Leadership and Self Deception

Book Review Leadership and Self Deception, The Arbinger Institute, 2010

Leadership and Self-Deception was originally published in 2000.  In the past decade it became an international bestseller and is now available in over 20 languages.  The new updated version of the book has the additional value of the descriptions “the various uses people have made of the book and its ideas over the last decade” (p.xii).

The contents of the book are presented in a fictional story line that is replete with redundancy and weakened by a sermonizing approach.  The central thesis of the book is also missing any Christian understanding of interpersonal relations and sin, repentance and forgiveness.  Those understandings are fundamental to healthy work and team environments.  But too often they are not applied even in Christian organizations.  Therefore, since the basic problem of self-deception is within Christian and non-Christian organizations alike, the uncovering of the roots and patterns of self-deception is helpful.

According to the authors, self-deception occurs when people can’t see their own negative behavior and its effect and therefore feel that any problems (in the organization or family etc.) are someone else’s fault.  The authors call this “being in the box – cut off, closed up, blinded” (p. 16).  They maintain that people are in or out of “the box” depending on how they see and treat other people, how they are aware of others’ needs and concerns and try to meet them.  People “in the box” tend to minimize others and treat them as “objects, a threat, a nuisance, a problem…they are there to do what we want and if they fail, they’ll hear it from us.  But this attitudes creates tension and ill-will” (p.40).

One of the most important insights in the book is how the authors contend self-deception starts - with self-betrayal. “Self-betrayal happens when we realize someone has a need and we choose not to act on that realization and address that need. [We have betrayed a basic sense of what we know is good and right for another in that specific situation. In Biblical terms that is sin: “Whoever knows what is right to do and doesn’t do it, sins” Ja.4:17]…Once we commit that self-betrayal, we judge those around us negatively and tend to paint ourselves positively, justifying whatever we’re doing or failing to do…Self-justification becomes our on-going focus (pp. 66,73, 76)…If people act in ways that challenge the claim made by a self-justifying image, we see them as threats. If they reinforce the claim made by a self-justifying image, we see them as allies. If they fail to matter to a self-justifying image, we see them as unimportant” (p.88). In business people focusing on self-justification “can’t fully focus on either results or the people to whom you are to be delivering those results. You are focused on yourself, your results, your reputation” (p. 109).  Such self-justification distorts the truth and blame-shifts the problem to others.  The authors’ fictional story line traces the downward spiral of attitudes that result in the work environment and family life from such self-deception – a story line where “over time certain boxes become characteristic of me and I carry them with me” (p.85).

The authors say that you get out of the box when you “stop resisting the call of others’ humanity upon you…you recognize your own self-centered justifications and experience deep regret for how you have treated others” (pp.145, 147).  You own the attitudes of “blaming, defensiveness, an inflated view of your own contribution to your success, and your focus on self” and choose the paradigm shift to ‘accountability transformation’ when people help each other and stay focused on results and one another in deep responsibility-taking and accountability” (p.172).

                                                                        Reviewed by M.L. Codman-Wilson, Ph.D., 5/31/12

Radical Together by David Platt

Book Review Radical Together  David Platt, Multnomah 2011

Platt starts his book with a powerful image of one drop of ice that melts in the high mountains of the Andes. As that drop of water descends, it is joined with other drops of water in a journey of hundreds of miles that eventually form the Amazon River – “which is more powerful than the next 10 largest rivers in the world combined” (p.1).  In the same way, “as men and women who are surrendered to the person of Christ join together in churches that are committed to the purpose of Christ, then nothing can stop the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth. In Radical Together I want to consider what happens  - or can happen – when we apply the revolutionary commands and claims of Christ to our communities of faith. I want to contemplate the force of a people who come together to enjoy God’s grace in the church while they extend God’s glory in the world” (p.2).  The book is a follow-up of Platt’s best-selling 2010 book entitled Radical, where he more thoroughly expounds his thinking.  In many ways this new book is therefore a bit redundant.  Even in Radical his emphasis was on the role of community and the church.  But a few of his thoughts in Radical Together have been excerpted to highlight his mission-based, discipleship orientation to the Christian life of total surrender to Christ in the context of the church.

One problem Platt decries in the American church is “the good things in the church that are not advancing the kingdom of God” – good things…that can result in people having a deaf ear to the cries of the poor, even among God’s own family in Christ, and a blind eye to the lost” (p.25). He asks his readers: “Amid all the good things we are doing and planning, are there better ways to align with God’s Word, mobilize God’s people and marshal God’s resources for God’s glory in a world where millions of people are starving and more than a billion have never even heard of Jesus?” (p.15). 

Aligning with God’s Word, to him, means a clear understanding of Christ’s sacrificial love which “compels a willing, urgent, joyful, uncompromising grace-saturated, God-glorifying obedience in us…Indeed, when the gospel of God is clear in the church, Christians will work hard by the grace of God with great delight for the glory of God…As pastors it is our call not only to preach a gospel of radical grace but also to portray a life of radical goodness. Those who espouse sound doctrine in the church should embody selfless devotion in the world” as people give themselves wholly to the priorities of God (pp.31, 37, 38).  

“In Jesus simple command to ‘make disciples’ He has invited every one of his followers to share the life of Christ with others in a sacrificial, intentional global effort to multiply the gospel of Christ through others”(p. 57).  Christians are called to “make disciples who will make disciples who will make disciples and together multiply this gospel to all peoples” (p.73).  Therefore churches should “develop in every member an intense desire and intentional effort to make his or her life count for the multiplication of the gospel in the world…The plan is for every person among the people of God to count for the advancement of the kingdom of God” (pp. 74-75).

In one telling example Platt tells about an island where there are multitudes of Christians living amid one of the most unreached peoples on earth.  He was told “the Christians have all the trapping of the church. The only thing they are missing is the heart of Christ” (p.79).  As a result, they do not reach out to their Muslim neighbors.  “Instead, they focus on church activities among themselves” (p. 70).  Platt acknowledges that “so many people groups are still unreached because they are hard to reach [resistant attitudes, closed countries, difficult access, threats of persecution or death] but we haven’t had the resolve to get them the gospel.  Any Christian and any church desiring to obey the command of Christ in the world and longing to see the coming of Christ at the end of the world [which will happen once all people groups have some believers in each group Mt. 24:14], must possess a God-centered, gospel driven tenacity that is ready to endure an intense spiritual battle…There will be divisions within us, distractions around us, diversions in front of us, deceptions tempting us and disease and death threatening us. It will not be easy. And it will cost” (pp.86-87).

But, Platt argues, true discipleship leads believers to “leverage their businesses, their relationships and the position, possessions, influence, wealth, gifts and talents that God has given them for the sake of God’s glory among the unreached peoples” (p. 90).  Toward that end, prayer and fasting are necessary to prevail in the spiritual battle and discern God’s direction for each church.

Radical Together is a short book with good teaching supported by many concrete applications of each principle.  A Small Group Discussion Guide at the end of the book provides a helpful way to discuss the book’s contents and their specific applications for people in their own church context.  Using that discussion guide as a tool to understand this book and Radical together would yield the most productive, life-transforming results in churches.

                                                Reviewed by M.L. Codman-Wilson, Ph.D.     5/24/12

Radical by David Platt

Book Review: Radical by David Platt, Multnomah Press, 2010

Radical is an outstanding book critiquing American church culture from a Biblical perspective.  Platt, a “successful” mega-church pastor, says: “I realized I was on a collision course with an American church culture where success is defined by bigger crowds, bigger budgets and bigger buildings.  I was now confronted with a startling reality: Jesus actually spurned the things that my church culture said were most important. So…I found myself asking two questions:  (1) Was I going to believe Jesus?  (2) Was I going to obey Jesus?” (pp.2-3)   Because Platt’s book is so well written, the purpose of this review will just be to highlight a few of his very provocative and insightful comments.

He says: “Always Jesus presented the high cost of being his followers – “leaving certainty for uncertainty, safety for danger, self-preservation for self-denunciation.  In a world that prizes promoting yourself, they were following a teacher who told them to crucify themselves” (p.12)  Because we don’t want to believe this cost, we rationalize these passages away… “Because in America we have a dangerous tendency to misunderstand, minimize and even manipulate the gospel in order to accommodate our assumptions and desires,…we desperately need to explore how much of our understanding of the gospel is American and how much is Biblical” (p.28).

“The dangerous assumption we unknowingly accept in the American dream is that our greatest asset is our own ability.  The American dream prizes what people can accomplish when they believe in themselves and trust in themselves…but here the gospel and the American dream are clearly and ultimately antithetical to each other...In the gospel God confronts us with our utter inability to accomplish anything of value apart from him”(p.46). 

“Jesus commands us to go. He has created each of us to take the gospel to the ends of the earth and I propose that anything less than radical devotion to this purpose is unbiblical Christianity... God created humans for two purposes: to enjoy his grace and…to extend his glory to the ends of the earth” (pp.64-65).  [Yet] we live in a church culture that has a dangerous tendency to disconnect the grace of God from the glory of God”…The message of Biblical Christianity is not “God loves me, period” as if we were the object of our own faith. The message of Biblical Christianity is “God loves me so that I might make him, his ways, his glory, his salvation and his greatness – known among all nations” (p.69). It’s a foundational truth: God creates, God blesses and saves each of us for a radically global purpose but if we are not careful, we will be tempted to make exceptions” – i.e., I am not called to foreign missions.  “We have unnecessarily and unbiblically drawn a line of distinction, assigning the obligations of Christianity to a few while keeping the privileges of Christianity for us all” (p.73).

We need to be “not receivers but reproducers of God’s Word” (p.101).  We are by nature receivers. Even if we have a desire to learn God’s word, we still listen (to teaching from pastors/authors etc.) from a default self-centered mind-set that is always asking: What can I get out of this?’  But as we have seen, this is unbiblical Christianity. What if we changed the question whenever we gather to learn God’s word?  What if we begin to think: ‘How can I listen to His Word so that I am equipped to teach this Word to others?”  (p.103).  “God’s design for taking the gospel to the world is a slow, intentional, simple process that involves every one of his people sacrificing every facet of their lives to multiply the life of Christ in others” (p.104).

“In our Christian version of the American dream, our plan ends up disinfecting Christians from the world more than discipling Christians in the world.  Disinfecting Christians from the world involves isolating  followers of Christ in a spiritual safe deposit box called the church building and teaching them to be good, decent church members, decent citizens but with a deaf ear to billions who haven’t heard his name” (pp.104-105).  Discipling Christians involves propelling Christians into the world to risk their lives for the sake of others.  Now the world is our focus” (p.105).

“Our perspective on our possessions radically changes when we open our eyes to the needs of the world around us…Scripture clearly teaches that God intends our plenty to supply others’ needs.  It is two radically different questions to ask: (1) ‘What can I spare?’ or ‘What will it take?’ to meet the needs of the poor?” (pp.128-29). “There are 26 thousand children dying daily of starvation or preventable disease. As I see their faces, I realize I have a choice – we can stand with the starving or with the overfed” (p.140).

“If more than a billion people today are headed to a Christ-less eternity and have not even heard the gospel, then we don’t have time to waste our lives on an American dream.  Approximately 1.5 billion people (in more than 500 people groups) are unreached or unengaged (no church or organization actively working within that people group)…We need to take the gospel to them…This is a cause worth living for. It is a cause worth dying for. It is a cause worthy of moving urgently on” (p.159)…Will we risk everything – our comfort, our possessions, our safety, our security, our very lives – to make the gospel known among the unreached peoples? Such rising up and such risk-taking are the unavoidable, urgent results of a life that is radically abandoned to Jesus” (p. 160).

“To everyone wanting a safe, untroubled, comfortable life free from danger, stay away from Jesus. The danger in our lives will only increase in proportion to the depth of our relationship with Christ. Maybe this is why we sit back and settle for a casual relationship with Christ and routine religion in the church” (pp. 167-168).

Platt’s last chapter is what he calls “The Radical Experiment – One year to a life turned upside down” (p.183).  “The challenge is for one year and it involves 5 components:

1.        Pray for the entire world, praying for laborers in the harvest (Mt. 10) and praying audaciously for God’s purpose to be accomplished around the world” (pp.187, 190).

2.      Read through the entire Word. (If you and I are going to penetrate our culture and the cultures of the world with the gospel, we desperately need minds saturated with God’s Word”p.191).

3.      Sacrifice your money for a specific purpose. (‘Notice I didn’t say merely ‘give’; I said ‘sacrifice’...Sacrifice is giving away when it hurts to give…Sacrifice is giving beyond your ability” (pp.193, 195). “Spend your money on something that is gospel centered,…church focused …for a tangible, specific need…to someone or something you know you can trust” pp.194-195).

4.      Spend your time in another context around the world (at least 2% of your time which works out to a week a year pp.201-203).

5.      Commit your life to a multiplying community” (p.185). (We need community in order to follow Christ radically. ..We will need the church to live in radical obedience to Christ. We will need to show one another how to give liberally, go urgently and live dangerously. When we sacrifice our resources for the poor and then face unexpected and unforeseen needs in our own lives, we will need brothers and sisters to help us stand” p.206).

Platt’s dream is that such “radical obedience to Christ becomes the new normal” (p.216).  Reviewed by M.L. Codman-Wilson, Ph.D.  5/14/12

Toxic Faith by Stephen Arterburn and Jack Felton

Book Review Toxic Faith, Stephen Arterburn and Jack Felton, Waterbrook Press, 2001.

Many times people leave the church or walk away from God because of their experience of ‘toxic faith.’  Arterburn and Felton describe toxic faith as “a destructive and dangerous involvement in a religion that allows the religion, not a relationship with God, to control a person’s life.  It is a defective faith with an incomplete or tainted view of God. It is abusive and manipulative” (p. 19)

They illustrate how people can become entrapped in toxic faith because of religious leaders’ evil manipulations of their followers, or tragedy or abuse in people’s past, or unrealistic expectations that God should keep believers from suffering, or human tendencies towards a self-centered, narcissistic religion or  “distortions from one’s early years by watching parents practice a faith with little truth and hope… [It occurs when] Faith is slowly poisoned as lies and false ideas are integrated into a person’s beliefs about God… Whether handed down, learned later in life, supported by others, or reinforced by denial, toxic beliefs take root and spoil the relationship with God. These beliefs must be countered and replaced with truth” (p.33).

The purpose of the book, therefore, is to help people move from a toxic faith to a true faith:  

“Once faith is poisoned, it is a complex process to detoxify the individual and restore a pure faith.
 Identifying the toxic elements is the beginning of hope. To see toxic beliefs and practices for what
 they are can allow men and women to plunge deeply into true faith and to know and serve God,
 rather than to walk on the deadly fringes” (p.31).  The authors seek to “cut in on the dance of self-deception and introduce tired dancers to a God who cannot be manipulated and whose love cannot be earned” (p. xii).

One of the many examples of a toxic faith progression is in Melody’s story. 

Her father, who was a minister, molested her as a teenager. “Melody didn’t sleep the rest of the

night. As she lay awake, the nucleus of a lifetime of toxic faith began to form. She wondered why

God had allowed this to happen. She thought that she must be bad or this bad thing wouldn’t have

happened.  She felt that thus must be some kind of punishment for something she had done. Her

faith shattered. Since my father is a fake, she thought, all believers must be fakes also….She told

her mother what had happened [but] Melody’s mother couldn’t believe it and accused her of lying.

The revelation destroyed her relationship with her mother. She felt isolated and abandoned by her

father, her mother and her God” (p. 34). As a result she began self-destructive abusive behavior.

The book is a careful and thorough study of the elements of toxic faith, with clear illustrations for each point and a helpful layout that underlines key ideas and includes summaries at the end of each chapter.  The book describes the beliefs involved in toxic faith, the progression of religious addiction, the characteristics of a toxic faith system with its rules and its leaders, and the hope in recovery and treatment.

Some of the 21 toxic beliefs the authors highlight include: “If I have real faith, God will heal me or someone I am praying for…All ministers are men and women of God and can be trusted…A strong faith will protect me from problems and pain…God hates sinners, is angry with me and wants to punish me…

The more money I give to God, the more money he will give to me…More than anything else, God wants me to be happy” (p. 78).

The test for possible toxic faith includes questions like:

1.      “Have you found yourself looking to your minister for a quick fix to a lifelong problem?

2.      Do you feel extreme guilt over the slightest mistakes or inadequacies?

3.      Do you feel God is angry with you?

4.      Has your faith led you to lead an isolated life, making it hard for you to relate to your family and friends?

5.        Do you sense that God is looking at what you do and if you don’t do enough, he might turn on you or refuse to bless you?” (pp. 263-264).

Toxic Faith removes the veil from much religion that is dysfunctional and is a very important book for anyone whose faith has been injured along the way.  The authors’ guidelines for restoration and treatment provide hope and Biblical correctives for poisoned perspectives.

                                    Reviewed by M.L. Codman-Wilson, Ph.D. 5/10/12

Spirit Rising, Tapping into the Power of the Holy Spirit by Jim Cymbala

Book Review: Jim Cymbala Spirit Rising, Tapping into the Power of the Holy Spirit, Zondervan 2012

Issues surrounding the Holy Spirit have polarized Christians for centuries.  Some focus primarily on the Spirit and neglect the Word; others focus primarily on the Word and neglect and distrust the manifestations of the Spirit.  Both have misunderstood the Trinity.  The first group neglects the Father and the Son.  The second group has created a new Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Bible.  Cymbala moves in the middle of those polar extremes to advocate for a Spirit controlled life that is modeled on Scripture.  He is right to call out the anemia of much of contemporary western Christianity and urge Christians to submit to the Spirit “so the church will be built up, the Word will be honored and the kingdom of God will be extended. For that is why He came” (p. 194).

With those convictions, Jim Cymbala’s Spirit Rising follows the patterns of his previous best-selling books: Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, Fresh Faith and Fresh Power.  He intersperses chapters on Biblical teaching re: the work of the Spirit with chapters that call Christians to live in the power of the Spirit and five story chapters that demonstrate Spirit transformation in 5 different people’s lives.

A very readable, valuable and timely book for Christians today.

                                                Reviewed by M.L. Codman-Wilson, Ph.D. 5/3/12

Some excerpts from Spirit Rising:

“Spiritual ministry can only come by the Holy Spirit showing himself through human beings. His power flows through human vessels” (p. 32).  This is why “God gave to each one the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (I Cor. 12:7)… “To each one, not just to the apostles…God has promised every one of us a manifestation – supernatural by definition – of the Holy Spirit. It is part of being a Christian. To water that down to mean human talent is unbelief in God the Holy Spirit” (p. 32).

“The Scriptural mandate ‘to be filled with the Spirit’ is best understood as being controlled by the Spirit.  Yet, being a Christian does not necessarily guarantee that a person lives a life controlled by the Spirit.” (p. 38). [He cites the church in Laodecia which was lukewarm.] “Christianity is not a self-effort religion but rather one of power – the ability and might of the Spirit…The Spirit is the only one who can produce self-discipline love and boldness. But to do so, he has to control us daily. We can’t rest on a religious experience we had years or even months ago..[Therefore,] “fan the flames of the Spirit…prevent the fire from being extinguished, give attention to the Spirit’s work in you because without that anointing you will never fulfill the purposes of God for your life.” (p. 41).

A Spirit controlled life will be characterized by:

1.         An aliveness to Scripture – i.e, “Without the help of the Holy Spirit to understand the meaning of what we read, we’re susceptible to reading our own biases into God’s Word…When we see only what we want to see in the Bible, it loses all power to transform us” (p. 62). As well, “Often we get our definitions for important things not by what the Spirit shows us in Scripture but by what we saw growing up in the church” (p. 63).

2.         Joy that comes from God. “Paul linked our progress and growth in the faith with the joy that increases as we mature in Christ” (Phil.1:25).

3.         A quest for Christlikeness “The Holy Spirit brings new sensitivities and convictions to us if we are really living under his control. Behavior, words and attitudes that are unholy cause a reaction from the Spirit who is holy” (p. 97)…The Spirit wants to work in the deepest level of our being – the place where our thoughts, desires and plans are formed” (p. 99).

4.         Power – “Power to overcome sin. Power to overcome spiritual enemies that attack us. Power to endure hardship and affliction. Power to witness. Power to speak. Power to pray.  Isn’t more spiritual power probably the greatest need we have today?” (p. 105).  “Whenever we reach out with purpose to share the good news of salvation through Christ; whenever we are determined to help the spiritually blind to see and to set the oppressed free, we can prayerfully expect the Holy Spirit to work in power as promised by Jesus…Sadly, many of us don’t experience the power of the Holy Spirit because we so seldom do what Christ commissioned us to do” (p. 109).

5.         Love for the unlovable – “Let’s ask for a fresh baptism of God’s love. Let’s then walk in that love so everyone encountering us can have a peek into the heart of God” (p. 127).

6.         Victory over fear of opposition, of rejection of suffering and failure (p. 152). “The Spirit’s invisible but powerful strength will help us live a life worthy of our Lord” (p. 154).

7.         Powerful prayers. “In its purest form prayer has a raw fervency and faith that prevails with God and secures answers otherwise thought impossible” (p. 163).  The Holy Spirit helps us by revealing God’s will and granting us the faith to pray in the right direction” (p. 165).  We can move mountains.

8.         A willingness to step up to the Spirit’s directive for our lives. “It’s about hearing the Spirit’s call, surrendering to him and then giving ourselves totally to the work he puts before us…What the Spirit lead us to do isn’t always easy and it doesn’t always make a lot of sense, but whom God calls, he equips” (pp.181, 187).

“Don’t easily settle for ‘church’ instead of God.  Confess your need for a fresh revelation of what his church was meant to look like…Acknowledge we need help from the Holy Spirit…And each time the Holy Spirit prompts us to move in a new direction, let’s obey immediately.  This will help us develop a deeper sensitivity to his voice” (p. 194).