A Different Way

Dave Brisbin 11.23.25 When I’d tell people the title of my book, The Fifth Way, first question was: what are the first four? That made perfect sense, because you can’t understand the fifth way of Jesus until you understand how the first four operate in our lives. There are several systems that try to explain human behavior in terms of personality types, unconscious ways we process experience and approach challenges in life: Enneagram, Myers-Briggs, DiSC, Kiersey…the four ways operate similarly. In Jesus time, four sects dominated Jewish life, and each had a specific way of dealing with threats to their powerbases—specifically the Roman occupation. The Sadducees, yielded to Roman power; the Pharisees tried to influence or manipulate; the Essenes exited to build their own communities; and the Zealots tried to destroy Roman presence through rebellion. To yield, manipulate, exit, and destroy, are the north, south, east, and west of ways we can deal with challenges in life. From dysfunctional marriages to nations and armies, these four ways, with all the combinations in between, are what we have to work with, and each of us has learned to favor one as primary in our personal lives. They aren’t bad or evil; they’re necessary for navigating life. Only when we apply them to spiritual growth do they become limiting, destructive, never taking us where we need to go. The four ways answer physical needs we all have as humans, but until we become aware of them, they strip free will, reducing us to predictable, type-based behavior. When Jesus comes out of the wilderness, having overcome three temptations symbolic of all human need, he begins teaching a fifth way, turning the other four on their heads. Everything Jesus teaches and models is a refutation of our normal, ingrained ways of meeting our needs. Starting within and working outward, from an awareness of inexhaustible presence rather than scarcity, we realize that all we really need is not gained through acquisition but in giving away all we have. In the giving, we learn what we really possess is inexhaustible, restoring free will—our ability to choose in love, not just in need.