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These are serious, maybe even fatal, flaws in Peck's thinking. Nevertheless, People of the Lie is a remarkable book and well worth your time. It is a significant contribution to the dialogue between psychology and theology. Peck's discussion of the value of a multimodel approach to the study of human behavior is alone worth the price of the book. For pastors it provides some crackerjack sermon illustrations (Charlene's lonely protests against God are a devastating example of the power of evil to isolate and destroy a human being). More important, the book is invaluable for alerting the pastoral counselor to the dynamics of evil on an interpersonal level.

The book also leads to a very urgent consideration of the role of the Christian community in dealing with human evil. I say "leads to" because he did not mention this in the book, but said it later in a telephone interview. He said he felt that something very inappropriate was taking place during the exorcisms of which he was a part. It was that the exorcisms were not taking place in the church, but outside it. He commented, "The church, I think, has failed in not being willing to be that battleground. What the church has done is to try and hush up and avoid any kind of conflict … The church should properly be a place for conflict just as Jesus' body was stretched apart and torn apart on the cross … Our job in the body of Christ should be in some ways to be torn apart and experience great stress rather than great peace. I think we generally want church to be like going to a good movie, Mary Poppins or the like, and it gives us a good feeling for an hour a week." Right on, Scott Peck.

When he said that, I felt as I did so often in reading his book. I felt as though I had had a glass of ice water thrown in my face. Thanks, I needed that. For a long time I thought it was only the liberals who had a weak view of human sin and evil, and who therefore avoided those subjects in their preaching and publishing. But of late, we evangelicals have out-liberated the liberals with our self-help books, positive thinking preaching, and success gospels. Peck's book has come along at a propitious time. It deserves a critical reading by evangelicals, but also a wide reading.

This article was first published March 1, 1985. At the time, Ben Patterson was pastor of Irvine Presbyterian Church, Irvine, California, and a Christianity Today contributing editor. Patterson is now campus pastor at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, and is still a Christianity Today contributing editor.

Copyright © 2005 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

More about M. Scott Peck is available from his website.

Editor's Bookshelf featured Peck's latest book, Glimpses of the Devil.

Editor's Bookshelf: Review
Scott Peck vs. Satan | A well-known psychiatrist describes and analyzes two exorcisms. (Jan. 24, 2005)

Editor's Bookshelf: Interview
The Devil Didn't Make Me Do It | Possession is real, says Scott Peck, but we have more to fear from the evil already inside us. (Jan. 24, 2005)

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September (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49