Customer Reviews

Who Can You Trust?: Overcoming Betrayal and Fear

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Here's a good potential for a small group discussion. "Who Can You Trust?" addresses the essence of living and why we have trouble trusting people. Author Howard E. Butt, Jr. claims betrayal is the root of our relationship problems. In fact, betrayal was the sin Eve committed against God in the Eden which cursed the world.

"Betraying and being betrayed by abuse, desertion, neglect, or rejection lie deep within our personal and collective being," he writes. "We betray others because of our personal experience of feeling betrayed. And we do this whether such betrayal actually took place or not."

Real and imagined betrayal breaks down our trust of individuals or people in general, making specific relationships and common business difficult. Couple this with self-deception, that we believe ourselves to be far more pure than we are, and we grow a judgmental perspective, unwilling to forgive and willing to condemn others. Butt believes many Christians have "a too-shallow sense of our sinfulness." He says there are sins we have personally listed as egregious, and if we avoid those, we believe we're in the clear, free to condemn those whom we see as more sinful than we are. If we had an honest view of ourselves, we would have compassion on those who have disgraced themselves in society's eyes. How to address our feelings of betrayal and gain a good understanding of ourselves makes up the counseling portion of the book.

Plenty of quotes from C.S. Lewis and other strong authors add interest to the reading.

Howard Butt has years of experience working with people on and off the job. He helped his father build the H.E.B. grocery store chain and is a leader in applying the Christian faith to workplace decisions.

I came upon this book at a time when I needed to reflect upon a bad situation in my life. It was highly appropriate, and it ended up turning things around for me.
Despite my own situation, the book goes candidly into the depths of the damage from hurt relationships, but it goes further. Addressing the need for release, Howard E. Butt pulls the reader through the healing process via connection with God in addressing deeper issues that have affected the immediate thinking pattern. Butt does this without a preaching attitude, instead using a real and candid display of the psychological and spiritual factors at hand.

I am thoroughly thankful I came into this book at a needed time in my own life, and I highly recommend it for not only painful times, but study times as well. Since it was my first encounter with the author, I look forward to reading more from him in the near future.