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Whistle Stopper - Lies Women Believe: And the Truth that Sets Them Free
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List Price: $14.99
Our Price: $6.00
Your Save: $ 8.99 ( 60% )
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Manufacturer: Moody Publishers
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 248.843
EAN: 9780802472960
ISBN: 0802472966
Label: Moody Publishers
Manufacturer: Moody Publishers
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: 2002-04
Publisher: Moody Publishers
Studio: Moody Publishers
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: The difference between a truth and a lie
Comment: I bought this book because I thought it was part of a series started by the other book The Lies We Believe and which I liked a lot. From the first chapter on, I regretted the purchase because it was not as authentic to a Christian like me as the other book was. For one thing, the author purports to discuss some supposed lies that she doesn't even have any authority -- not to mention experience -- on. Granted, the book does have some lies that are real lies, but there were quite a few lies that should not have been there. With these types of lies, the author generalized too much, especially in areas she obviously had no knowledge or experience of, so that anyone could be duped into actually thinking the way this author thinks -- which is very bad if you're a seeker (a person who just heard God's Word and would like to know more or someone who is in the process of finding a God- and Bible-believing church to go to).
One of the lies that the book subtly tries to tell you is if not for Eve, Adam would have not sinned and sin wouldn't have entered the world. All through the chapters the author always goes back to how Eve wrongly acted and used an authority not rightfully hers by making Adam eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There has been quite a bit of Biblical study into that scene where Eve eats the fruit and then Adam eats it, and these Biblical scholars now point to the fact that most statements in the creation part of Genesis have a time lag that is not immediately evident. In the case of the eating of the fruit, Eve ate the fruit but may have not given it at that very instant to Adam. Eve may have served the fruit as part of a meal, or may have casually told Adam to eat the fruit a little later -- in either case without the assumption DeMoss makes that she seduced/enticed/"ordered" Adam to eat it. It is similar to one's wife calling today, "Honey, dinner is on the table, let's eat!" The opening of their eyes may not have happened immediately, too, and may have been a gradual process. In any event, if Eve had truly orchestrated the Fall of Man, the Bible would have been specific about that instead of emphasizing that "through Adam sin entered the world", which is what Lies Women Believe: And the Truth that Sets Them Free thinks is not the case -- i.e., sin entered the world through Eve.
To believe that the need to learn to love myself (Lie #8) is a lie is not healthy. For one thing, DeMoss actually says we already have a good sense of self-esteem. If she meant that, then why not just state "I need to have high self-esteem" as the lie instead of learning to love myself? Not everyone is born with "high self-esteem" or a keen sense of self preservation. People who, as DeMoss says, "are plagued with a sense of worthlessness" are usually that way because of something in their life that made them that way. These people would like to kill themselves because they believe they are truly not worth anything (Lie #7). A person can't change the circumstances of his/her birth, childhood, background, past -- all of which have equal chances of making him the person he/she is today. If a person is abused as a child, it would take an extreme miracle for that child to even believe that he/she is lovable, much less for him/her to love himself/herself. This therefore proves that Lie #9 ("I can't help the way I am") is actually true because the accident of birth and environmental background shape what you are, which you cannot help (unless you're God, of course). This brings me to jump to lie #36 ("If my circumstances were different, I would be different"), a general statement that does not take into account that a considerable chunk of humanity would truly be different if their circumstances were different -- i.e., if they had not been abused, or their parents were not alcoholics, or if they had not been born with Down syndrome or cerebral palsy, then they themselves would actually be different.
Another supposed lie is "I have my rights". The Bible itself disproves DeMoss in this, as it is obvious from reading just the Old Testament that even God, in His goodness, recognized that human beings have inherent rights by making provision for those rights to be protected when he gave the various old covenant laws to Moses. For example, God made provision for a person who killed someone by mistake to flee to a place (in safety so others won't go after him) (Ex. 21:12-14, Lev. 24:17, 21b). Furthermore, one witness to a murder was insufficient; there has to be at least 2 (Num. 35: 29-30) because obviously there would be the "your word against mine" at play at a time when there was no CSI or forensics to conclusively determine whether a man killed another. These and other basic human rights has been carried down to our day, and to make a general statement that we don't have rights at all goes even against Scripture. DeMoss should have restated this to "I have no right to demand petty things" or something like that, which is what the list she wrote actually was. Her example of Jonah was an example of obvious eisegesis (among many) that I am just offended she would use him to justify that women have no rights.
Lie #20 ("A career outside the home is more valuable and fulfilling than being a wife and mother") is obviously something the author is not prepared to follow herself but expect the rest of womankind to follow. Here she is with a radio program she hosts and a writing career. I can believe the writing career being a career inside the home, but unless she owns a radio studio, then she obviously is going out to work and thinks it is better than having a husband and kids. (Yet later on she says it's a lie that women have to have a husband to be happy.) Not everyone has the luxury to be able to work in the home. And let's not be hypocritical about this because I have met so many Christians who pretend to be wives and mothers and have careers in their home, during which time they practice said careers, they leave their kids in a Church-run daycare or Christian babysitter from their parish or church. These Christian women are no different from others who have careers outside the home and leave their kids in a secular daycare or with a non-Christian babysitter. Furthermore, since DeMoss is keen to blame women in our culture as the culprits, what about those men who abandon women they impregnate with kids they are not willing to support? Those women can't stay at home else her kids will starve. She has to work because she has no choice (2 Thess. 3:10). It is not just women here who have shaped the culture we are in. Yet DeMoss wants us to believe that if womankind had submitted to the men in their lives from the get go we wouldn't have this kind of culture and society, we wouldn't be working outside our homes because every woman will be happily married with a wife and kids. Additionally, in the Middle Ages women have almost always submitted to their husbands and other authority figures above them and it obviously did not make our society any better than it is today. Additionally, the Church at the time propagated the myth that women were not empowered in the Bible and emphasized the submission so much to the point that women were secretly abused, all in the name of submission. DeMoss should carefully tread in the fine line of submission and not use the name of God, the Bible, and Christianity to justify this, because the Church has often twisted and used this to the detriment of thousands of women both then and now.
And what's this about the size of our family not being up to us to determine? There is no Scriptural basis at all for this. Most of Africa, Asia, and heavily Catholic South America obeyed this mandate, and the world is now heavily populated as a result, taxing those countries' natural resources. Surely when God mandated the human race to take care of the garden, he didn't just mean take care of Eden but also the whole planet? This is a very selfish lie because in DeMoss' ideal world, women would have babies no matter what, and the husband is supposed to be the only one taking care of that brood of maybe 4, 5, 6, 7 children. I can't do that to my own husband. I don't want him to work to death to support us! A woman is not just a baby-making machine while a man is not just a breadwinner. It's very easy for DeMoss to say this because obviously she was born in a rich family: her father had his own business, giving her mother the luxury of staying home to just take care of the house and kids (p. 172), and they were able to later send all 7 of them to private Christian schools (p. 174) even though they could afford to send them to a "private secular school" (p. 173). DeMoss also mentions she had a very sheltered upbringing in her introduction. I believe this is why some of the lies she says are unrealistic because she just lacks the experience or knowledge to know about them. I mean, has she even ministered to Christians in Africa or Asia?
Lie #33 ("I can't control my emotions") sometimes depends on how healthy or unhealthy a person is, and what type of person we are looking at. DeMoss would have you believe that we ought all to be able to control our emotions. Hypoglycemia can cause a person to be irritable, as well as PMS in women, lack of sleep, hypothyroidism in everyone. If the person, however, is not aware he has a medical condition that is affecting his emotions, then he truly will not be able to control them. What more people with more severe mental and physical illnesses? Furthermore, there are certain diseases that can kill parts of the brain, and if those parts deal with how a person expresses emotion, then that person totally will not have control over what he feels. Again, DeMoss is making a general statement from the outside looking in.
This could have been a good book if the author stayed within her own knowledge, experience, and calling. Although she gives a list of further helps in the back of the book (some of which toe the same line as her book), it is easy to notice that she is talking from a shallow understanding of a lot of serious problems and things that are wrong in this world and with humanity, and using eisegesis of the Bible (as opposed to exegesis, hermeneutics, or even exposition) to prove her points. She says she has had a sheltered upbringing. The least she could have done to remedy this was go outside into the world, do some Christian work or something in other parts of the world, before writing this book, in order to understand more than she knows now and be able to write from a real calling and true experience.
Customer Rating:
Summary: What a blessing!!
Comment: This book was a true blessing. I need someone to remind me of what the bible says and don't sugar coat anything. If you are someone who needs to feel that everything you've done is OK, then this book is not right for you. If you want to know how to live a truly blessed, happy and stress free life then start reading it now.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Insight
Comment: I recommend this book to any christian women who thinks she doesn't have any lies that she is believing about the christian life/faith/marriage, etc. You will be surprised at how many lies Satan has used to discourage you and bring you down. Some of these lies are very obvious, but others will hit you like a ton of bricks. I know so many women who have read this book that you could probably find a fellow christian to borrow it from;-)
Customer Rating:
Summary: encouraging yet challenging
Comment: Nancy Leigh DeMoss, with startling clear exegesis of what the Bible really teaches about life and how we should live in the reality of a post-fall world are both comforting, encouraging, and constantly challenging. She does not represent a short of "Christianized" post-modernism but faces up to the hard demands of Scripture in every area. I have found the book to be helpful at so many levels to help me regain a Biblical outlook on life instead of simply acting out cultural assumptions and highly recommend it.
On the birth-control issues, again DeMoss bravely puts forth an idea that is radically against our rather self-centered culture. I am not saying that raising children is an easier than it is! But that isn't the point. Children are a blessing, every one of them. It is my tentative theory that before the fall/flood raising children was easier, because lifespans were longer, it was more spread out. today we have the same many kids naturally, but live like 500 yrs less. That means raising children selflessly today is extremely challenging, but God will never give us more than we can handle. God has built the conception of life as the general result of love between a man and his wife. Not that that's the only purpose of sex (expressing love is), but children are a blessing God Himself has generally built as a result. For some people, letting God decide how many children he will bless them with will mean a large family (and I have seen personally how warm and rich such families are. every member of the family adds something, and the parents will say raising such a large family was definitely challenging at times, but so worth it. each member is infinitely precious) The stress of raising a family will mean giving up a lot of our personal plans, will necessitate patience, a good sense of humor, and lots and lots of grace. But when we are weak, God is strong. Don't let cultural assumptions cause you to write off ideas like this and some others that Nancy brings to the light of Scripture.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Forget "women's liberation" - this is the real deal!
Comment: This book was written for Christians, but I can't imagine that any woman could read it and remain unchanged. Author DeMoss takes on the lies that ruin our lives and destroy our peace - lies about ourselves, our relationships, our emotions, our circumstances, our sin, and most important of all, God Himself. And then she tells us the truth.
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Editorial Reviews:
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The lies Christian women believe are at the root of their struggles. In Lies Women Believe, Nancy Leigh DeMoss exposes areas of deception common to many Christian women -- lies about God, sin, priorities, marriage and family, emotions, and more. She deals honestly with women's delusions and illusions and then gently leads them to the truth of God's word that leads to true freedom.
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