Henry Cloud - 12 Christian Beliefs That Can Drive You Crazy

Resources by Henry Cloud and John Townsend

Books

Boundaries (and workbook)

Boundaries in Dating (and workbook)

Boundaries in Marriage (and workbook)

Boundaries with Kids (and workbook)

Boundaries with Teens (Townsend)

Changes That Heal (and workbook) (Cloud)

Hiding from Love (Townsend)

How People Grow (and workbook)

How to Have That Difficult Conversation Youve Been Avoiding

Making Small Groups Work

The Mom Factor (and workbook)

Raising Great Kids

Raising Great Kids Workbook for Parents of Preschoolers

Raising Great Kids Workbook for Parents of School-Age Children

Raising Great Kids Workbook for Parents of Teenagers Safe People (and workbook)

12 Christian Beliefs That Can Drive You Crazy

Video Curriculum

Boundaries

Boundaries in Dating

Boundaries in Marriage

Boundaries with Kids

Raising Great Kids for Parents of Preschoolers

ReGroup (with Bill Donahue)

Audio

Boundaries

Boundaries in Dating

Boundaries in Marriage

Boundaries with Kids

Boundaries with Teens (Townsend)

Changes That Heal (Cloud)

How People Grow

How to Have That Difficult Conversation Youve Been Avoiding

Making Small Groups Work

The Mom Factor

Raising Great Kids

ZONDERVAN

Twelve Christian Beliefs That Can Drive You Crazy

Copyright 1994, 1995 by Henry Cloud and John Townsend

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan.

EPub Edition July 2017 ISBN: 978-0-310-57064-6

Requests for information should be addressed to:

Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cloud, Henry.

Twelve Christian beliefs that can drive you crazy: relief from false assumptions/by Henry Cloud and John Townsend.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-310-49491-1

libraryofcongress21. Spiritual Life Christianity. I. Townsend, John Sims, 1952 II. Title

[BV4501.2.C589 1995]

248.4dc20

95-4129

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published in association with Yates & Yates, www.yates2.com.

Discussion guide written by Lisa Guest

08 09 10 11 12 13 14 42 41 40 39 38 37 36 35 34 33 32 31 30 29 28 27 26

Information about External Hyperlinks in this ebook

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To our clients,
who have worked through
all twelve of the
false assumptions with us

This book began with a dilemma.

Time and time again, wed find that our patientssincere, Bible-loving believers struggling with emotional issueshad a double burden to bear. Not only were they depressed, or eating compulsively, or having trouble dealing with authority figures, but they were also handicapped by certain teachings that sounded Christian, but werent.

The ideas appeared true because those who taught them used religious language and quoted Scriptures. These ideas, however, are emotional heresies. They are false assumptions about spiritual and emotional growth. They arent biblical, and they dont work.

We identified twelve teachings that sound plausible because they each contain a nugget of truth. At some point, however, when Christians try to apply the truths, a breakdown occurs. And the person needlessly suffers.

A woman who suffered from a deep depression because she had been abandoned as a child, was told by a Bible teacher that she simply needed more time with God. She was putting too much trust in people, he told her. Faithfully she tried to follow the principle, If I have God, I dont need people. She isolated herself more and more from those who loved and cared for her in order to spend time praying and studying the Bible. She spent hours alone, with no human contact.

Eventually, her depression deepened to the point that she was hospitalized. During her stay, after much effort, she learned what the Bible really teaches: that a great deal of Gods healing comes through the members of his church.

The most astounding finding of our informal study was that Christians who had been raised with minimal Bible training were less injured by these false assumptionssupposedly biblical teachingsthan Christians with extensive Bible training. In other words, Christians who know their Bibles the best are often injured the most. When their allegiance to the Scriptures was combined with dangerous teaching, much pain often resulted.

Though sometimes they questioned their faith, more often they blamed themselves: They werent faithful to God, or they were secretly resisting what God wanted to tell them. Either way, their emotional symptoms tended to worsen and their pain increased.

The hurting person was then left with one of two options: Leave God and get well in secular psychology, or stay in a Christianity that apparently didnt work and simply cope with being dysfunctional.

As we continued to run across this problem, we searched the Scriptures for answers to these beliefs that were literally driving people crazy. We found that there really is nothing new under the sun: These crazymaking principles have all been addressed in the Bible, from Jesus confrontation of the Pharisees, who believed that authoritative religiosity was actually the voice of God (Mark 7:5), to Johns exposure of the Gnostics, who believed that human connections should be avoided in preference to divine connections (1 John). The Scriptures present clear corrections of all these crazymakers.