Telling Each Other the Truth , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - William Backus

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113 pages

English

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Proven, Healing Ways to Speak the Truth in LoveNow in a fresh package, this classic on learning the art of true communication is good news for all. The author uses Scripture, case histories, and dialogue to impart timeless principles that can heal damaged relationships, strengthen everyday communication, and help people avoid the traps of manipulation that often disrupt the free flow of honest discussion. Readers will find this information invaluable in every relationship of life--especially those that don't come easy.

Sujets

Philosophie et théologie

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	01 février 2006
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781585588848
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0461€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Telling Each Other the Truth
Copyright © 1985
William Backus
Cover design by Eric Walljasper
Ebook edition created 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
eISBN 9781585588848
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
To Candy
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction: “Two Hundred Lies a Day”
1. Say What You Want to Say
2. Nothing’s Wrong with Saying “I”
3. Attacking and Defending vs. Speaking the Truth in Love
4. Manipulation by Guilt
5. Ask and It Shall Be Given You—How to Make Requests
6. Free to Say No
7. Dealing with Critical People
8. How Matthew 18:15 Keeps You from Blowing Up
9. “If He Listens to You”: The Loving Art of Listening
10. Wrapping the Truth in Love
11. Telling the Truth in Social Talk—Small Talk
About the Author
Books by Dr. William Backus
Back Cover
I NTRODUCTION

“Two Hundred Lies a Day”
You don’t need a book to teach you to tell the truth, right?
That’s what Joel thought about himself, too. He believed he was a truthful man—well, for the most part. And he certainly wouldn’t have traced his current difficulties to untruthfulness. He knew he was a good doctor, too. Then why was he risking everything? Why was he putting it on the line in exchange for nothing?
He knew he was taking an enormous risk. If arrested he would be ruined. His practice would go down the drain. He might even lose his medical license. Julie would leave him—he knew that for certain. And his family would never recover from the shock and mortification.
Yet Joel continued walking toward the bar. He seemed driven. The familiar pattern of intense pressure from marital disharmony and professional responsibility seemed more than he could bear. Always at such times of stress his mind dangled before him the excitement of the forbidden—and the pressure always persisted until he gave in.
He knew what the end would be, yet he told himself that this time he would not go that far. He would only stop and watch the strippers for a few hours, have a couple of drinks, and then go home. Perhaps that would be enough. It would have to be enough. He had promised God he would clean up his act.
Home. Joel did not allow his mind to dwell on home. How shocked his patients would be if they knew what his life with Julie had been like! Most of his patients viewed him as almost divine. What would they think if they knew he and Julie weren’t talking, that they seldom got along well enough to sleep in the same bed? What would they think if they knew of the feelings (Were they angry feelings?) he had locked inside himself?
How would Julie react if she knew? He failed to notice a quick thrill of satisfaction at the thought of Julie discovering his secret. It would hurt her, and she deserved to be hurt. But he would never tell. She mustn’t find out. Still, he knew dimly that in some curious way he was getting even, taunting her, punishing her, rubbing her nose in her coldness, acting out his anger at her this very moment.
She would never know. She must not find out. For he knew the course he was on would not stop with a couple of drinks and a show. It would end as it had always ended. He would find a prostitute and go home with her. It was his act of “communication” directed at the Julie he carried in his mind. The real Julie must not know.
Here was communication gone so awry that it never communicated at all! Julie would also never know that he was angry. He wouldn’t tell her. He didn’t know how. And if he did tell her, she wouldn’t know how to answer. So instead of telling each other the truth, this couple had learned to “stuff it.” And the result was Joel’s gross, sinful, pathological, guilt-ridden misbehavior. Joel, like most people, did not think he needed to learn how to tell Julie the truth about himself and the needs and feelings he harbored.
Most people who are likely to read this book were taught long ago not to lie. The lesson usually comes early in life. The first time a child makes up a story to avoid parental wrath, he may discover that the penalty for his inventive genius is worse than if he had truthfully admitted his trespass.
If you are fortunate enough to have been reared by parents whose compassion, love, and respect for morality were consistent, you will have acquired the truth habit to the point where you wouldn’t dream of lying—in most situations. You will hardly believe you need a book to teach you to speak the truth.
Nonetheless, most people, even most moral people—like us—slip around the truth without even realizing it. Yes, we have learned the difference between truth and lies. But to an extent we don’t fully realize, the culture desensitizes us to falsehood, immunizes us to its evils, simmers us in a broth of untruth, and numbs us to the uncounted lies we hear each day. So we eventually take certain untruths for granted and hear them without amazement or shock.
Someone calculated that each of us tells 200 lies each day! Yet we believe ourselves to be honest, truthful folk. In fact, we’d swear to it—and chances are, we’d be swearing to an untruth. It’s so much easier to “call in sick” than to go to work when relatives we like are visiting. Few people think twice before insisting to the arresting officer that they were not driving as fast as he claims they were. Most errors on tax returns occur in favor of the taxpayer, attesting to our habit of nudging reality in our own direction. The marriage counselor who interviews each partner separately can hardly believe he is hearing about the same relationship—the two versions vary so sharply.
The consequences of this built-in disregard for truth dog our tracks. Most of the time we barely notice how they underscore human faithlessness. Banks can’t cash checks for strangers; stores won’t take merchandise returned without a sales slip; TV monitors scan the aisles to catch furtive hands; ushers on guard make sure we don’t see two movies for the price of one; in the days when virtue was important, young women learned to be wary of young men with a “line”; all America knows what a dead bolt lock is; insurance against the dishonesty of others costs us hard-earned resources; dogs, alarm systems, fences, walls, vaults, lockers, safe-deposit boxes, false bottoms, secret pockets, chains, combinations, bars, bolts, padlocks, polygraphs, voice analyzers, bloodhounds—all provide some of the most obvious signs of everyday falsehood.
LIES AND HUMAN MISERY
But the less obvious markers of lies at work need attention. Untruths devastate our plans, corrupt our characters, disrupt our relationships, shred our spirits, and putrify our sweetest daydreams.
We become insensitive to the lies because our daily life has inured us to noise. It comes pouring at us from a hundred loudspeakers during nearly every waking moment. What we hear is often false; worse, we take falsehood for granted.
Falsehoods are sung, shouted and whispered to us. Falsehoods hypnotize and cajole us to buy soap, magazines, tombstones, dish detergent, condominiums, books, fly spray, laxatives, scuba lessons, medical care, beer, vacation cruises, and dating services. But even more insidious, we are sold false ideas ; we are told what to think, and are thus seduced into believing false notions about who we are, what we must have, where we really came from, what life is all about, and how we ought to live. Much that is offered on the idea market consists of lies.
Here is how those lies affect us: Perhaps we are not happy. Ask most of us why we are miserable and we will tell you that the problem lies outside ourselves; or if it lies within ourselves we will blame it on the lack of something within, some attribute which leads to happiness. “God,” we whine, “why don’t you just give me that one thing I lack. Then I’ll be happy.” We imagine our misery exists because God won’t loosen up and give a little. It would be so easy for Him! Why doesn’t He?
This is perhaps the biggest lie of all. The notion that the cause of our unhappiness lies elsewhere creates precisely that state of hopelessness the enemy so fervently desires: The “I can’t and God won’t” situation of utter despair.
Even the secular psychologist who keeps up with his reading knows better. Cognitive psychology, pioneered by Ellis, Beck, Mahoney, Meichenbaum, Novaco, and many other researchers, certainly knows better. For more than a decade, these psychologists have found wanting the old Skinnerian behaviorism which insisted man is no different from the laboratory animal insofar as the mechanisms governing his behavior are concerned. If the laboratory rat could be taught to press a lever by rewarding him with pellets of pressed barley, then psychologists could teach man to save his soul by rewarding him for correct responses. The social learning and cognitive behavioral psychologists did not exactly repudiate Skinner’s principles, they merely added something. Yet the addition was crucial. They discovered that, unlike the laboratory rat, man thinks. He assesses, appraises, and evaluates, supplying meaning to events.
It is the content of human thinking that makes the difference between misery and happiness. What matters is not the event, but how a person appraises and evaluates the event. What occurs outside him does not make him joyful or wretched, angry or benevolent, peaceful or turbulent. What he believes about the event makes all the difference.
So, by a quirk in the development of psychological thought, theoreticians and clinicians have come strikingly close to saying what th