Major premises in the book are also contradicted in the book and in other LMW teaching (updated 11-11-25).
Claim: Spiritual Practices Use the “Slow Track”
This claim contradicts LMW’s own teaching about “training the brain.” For example, over and over they emphasize the need for practicing relational skills, because experience re-wires circuits in the brain far more effectively than any academic description of relational skills.
The truth is that spiritual practices, when properly engaged, are actually whole-person experiences! They not only work to transform our soul, they create new growth in our brain to deal with the changes in our soul. Any claim that spiritual practices are “slow track” processes has no basis at all, other than an empty claim.
Claim: Attachment is the starting point rather than spiritual practices
The last half of the book repeatedly makes an issue of how weak and ineffective spiritual practices are when compared to the power of attachment; that if we use spiritual practices, we will be on the “slow-track” to transformation. Then in Appendix A (also pages 196-197) it finally gets around to telling us how to build attachment. And nearly every idea listed in those pages is a spiritual exercise of some sort. It is even suggested early in the book (p.7) that it is possible to focus on spiritual practices that build up our attachment bond with God. So the means for building attachment directly contradict the book’s argument that spiritual practices are the slow way to change, because in reality we are very dependent upon such practices to create attachment.
Placing “Vision” at the end of the process
In his misunderstanding of VIM, Wilder places vision at the end of a process (page 175) to be used as a “corrective” to his fast-track methodology. But of course his diagram is itself a vision of how he thinks it all works. Wilder uses this vision as his own starting point, and gives it priority over any other. In fact, the whole book is based on his (mistaken) vision of how spiritual maturity happens. His vision was the starting point for writing the book. It comes first by the very nature of undertaking a meaningful task. It did not come at the end of the process, nor could it. So this particular “correction” to Dallas’ VIM is something the book itself is unable to follow, because vision is by definition where we must all begin when undertaking a significant task. If anything, this should tell us that something is not quite right about Wilder’s analysis.