Most of my blog posts are about religion/theology, social ethics, and political issues, areas in which I have studied and read about extensively. But even though I haven’t studied psychology so much, this post is about a book by M. Scott Peck, a psychotherapist who died on September 25, 2005.
.jpg)
M. Scott Peck was born in May 1936. He completed his
bachelor’s degree at Harvard University in 1958 and then earned a medical
degree in 1963 from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.
Peck was a psychiatrist in the United States Army for nearly
10 years, and then was the director of a mental health clinic and had a private
psychiatric practice in Connecticut.
He is said to have been among the founding fathers of the
self-help genre of books. His first and most widely-read book is The Road
Less Traveled: A New Psychology Of Love, Traditional Values, And Spiritual
Growth (1978; 25th anniversary
ed., 2002). It has sold over 7,000,000 copies!
Peck’s The Road Less Traveled is a self-help book,
but it is far different from the get happy quick emphasis of so many books of
that genre. The opening sentence is, “Life is difficult.” The way to overcome
life’s difficulties is also hard. Since most people prefer easy ways, it is the
road less traveled.
Section I of Peck’s book is titled "Discipline.”
He writes, “Discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life’s
problems. Without discipline we can solve nothing” (p. 15). The necessary discipline tools are
delaying gratification, acceptance of responsibility, dedication to truth,
and balancing.
The latter refers to achieving the delicate balance between
conflicting needs, goals, duties, responsibilities, and directions that gives
us the flexibility required for successful living in all spheres of activity.
The second section of Peck’s book is “Love.” His
definition of love is, “The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of
nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” And he asserts, “Love is as
love does” (pp. 81, 83).
Section III is “Growth and Religion.” Peck states
that people tend to define religion too narrowly, but he believes that everyone
has a religion. Everyone has a worldview, he says, and a person’s worldview is
that person’s religion whether he/she recognizes that fact or not.
Following the road less traveled,
it is possible, Peck declares, “to mature into a belief in God” (p. 223). In
his case, his own journey of spiritual growth led him to affirm the Christian
faith. In his second book, People of the Lie (1983; 2nd ed., 1998), he wrote,
After many years of vague identification with Buddhist and Islamic mysticism, I ultimately made a firm Christian commitment—signified by my non-denominational baptism on the ninth of March 1980 (p. 11).
The fourth section of Peck’s book is “Grace.” On the
opening page of that section, he begins with four verses of “Amazing Grace,”
which he calls an “early American evangelical hymn.”**
In this section Peck asserts, “Spiritual growth is the
evolution of an individual,” and “God is the goal of evolution.” Further, God
is also “the source of the evolutionary force” (pp.
263, 270). God wants us to grow into mature, loving people—and assists us
in that process. That is God’s grace.
But sadly, humans often resist grace. Peck says that the
reason for that resistance is laziness, which, interestingly, he says is the
“original sin” of us humans.
The last subsection of the book is “The Welcoming of Grace,”
and there Peck avers that “our human growth is of the utmost importance to
something greater than ourselves. This something we call God” (p. 311).
Jesus sadly said, “the road is hard that leads to
life, and there are few who find it” (Matt. 7:14).
Yet those who walk up the road less traveled,
welcoming grace rather than resisting it, experience a joyful, meaningful life
for themselves and a life of loving service to others. How amazing is God’s
grace!
_____
** On
Sept. 12, Christianity Today posted an
informative/inspirational article titled “We’ve Sung ‘Amazing Grace’ for
250 Years. We’ve Only Just Begun.”
.jpg)