Uprooting falsehood

Jennie Allen, a bestselling Christian author and speaker and founder of the IF: Gathering, a women’s discipleship ministry based in Dallas, knows what it’s like to believe a lie. She’s detailed her battles with anxiety in previous books. Her latest book, The Lie You Don’t Know You Believe (Thomas Nelson, 240 pp.), aims to help the reader name her lie, go to war armed with biblical truth, and enjoy living in what she calls the “Kingdom of Light.”

In Part 1, Allen pinpoints three core lies in which she believes most enemy deception is rooted—“I’m Worthless,” “I’m Helpless,” “I’m Unlovable”—and explains how they typically manifest. It’s important to understand the lie and its origin, she writes, in order to better fight it. Consistent with the current “Jesus plus therapy” movement, she integrates psychological tools with biblical ones, avoiding the “trauma-informed” language for more biblical terms. But though she returns time and again to biblical truth, four chapters of urging the reader to dig into personal insecurity becomes uncomfortable and perhaps unproductive—like a therapy session you’re not sure you wanted.

After the reader discerns her own lie, Allen heads into Part 2 with a call to battle: Stop agreeing with your lie! There is another way! Like Jesus in the desert, we can align ourselves with Scripture and claim it every time the devil whispers untruths.

Spiritual battle is not a pull-­yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps event, Allen writes, but one in which we surrender on our knees to Jesus, who gives us victory. She challenges the reader: God is delighted not just with Christ in us, but in us—with all our quirks and personality.

Interestingly, though, she distinguishes between truth and vision (what God makes possible when we live in truth), claiming we need both to be victorious. What Allen fails to explain is the frustrating gap between the two. Believers can name and claim Bible verses in the valleys of life for years before God shows them a view from the mountaintop. Is there no ­victory, then, while we are in the valley?

Allen wraps up with practical guidance for daily living in the Kingdom of Light: Start your day in God’s presence. Read Scripture. Live in community. Remain humble and focused on others. Amen!

Still, discerning readers will find reason to question the therapeutic self-reflection found in Part 1. We can only understand the depth of our sin and the ugliness of Satan’s lies by gazing first at God’s love and goodness, not at ourselves.