“No Fear” by Tony Perkins

The book, “No Fear — Real Stories of a Courageous New Generation Standing for Truth”, by Tony Perkins, starts out on the wrong foot. It begins with a lie!

The very first story Perkins chooses to tell about someone “standing for truth” is about an 18 year-old woman named Lila (wonder if Perkins is telling the truth about her name) who goes into a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic and says: “I’m fifteen years old and I am pregnant by my boyfriend who is twenty-three years old and I need help.”

Not only is “Lila” lying, she is hiding a recorder under her T-shirt. Perkins says: “The tale had been crafted carefully because such a scenario was not only a lie, it was a felony under California law.” Lila’s purpose was to deceptively entrap the person at Planned Parenthood into incriminating herself, and because Lila’s deception “previals,” Perkins highly praises her.

However, later in the book Perkins contradicts himself. He says: “If the stand we take is motivated by a need to ‘win’ an argument or prevail over those we oppose, we may win the battle but lose in the long run.” He also quotes another one of his courageous young people as saying: “There’s a way to take a stand for your faith without attacking others. That doesn’t mean that we back down from our convictions, but that we hold to them in a loving way–in a way that respects even those who oppose us.”

Even though the other stories are inspirational, I had trouble being inspired by them, because of Perkins praising the use of sin to fight sin. If you are looking to be inspired, I’d recommend another book.

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This review was written in exchange for a free copy of the book from Blogging For Books.