or another. For this reason Dr Peck's discussion stands out as close to unique. (C.S. Lewis's Screwtape letters is the only other book we can think of in English that rivals Pecks for sanity-and-insight on the subject.) In this book Peck, a psychiatrist searching the darkest recesses of the human heart, gives us the evidence he has found of the reality of evil. And he holds out hope for healing. ******************************************************************** Review comments by D. L. Repp, P.E.* This book addresses human evil as confronted by Psychotherapists. It indicates that Psychotherapists cannot help persons possessed by evil forces. The common underlying denominator is that these people have a serious problem with Lying�thus the title of the book! When M. Scott Peck begins discovering dishonesty in a patient, he recognizes that their problems are beyond the scope of the conventional Psychotherapists and are spiritually (i.e., demonically) based. The book indicates that evil is that force, residing either inside or outside of human beings that seeks to kill life or liveliness. Evil has nothing to do with natural death; it is concerned only with unnatural death, with the murder of the body or the spirit. Goodness is that which promotes life and liveliness. In most cases with children, the source of their problems is not in the child itself but in his or her parents, family, school, or society. Whenever there is a major deficit in parental love, the child will, in all likelihood, respond to that deficit by assuming itself to be the cause of the deficit, thereby developing an unrealistically negative self-image. When a child is grossly confronted by significant evil in its parents, it will most likely misinterpret the situation and believe that the evil resides in itself. When an adult is confronted by evil, the wisest and most secure adult will usually experience confusion. The healthiest people-the most honest, whose patterns of thinking are least distorted�are the very ones easiest to treat with psychotherapy and the most likely to benefit from it. Conversely, the sicker the patients�the more dishonest in their behavior and distorted in their thinking�the less psychologists are able to help them with any degree of success. Evil is revolting because it is dangerous. It will contaminate or otherwise destroy a person who remains too long in its presence. Unless you know very well what you are doing, the best thing you can do when faced with evil is to run the other way. However, evil people are to be pitied. Forever fleeing the light of self-exposure and the voice of their own conscience, they are the most frightened of human beings. They live their lives in sheer terror. Page 1 of 1 *Note - Mr. Repp went to be with the Lord in January 2008 |
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