M. Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled

Certain administrators, educators, and medical professionals in our ranks are recommending strange books which teach skepticism, atheism, and New Age philosophies.

This present report draws the curtain back, so you will not be ignorant when these concepts and their corollary code words are presented in your area.

It may all sound very exciting, mystifying, and life-changing. But it is old-fashioned Oriental mysticism in a new guise.

There are churchmen and medical professionals in our ranks who claim that these books will change a person’s life. We agree.

THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED

M. Scott Peck, M.D., is a practicing psychiatrist. His most famous book is The Road Less Traveled, which was initially published in 1978. It has been a national

Sounds pretty good, does it not? Do not be fooled. We are giving you an advance warning. You may find these theories taught at your own church one of these days.

Peck excites the imagination to lofty flights of fancy while subtly instilling pride in one’s own wisdom. This is the secret of its fascination. It lures one on to seek a wisdom hidden from, and unavailable to, commonplace people.

One might think that M. Scott Peck is a very wise man, in view of the profundity which people imagine they find in his writings; yet we will learn that, by his own admission, he is a tobacco and alcohol addict. The wisdom of the world is foolishness with God.

“The wisdom which spiritualism imparts is that described by the apostle James, which ‘descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish.’ This, however, the great deceiver [initially] conceals.”—Great Controversy, 554.

M. Scott Peck teaches his readers that they must forsake the half-truths their parents have taught them and become skeptics in order to attain the level where wisdom

I don’t go to church. I no longer believe much of what the church and my parents told me. I don’t have my parents’ faith. I guess I’m not very spiritual.’ It often comes as a shock to them when I question the reality of their assumption that they are not spiritual beings. ‘You have a religion.’ I may say, ‘a rather profound one. You worship the truth. You believe in the possibility of your growth and betterment: the possibility of spiritual progress. In the strength of your religion you are willing to suffer the pains of challenge and the agonies of unlearning. You take the risk of therapy, and all this you do for the sake of your religion. I am not at all certain it is realistic to say that you are less spiritual than your parents; to the contrary, I suspect the reality is that you have spiritually evolved beyond your parents, that your spirituality is greater by a quantum leap than theirs, which is insufficient to provide them with even the courage to