Identity Thief: Exposing Satan’s Plan To Steal Your Purpose, Passion, And Power, by Robby Dawkins

[Note: This book was provided by Chosen Books free of charge in exchange for an honest review.]

Through its inventive metaphor of Satan as an identity thief, seeking to guilt and shame people into accepting a lower view of them than God has as His children, this book manages to offer encouragement to believers in overcoming the prolonged effects of brokenness and generational sin. The book also, and highly surprisingly, is of great relevance in helping the reader gain a grasp of the tactics of demonology with regards to anarchical bouts of disorderly religious enthusiasm and its threat to more established congregations, which this book actively encourages in the language of encouraging its readers to be a light to their congregations by being a force for the encouragement of such spirituality despite its consistent record of dividing congregations and institutions, even those initially supportive of such enthusiasm. Additionally, the book provides possibly unintentional insight as to the territorial nature of the demonic realm, in which the author claims the right to invade what is seen as Satan’s domain on an escalating basis whose long-term results would likely to be a testy stalemate.

In terms of its contents, the book is organized into fifteen chapters, generally short, between ten and twenty pages, and with various provocative titles that include: “We’ve Been Hacked,” “I Got Torontoed,” and “You Can Raise The Dead.” In general, the organization of the contents of the books reflects less a logical development of an argument and rather the sort of sales pitch that offers time-shares in vacation homes in Cabo San Lucas. That said, the material in the book has a general progression of subjects. The first part of the book mostly concerns the nature of Satan as a thief and liar and charlatan and fraud, and begins the initial discussion of the book’s second major section, and that is the way that God uses those who have suffered greatly in serving for the glory of His Kingdom. The third part of the book continues the hostility towards Satan and the concern with the believer’s identity as a child of God with the full power evangelism of the early Church, in the author’s mind, with a focus on the sort of power and glory that comes to believers who adopt the spirituality the author has in mind, namely the attention-getting gift of raising the dead, and to a lesser extent being a conduit for healing, called “the stuff” by believers in the Pentecostal circles the author is a part of.

It is unlikely that readers of this book who are leaders of congregations will find much to celebrate in this book, which openly supports the planting of churches by dissatisfied groups in schisms, an unpleasant matter that few need encouragement to do in our contemporary context. Of note is the fact that this book is full of criticism of abusive fathers, is nearly free of doctrine apart from its strong views on demonology and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and is particularly harsh on fathers. Two fathers come off particularly harshly—one of them is the author’s own father, whose leadership was wrecked by a pattern of affairs, and another is the father of a woman spoken of by the author who was a pedophile with his daughters, and was lewd and suggestive towards others. It seems quite likely that the author’s support of a particularly anarchical sort of religious identity that is light on the authority of either doctrine or leadership and that is heavy on personal spirituality that brings attention to spiritual intuition and the supposed instrument of divine grace is a way both of seeking approval apart from a context that would remind him of his own considerable father issues and that is designed to appeal to those who view themselves both as being more spiritually enlightened than those in authority as well as those whose view of authority is darkened by the experience of or the perception of abuse. The importance of churches in providing care to the many wounded believers in their fellowship in such a way that strengthens the Body of Christ rather than promoting schism is of the highest importance in light of the deliberate strategies of the author, and others like him, even apart from their being a part of the basic obligations of Christians in light of the Gospels (see, for example, the parable of the Good Samaritan and the warning of Jesus Christ in the last part of Matthew 25). For its bluntness and honesty, the book is worthy of credit, as its honesty is instructive even where its perspective and background are not shared by the reader.