Did "The Seduction of Christianity" Change Any Minds?

Now, Contending for the Faith. In this regular feature, Dave and Tom respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call. Here’s this week’s question: “Dear Dave and Tom, I read The Seduction of Christianity for the second time recently. I read it the first time about 15 years ago, and I’m amazed at how relevant it still is. I was wondering if any of the subjects you addressed were so impacted by your book that they lost favor among their adherents.”

Tom: Well, let’s talk about Seduction of Christianity, Dave. Many of the things that we addressed are still very viable today. There are some things that have fallen out of favor. Some of the inner healing is not quite what it was, but certainly positive confession, the whole so-called faith movement, that’s as strong…

Dave: It’s taken on a few new faces, but it’s basically the same…

Tom: Yeah, oh, by the way, a little aside—I don’t know when this program’s going to air, but we do have Paul David Yonggi Cho coming to Bend for a major event.

Dave: I understand he’s going to up at Mount Bachelor…

Tom: Mount Bachelor, right…

Dave: With thousands and thousands of people up there, I guess…

Tom: Well, we’ll see.

Dave: You remember, he said he would only discuss the issues with me when I had a church as large as his. And he made of few misstatements, of course. He said I only quoted him once—or, maybe he…I think he’s…was he referring to Beyond Seduction? Or let’s say Seduction… So you and I only quoted him once, Tom? In fact, we quoted him five or six times—large quotations, not out of context…but anyway, he’s one.

Tom: Yeah, Dave. He’s one—I don’t know whether he has the popularity that he had before, but certainly he’s the biggest thing in South Korea. But there are other things that—we can’t say that the book itself impacted them, but they were fads. They were things that the church went through, people got excited, and then they sort of got bored with it, and so on, I think that’s part of it…

Dave: Well, Tom, while we’re talking about this, maybe we should be more specific. What is the problem with Yonggi Cho? Well, even the Wall Street Journal said he was involved in Korean shamanism, visualization—that you could create your reality with your mind! He claimed that God created the universe by visualizing it, and then incubated it like an egg…you would find this in his book The Fourth Dimension. And that we can do that too—visualize…in fact, he said, “You can’t get your prayers answered unless you visualize clearly what you are praying for.” And he told of how he was praying for a bicycle, for example… a chair and a desk…but a bicycle. And God supposedly said to him, “Well, how can I give you the bicycle you want? I don’t know what kind you want. You want a French bicycle, an American bicycle, you want a racing bicycle, you want a 10-speed? What do you want?” And so, he was taught, he says, by the Holy Spirit, that you must visualize what you want from God, and then, and only then, God will give it to you. If you’re…if a woman is praying for a husband, visualize that man, exactly as you want.

Now, Jesus said, “Your heavenly Father knows what you have need of before you ask.” It’s the difference between getting God to give me what I want and submitting to His will and receiving from Him what He knows I need.

That’s part of the problem with positive confession—Hagan, Copeland. Well, Hagan has died now, but Hagan wrote a book saying that Christ appeared to him…Christ appeared to Yonggi Cho, he said, in a red fireman’s uniform. I don’t think that He’s running around the astral plane in a red fireman’s uniform. But Kenneth Hagan said that Christ appeared to him and gave him four principles, which if you follow these, you can always get what you want from God. And you will find that in his book How to Write Your Own Ticket with God. I don’t want to write my own ticket with God. I don’t want to talk God into giving me what I want, but I want what His will is. And just to quote Him again, Jesus said, “Your heavenly Father knows what you have need of, not what you want—what you have need of.

And then there was psychology, Christian psychology…

Tom: Well, we’ve really stopped that…(laughing)

Dave: Yeah, right. You’re kidding of course…

Tom: Oh brother…

Dave: This has grown and grown. It’s in all the Christian colleges now. It’s in the seminaries and the churches. What was wrong with psychology? Well, Tom, we have a couple of minutes—but you can go to any library, any university, pick up any book on psychology, look in the index—you will never find a listing for “Christian psychology.” Why is that? But they talk about Christian psychology, but there’s no such thing. It doesn’t exist. Well, you find Freudian, Jungian, Rogerian; you’ll find transpersonal or humanistic or all kinds of psychologies— more than 200 of them. Never a listing for Christian psychology. Why not? Because there’s no such thing. There is no Christian who was the founder of a distinct school of psychology known as “Christian psychology.”

Then, what is Christian psychology? Well, Christians have taken the ideas of the godless anti-Christians, the humanists—in fact, Bruce Narramore said, “It was humanistic psychologists Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers who first made us aware of the need for self-love and self-esteem. This is a good and necessary focus.” So he’s telling you—where did it come from? It came from godless anti-Christians, but they have tried to blend that with the Scripture.

In fact, if Christian psychology has anything of any value to offer, we would have to say the church was without it for 1,900 years. It wasn’t in the Bible. Paul knew nothing about it. Jesus knew nothing about it. So basically, they’re saying the Bible is incomplete—it needs some help from these secular humanists.

And of course, Robert Schuller was one of the leaders in this, and it was, in fact, Norman Vincent Peale who was the first one who brought Christian psychology into the church.

Tom: Dave, also, I’ll just bring it right up to speed, the church-growth movement, the seeker-friendly churches, the church marketing—the cornerstone of that is popular psychology.

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Tom: And it’s undermining the church, so it’s bigger than ever. So, we didn’t do a number on that one, but we’re still after it.

Dave: You’ve got to learn to love yourself, they say. But the scripture says, Philippians:2:3Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.
See All...: “In lowliness of mind, let each esteem others better than himself.” That’s the opposite of what Christian psychology is teaching. We need to get back to the Bible, Tom. We’re not just trying to bash Christian psychologists. How about getting it from the Bible? And this is the Manufacturer’s Handbook. It has everything that we need.

Tom: “All things that pertain to life and godliness.”

Dave: Amen—2 Peter 1.