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Self-Help, So Help Me God!
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11682 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1994 |
2,227 Words |
| Author
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Martin E. Marty
Martin E. Marty is the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service
Professor at the University of Chicago and the George B.
Caldwell Senior Scholar-in-Residence at the Park Ridge Center
for the Study of Health, Faith, and Ethics. |
FURTHER ALONG THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED
The Unending Journey Toward Spiritual Growth
M. Scott Peck, M.D.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993
256 pp., $21.00
M. Scott Peck, in addressing readers, knows he has the best of two worlds. Whenever members of the American reading public show signs of discontent with secular or soulless existence, or when they pursue self-help by any number of means, they ordinarily relate to either or both of these and find reasons to turn to him.
Spiritual seekers on their own
On one hand, there is a kind of ad hoc "church" developing among buyers of books, frequenters of book stores and libraries, and belongers to disaffiliated middle-class elites. This church has no pope or bishops, no formal congregations or financial drives, no programs for social action or for carrying on works of mercy, no canons and dogmas. When authors and booksellers look for a code name for this company they often call it, as does Dr. Peck, "New Age." He recognizes that new things get old fast in our kind of culture of consumption. So he can get away with mild criticism of and soft sneers at this broadly defined New Age movement. But he also knows that there will soon be a newer name for the impulses that make it up, and he never alienates himself wholly from the people who will become part of it.
That impulse leads those who possess it to see the parts of the universe as somehow connected and driven by an energy available to serious seekers. Sometimes Peck calls it a "force" or a Higher Power. To advocates of this thrust, it is apparent that people who try to make it on their own over the potholes of their life's journey will get lost. They will run out of impetus if they do not somehow draw upon the energy or force or Power. As a psychiatrist, well-traveled seeker, almost driven lecturer and entrepreneur, and, by now, a sort of sage, Peck inspires confidence among millions who are not satisfied with most quick-fix or faddish therapies that deal solely with the self. You do not have to believe in a Him or Her personified as God in order to get help from Peck's energy-fired books, including this collection of lectures.
Seekers in the name of God
So much for the
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