Confronting "Motivational" Training Programs

On November 20th, 1986, I was required to attend a one day “Train the Trainer” program. Since I was an instructor who taught new engineers about shipboard engineering power plants, I thought it was going to be useful in helping me to teach technical topics. However, midway through the day the contract instructor turned off the lights, told everyone to close their eyes, take a deep breath, and he led everyone on a guided imagery, visualization trip to Maui with sand between the toes and a breeze in the face. I’m sure that many Christians have been through similar situations in the years since this happened to me.

See the below articles for more of the story. I pray the Lord would give you insight that would help rescue others you know who are deceived by these false philosophies and techniques.

Introduction

The guided imagery, visualization technique prompted me to protest the class to my management, and I began to investigate other courses taught by the Naval Shipyard where I worked. I found that the “Increasing Human Effectiveness” course taught an entire life-philosophy that we can each create our own reality through the powers of our mind.

I was convinced that this was a case of the U.S. government teaching Eastern Mysticism and occult philosophies in the form of “Motivational Training”. So, I first appealed by memo to my management and later submitted a class action religious discrimination complaint against the shipyard and the U.S. Navy via the Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) system. The EEO complaint was eventually rejected.

On the way through the process, the story was picked up by the media along with several other similar cases throughout the country. Our stories ended up in the New York Times, on the Associated Press wire, in “Christianity Today”, and ABC’s 20/20 program, and in many other print and broadcast media.

After the EEO complaint was rejected, the next step would have been to file suit in federal district court. I consulted some attorneys who professed to be Christians and we counted the costs. It never seemed to me that they truly grasped the implications or my concerns and suing the government would have been very expensive. So I decided not to file suit, but wanted to continue confronting “Human Potential” training in the “market place of ideas”.

At the time, I was still in a “Christian Activist” mode, so I formed a local informal group called, “Citizens Against a State Religion“. We continued to expose and oppose human potential training in the government school districts, in the federal, state, and local government training programs, and in private corporation training.

A slight victory occurred in February 1988 when the Federal EEO commission issued a policy warning against forcing people to attend New Age training programs.

Eventually the Lord completed the process of drawing me out of the “Christian Activist” mentality. I began to realize that the very things I was confronting in society at large were being embraced whole-heartedly among Evangelical Christians. I began to wonder what good it was to confront the pagans with these things when my fellow Christians were being deceived by the same things.

Since that time, I have gone through many phases in which I have tried to warn those who profess to be followers of the Lord Jesus. I am including articles on this website that tell the above story in the hopes that more individuals would be warned about these deceptions and that somehow others could gain from the experiences that the Lord Jesus brought my wife and me through.

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