PEOPLE IN PRINT
October 1, 1988
Why People Do What They Do Understanding People by Lawrence Crabb, Zondervan, $12.95 Reviewed by Mark Coppenger, pastor, First Baptist Church, El Dorado, Arkansas In one of the Marx brothers' movies, Groucho poses as a physician. A patient comes in, raises his arm, and says, "Doc, it hurts when I do this." Groucho immediately responds, "Then don't do that. That'll be ten dollars." Lawrence Crabb, in Understanding People, urges Christian counselors to go beyond this level of "Cut it out" and "Chin up." He wants us to get to the whys of anorexia nervosa, depression, and homosexuality. He gives Freud some credit for taking us inside the human psyche, but he takes pains to distance himself from Freud, Rogers, and other secularists who ignore or defy the Bible. This book attempts to show how the Bible provides the framework for tackling all but organically based psychological problems. While his best-selling book Inside Out presents his principles at the popular level, Crabb said in an interview that he sees this volume as his foundational and scholarly work. Understanding People has three main divisions. The first is an essay in epistemology, the study of what we can know and how we can know it. Crabb shows why the maxim "All truth is God's truth" can be treacherous: in putting general and special revelation side by side, we're tempted to sell the Bible short when it conflicts with current wisdom. The second division takes a hard look at how we tick, or fail to tick, in accordance with our Creator's designs. The third division is by far the smallest. It closes the book with a word on love, the fruit of all Crabb prescribes. If the Bible is our source book, what does it say? It doesn't address all our troubles directly; there's nothing ...
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