People Of The Lie: The Hope For Healing Human Evil is one of Dr. M. Scott Peck's most intriguing books. In his work with patients as a psychiatrist and a Christian, Dr. Peck has come to see that there are people who are simply evil. He thinks that this evil needs to be studied by scientists as well as known by theologians. Until we can name and identify evil at work among us we have no way of disarming its power.

Early in his book Dr. Peck tells one of the stories from his counseling practice that helped lead him to see that evil is a genuine reality in the world. He calls it, "The Case Of Bobby And His Parents." Bobby was a 15-year-old boy who was sent by the court to see Dr. Peck because his grades in school were falling precipitously, he was depressed and he had an accident with a stolen car. Dr. Peck met with Bobby and heard his story. He noticed that Bobby's face was dull and expressionless, the kind of face one sees in people in a concentration camp. Dr. Peck was alarmed by what he saw. He was even more alarmed by what he heard. He learned that Bobby's older brother, Stuart, had committed suicide in June of last year. Stuart had shot himself in the head with a .22 caliber rifle. Stuart's suicide had clearly been the cause for Bobby's academic slide and personal depression. But there was more. At Christmas time Bobby's parents gave him a .22 rifle. "Isn't that the same kind of gun your brother used to kill himself?" an amazed Dr. Peck said to Bobby. "It wasn't the same kind of gun," Bobby replied. "It was the same gun."

Dr. Peck was stunned. Bobby's parents were all but telling him that the whole matter with Stuart was his fault and things would be best if he would commit suicide too. Dr. Peck called the parents to his office. They seemed to be quite normal, blue collar, church-going, hard-working folks. Dr. Peck confronted them with their deed. "Don't you see that giving Bobby this gun was like telling him to go out and kill himself?" Dr. Peck inquired. The parents, Dr. Peck tells us, could see no such thing. They were blind to the consequences of their own deeds.

In his continued work with Bobby and his parents Dr. Peck began to formulate the thesis that these parents were evil people. He then cites a law of child development: "When a child is grossly confronted by significant evil in its parents, it will most likely misinterpret the situation and believe that the evil resides in the self." Bobby, that is, was in the clutches of evil powers. This evil resided in his parents whom Dr. Peck discovered to be, as his book title states, "People of the lie" (cf. John 8:44-45). They were people who could simply not tell the truth about themselves. That is Dr. Peck's definition of evil. Evil people deceive others by building layer upon layer of self-deception around themselves. Evil people are not the same as sinful people. It is not their sins in themselves that distinguish between evil people and sinful people. The difference is that evil people refuse to acknowledge any fault at all in their character.

Not being able to see and acknowledge their own faults was the characteristic of Bobby's parents. As such, Dr. Peck suggests, they were evil people. And evil, he tells us, can only be overcome with raw power. Evil, in other words, is a force that has to be conquered. Anywhere that evil rules in this world, therefore, such evil has to be disarmed.