Awaken the Giant Within

My husband reads a lot.  I am somewhat surprised by this because in high school, I'm fairly certain people thought he was more of a jock than a nerd.  In fact, even today no one would dare call him a nerd, but at any given time he's got at least 5-6 books in progress.  Some books I buy for him, other books he's bought for himself over the years.  Sometimes people give him books.  Truth be told, we don't always know how books get into this house, but we're always short on bookshelves.  We read everything - things we agree with, things we disagree with, and things we know little about.  For the most part, all books are fair game.

Last year, I saw that he was reading Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins.  I've seen Tony on TV.  He's a popular motivational speaker, so I thought I'd read his book too.  But after I started, I realized he was in desperate need of an editor.  So, I picked up my pencil and began to make notes in my husband's book.  (I'm sure he was thrilled. ;-)  But not to fear, I warned him on the title page that it needed editing and then wrote on the first page of the foreword, "This guy isn't much different than Olsteen.  He just doesn't intentionally invoke the name of Christ to make money."

Tony Robbins seems like a nice guy.  His book is highly motivational.  Actually Joel Olsteen seems like a really nice guy too, and all of his books are highly motivational.  There are plenty of speakers in the world who set out to inspire.  I don't think anyone is going to Tony Robbins for spiritual advice.  The subtitle of his book reads, "How to take immediate control of your mental, emotional, physical, and financial destiny."  Spiritual destiny is noticeably missing from the list.

Robbins writes on pg. 437, entitled Chapter 19 Emotional Destiny: The Only True Success, "There is no true success without emotional success..."  As a counselor and Christian, my husband already knew where I was going to go with this, but I edited this page anyway.  I wrote, "This isn't true.  Even a devoted believer can feel emotionally defeated.  But when God holds our lives in His hands, He determines its course.  Our destiny belongs to Him."  Biblical success can best be defined as doing the Lord's work out of devotion to Him and through His strength.  The parable of talents in Matthew 25:14-30 uses the phrase, "Well done they good and faithful servant."  It says nothing about emotional success.

But I don't look to Robbins for spiritual guidance, so I'm not upset that he's a little off here.  However, we have to be careful as Christians that we don't elevate motivational speakers who tug at our hearts and get our adrenaline pumping into spiritual authorities of the faith. Just because people use the title Christian or they resonate with your feelings, does not mean they speak truth.  We shouldn't give a pass to motivational people in the Christian faith simply because we identify with the name.  Every single speaker should be measured against the Word of God.  And we should ask ourselves, how often should we allow motivational speakers who seek out Christian audiences to contradict God's Word before we decide that, perhaps, they aren't a good source of motivation?