The Lies We Believe
The Lies We Believe: Renew Your Mind and Transform Your Life
By: Dr. Chris Thurman
“Truth matters. It matters not just in our relationships, in what we say to others, but inside each of us.”
It took me awhile to get through this book and I wish I would have read it within a shorter time frame, but for some of it I was reading it with a group and so it was sporadic reading.
Combining psychology and biblical truths, there are a lot of good insights in this book to help us recognize that the way we think about God, ourselves, life, and others is important and it’s often distorted in ways we never realized.
Thurman has written this book to help expose some of those lies and to tell us the truths we SHOULD believe that will transform our lives.
“We lie to ourselves every day, multiple times a day, when we tell ourselves things that are inaccurate, distorted, untrue, irrational, mistaken, and most important, unbiblical. The lies we tell ourselves cost us dearly. They cost us good relationships with others, a sense of meaning and purpose, emotional health, well-lived lives, confidence that we have worth, and an intimate relationship with the God of the universe, who created us in His image.”
We’d like to think that we are rational thinkers and that we can trust our intuitions and that our ‘heart’ would never lie to us, but that’s just simply not true. The Bible says:
“For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools…” (Rom 1:21-22)
“the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but have itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.” (2 Tim 4:4)
“the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. (2 Cor. 4:4)
We have to take captive every thought and discern whether we are believing lies or truth.
The aim of this book is to help with that.
This book would be easy to outline because it’s broken down into different sections within the chapters with lots of headings and provides ‘answers’ often in list form. He says these lists are to help us “assess whether you believe certain lies and whether you fall into unhealthy ways of living life.”
After explaining the ways that our minds are under attack and some methods of overthrowing mental strongholds, he goes through the lies that we believe about ourselves, others, life, and God, followed by chapters specifically about lies women believe and men believe.
Here are just a few of the lies addressed in the book:
My worth is determined by how I perform
My unhappiness is externally caused
Others should accept me just the way I am
People are basically good
Life should be easy and fair
You can have it all
God is mean and vindictive
I can do it by myself
My main job in life is to make everyone happy
The next part, after tearing down the lies, is spent building up the truths. Some of these are:
To err is human
You can’t please everyone
It’s not all about you
Life is difficult
You are a person of great worth
The world owes you nothing
You are going to die
Some of these kind of sound a little gloomy. Maybe you prefer to hear- You’re awesome! Everything is awesome! You deserve the best and everything you want and on and on.
But that’s why I’m not typically a fan of self-help books. Because 1) they seem to tell you to look within yourself for help, when we should be looking to God to save us from ourselves, but 2) a lot of self-helpy type books promote ‘positive thinking’ as a solution. That has always felt empty to me.
I appreciate that Thurman also agrees with this and reminds us that it’s about the truth, not just being positive:
“I’m not a fan of ‘positive thinking.’ As far as I’m concerned, those who tout positive thinking are actually part of the problem, not part of the solution. Why? Because, the most important issue about the beliefs we hold isn’t whether they are positive or negative but whether they are true. Some beliefs are positive but flat-out untrue.”
Each of the truths he promotes in this section are based in gospel truth and tells us the truth about our sin and our need for a perfect Savior. While appearing gloomy at first blush, they point us to the power of Christ and how we are called to treat others. It is the path to life.
It also acknowledges that we will never be perfect this side of heaven. Sanctification is a process that ultimately leads to glorification (perfection); but here on earth it is a daily dying to ourselves and continually becoming more like Christ.
Which is why one of my favorite ‘truth’ chapters in this list was ‘to err is human.’
“To err is human, but when your eraser wears out before your pencil does, you’re overdoing it.”
This chapter was about perfectionism. Thurman discusses the differences between pursuing excellence vs pursuing perfection.
When we pursue perfection we are committing the sin of pride in trying to be God: omniscient (knowing everything), omnipotent (all powerful and in control of everything), and omnipresent (doing everything and being everywhere at once). Those characteristics are reserved for God. We could never achieve them.
Pursuing excellence is a mindset of doing our best, being process-minded rather than product-minded, being realistic in our thinking, and knowing our worth is in Christ, not our performance.
These were good reminders that our goal is not to be perfect because we are human and we will make mistakes, but that we are in the process of sanctification, and pursuing excellence is our goal. And of course… it’s also trying to use the pencil more than the eraser…
Romans 12: 2 tells us we need to be transformed by the renewing of our minds so that we can discern what is good. The Enemy wants to distract us with lies so that we won’t pursue truth and good.
The last part of the book looks at how exemplifying Christ looks in all of this. While we don’t have access to all the specific thoughts of God, we have his Word, his commands., his life. The way Jesus lived gives us all the insights we need on how to renew our minds.
The character and attitude of Christ is marked by humility.
“Developing a deep-seated attitude of humility is the most important issue in the renewal of our mind. It’s the reason why there are so many verses in the Bible that talk about dying to self, serving others, and esteeming others more highly than yourself.”
If we were to go back through the entire book and all the lies and truths he shares and see how humility fits into resisting the lies and pursuing the truth we will see that humility is essential.
If we get nothing else from this book but an urgent exhortation to pursue humility, we will be on the right track.
“The acquisition of knowledge about an issue is a nice start, but it doesn’t set people free. To really know and deeply believe something, we have to contemplatively think about and act on it until it becomes so deeply embedded in the way we look at reality that we live life the way Christ did— lovingly, kindly, genuinely, compassionately, hospitably, courageously, selflessly, and passionately.”
Recommendation
I would definitely recommend this book. It’s a bit long and if you do it in a group a few chapters a week or so, you’ll have to intentionally stay connected to it because it’s easy to forget where you are if you go too long in between chapters.
The benefit of reading it in a group is hearing other’s thoughts and how you’re not the only one believing these lies and struggling with these truths. It may provide a good basis for accountability within a group and how to encourage one another in the struggles. It will require honesty and transparency, but in light of the gospel, there is forgiveness and Christ’s power to pursue truth and to change what feels impossible to change.
I found the writing style to be easy to follow and conversational at times. The author is honest about his own downfalls which helps it feel less like a lecture and more like encouragement.
“The most important way God works for the god of those who love Him is to help us change how we view reality so we can handle difficult circumstances in a more Christlike manner.”
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