The Company You Keep

Here we are in the post-Promise Keepers world. The movement designed to cement accountability relationships among men across North America seems to have declined to the status of just another run-of the-mill not-for-profit parachurch entity. Most of the men who participated are bound to remember PK events as either mountaintop experiences or one-offs that failed to live up to their promise (my apologies, but pun intended). While The Company You Keep by David C. Bentall isn’t an official Promise Keepers product, alas if it doesn’t come across as just another Promise Keepers-type effort.

If you recognize the Bentall name, it’s because David derives from the Bentalls of Vancouver construction industry fame. Of course, it would be a gross misreading to interpret the contents of the book according to Bentall’s celebrity status, but it would be misrepresenting the book to say that Bentall’s corporate background doesn’t impact it significantly, and not necessarily for the better. The language and lingo of the corporate boardroom are rife throughout the pages of this work, which made me feel like I was being counseled by an executive life-coach rather than a brother in Christ. This tone could be overlooked if the book had been directed toward corporate types or wannabes, but its endorsements claim the book will appeal “every man.” It’s also not helpful that Bentall pats himself on his back one time too many for his business accomplishments and admits to ‘probable’ spoiling as a child.

That said, this book isn’t without its points of application for every man, and the criticism sandwich technique demands we begin with praise (albeit a bit late on my part). Bentall’s main stated goal is a worthy one: to encourage the development of responsible, accountable male friendships. He goes on to make many worthwhile statements:

• Plan friendship time in your schedule from the outset, not in leftover time.
• Belief in one’s own indispensability is a sure sign of an oversized ego.
• Friendship cannot deepen without vulnerability and transparency.
• True friendship invites correction, listens carefully and thrives on honesty.

Like so many other Christian writers, Bentall integrates twentieth-century psychological tenets into his work. He routinely dispenses references to self-esteem, the value of being affirming and validating, the aim of feeling secure and well-adjusted, improving quality of life, and “believing the best about myself and who I am.” At one point Bentall narrates the time when a basketball coach had seemingly mocked him, and how he felt: “My self-esteem was so fragile that this off-handed comment by a person of authority was sufficient to destroy any hopes a I had of playing basketball in the future.” Bentall’s basketball skills aside, substituting biblical categories would reconstruct the sentence to begin something like this: “My pride was so highly developed that this off-handed comment by a person of authority was sufficient to destroy any hopes I had of playing basketball in the future.” The point of restructuring this sentence is not to take issue with Bentall’s word choice, but to point out the danger of presenting teaching infused with man-centered psychology. Sad to say, the book is heavily slanted this way.

But The Company You Keep suffers from a far more terminal problem than an emphasis reminiscent of Promise Keepers, a corporate boardroom tone or a preponderance of psychologizing. Its chronic issue lies in its lack of what pastor and writer Mike Bullmore calls ‘the functional centrality of the Gospel.’ This view – which is an ultimately biblical view – brings gospel application to every facet of life, and is the only truly ‘transformational’ view of life. By contrast, Christ is largely absent from this book, except for a brief chapter near the end touching on how Jesus is a model for friendship and life. What an understatement! To be fair, Bentall does tilt his prow in a ‘spiritual’ direction in Parts 3 and 4 of the book, although the discussion only lasts a measly twenty pages, and focuses predominantly on the individual’s ‘Spirit’, not on the God who is the transformational agent for any sanctifying changes in one’s life.

One of the major indicators of a successful Christian book is its capacity to draw its readers back to the Book. The Company You Keep does not accomplish this. Another indication of a book’s success is how well it achieves what it has set out to do. If Bentall’s purpose is to convince readers that male friendship is transformational, this reader at least was unconvinced – not unconvinced that male friendship ought to be transformational, but unconvinced by the way Bentall went about making his case. And in view of this book’s lack of Christ-centeredness, I would definitely not define ‘transformational’ in Bentall’s terms, which falls far short of gospel transformation as described in the Scriptures. While I apologize for my failure to round out the criticism sandwich by way of praise, I cannot praise a book all but lacking in Christ-centeredness.