Dr. Brad Blanton, a psychotherapist and expert on stress management embraced a new way of self-expression. He, and his followers, claim to live better and more honest lives without any lies, even without white lies.
Nevertheless, the problem of this book is that such a method is self-centred and ego-oriented and not people or environment-oriented. Its full of love that can be defined only as self-love. Be free to tell how you see it. Be free to tell how you feel it. That’s the summary of this therapy. Be open and tell your boss that she is an idiot. Tell your neighbour that both his dog and his breath smell terribly and then tell your wife, upon the entry of your house, that you sleep with your secretary and you will continue to do so.
Those who practice this therapy claim to be finally free. It’s similar like people who promote sin. Throw God out of the window and be free in your evils and sins. You are your own God and you don’t have to submit to restraints of love. That’s how they feel. But getting rid of law, responsibility and accountability for your actions is not the solution. Such a behaviour claims to get rid of lies, but actually, the whole behaviour is one BIG lie. This method supposedly should make you free from white lies like “Oh my, this soup is so good”, and you are free to say how disgusting it is. Ok, you are free, but where is love in your behaviour? It was love that kept Jesus on the Cross. It was love that made Him endure suffering. It was love that motivated Him to leave the heavenly comfort zone and enter our fallen world. It was love that made Him lay down His life for us. It was unconditional all-powerful self-sacrificial love for others. Not self-love.
Be open. Don’t suppress it anymore is the core teaching of this method. Let it out and be free. But don’t you remember that such behaviour is irresponsible shit, that we have been warned against by our parents from our youth? Our character is to be moulded, and not let grow wild.
First, maybe nobody is interested in your opinion of this matter.
Second, maybe nobody is interested in your opinion at all.
Thirdly, what if your opinion is wrong and your boss is not stupid?
Fourth, it looks more that you are an arrogant person and you have a defect in your character. If you can’t love people around you it is actually a result of your self-love, which is called selfishness.
Fifthly, maybe people would rather hear what God says about them than your selfish opinions on them.
Many unbelieving doctors are focused on mending the fallen soul, but they are forgetting God. They are inventing different methods, yet they deny the method of God. Soon, it will not stay in words only but will be expanded to actions too. Soon, this teaching will not tell you to speak all you want but will tell you to do all you want. It does not consider others and it will not consider them in the latter development either. Self-orientation and thinking only of yourself is destructive both to the person but to all around him too.
To be truly free is to change your heart and mind from YOU to HIM and to OTHERS. Then we find true joy and happiness. That’s why it is so true saying that people find joy in service and sacrifice because love elevates it to virtue and not a burden. After all, every relationship is about others, and not about ourselves.
When people do not get this basic truth, they tend to make erroneous conclusions. Strong wounded emotions dull our receptiveness and pride rejects submission to the truth. Intellectual pride and knowledge degrees can puff up a person to total blindness that he doesn’t see anything else than himself.
But love is not puffed up. Love does not seek its own. Love does not fail.
Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth: (1.Corinthians 13:4-8)