The Secret's Out!

Can't seem to keep this genie in the bottle!

The Secret is out and it's generating a lot of press - both positive and negative. I have found some balanced resources, though, and thought you'd like to get in on it before the whole universe knows about it. :-)

Here are some like-minded (and probably better stated) perspectives on The Secret and the secret behind this amazing marketing phenomenon, the Law of Attraction.

• Back in July, 2006, Kelly of Women by Grace has this to say:

  "As is always the case, when people find something that works 'universally', they have bumped into one of God's Laws for His Creation - but they're viewing it through a skewed lens, leaving Him out of the picture - or even worse - redefining Him to be Personless."

• More recently, Tom Sims of The Dream Factory states (HT to Ryan at Design Guru) :

  [The Secret] "presupposes an impersonal god called "The Universe" without specific will or personality that is more like "The Force" than God. There are forces in the universe that God created and set into motion. I am reluctant to employ them without first acknowledging their/my Creator and understanding His will. They can make me effective and successful without being centered in His purposes. I don't want that."

• In one of the most thorough reviews and biblically informed critiques of The Secret, and especially of Rhonda Byrne, the force behind this movement, Don Whitney of the Baptist Press exposes the heresy that has co-opted this biblical principle.

  But in the final analysis, The Secret is nothing more than so-called Name It-Claim It, Positive-Confession, Prosperity Theology (minus God and the Bible), built on a foundation of New Age self-deification. In other words, the book is just a secular version of what some TV preachers have taught for decades: Namely, if you will sustain the right thoughts, words and feelings, you will receive whatever you want. But The Secret adds this important twist: your thoughts can bring anything into your life because you are god.
  
  Books that promise health and wealth for their practitioners are published every day. But few associate such promises with Byrne's breathtaking audacity. She proclaims to her readers, "You are God in a physical body. You are Spirit in the flesh. You are Eternal Life expressing itself as You. You are a cosmic being. You are all power. You are all wisdom. You are all intelligence. You are perfection. You are magnificence. You are the creator, and you are creating the creation of You on this planet" (p. 164).
  
  If that weren't blasphemous enough, realize that the book your neighbors and co-workers are reading more than any other also tells them, "The earth turns on its orbit for You. The oceans ebb and flow for You. The birds sing for You. The sun rises and it sets for You. The stars come out for You. Every beautiful thing you see, every wondrous thing you experience, is all there for You. Take a look around. None of it can exist, without You. No matter who you thought you were, now you know the Truth of Who You Really Are. You are the master of the Universe. You are the heir to the kingdom. You are the perfection of Life. And now you know The Secret" (p. 183).
  
  This would be beautiful if it were addressed to the God of Heaven. But as Byrne thinks this is what we should say to the person in the mirror, it is the heresy of heresies. Her "Secret" is nothing less than Satan's original lie in the Garden of Eden, "You will be like God" (Genesis 3:5).

Well now. Hard to state it much more succinctly than that. But that shouldn't end the conversation. Tell me what your opinion is in the comment section below.


Other Christian critiques include...
1) The Secret: Creating One's Reality, by Russ Wise
2) The Secret: A Cosmic Dream Machine, by Marcia Montenegro
3) Also visit my del.icio.us archive on TheSecret

A Second Look - Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting

Note: This is another "law of attraction" book - one that I read a few years ago. Since The Secret has brought so much awareness to this concept, I thought I'd republish this post from August, 2005. lgp

This book by Lynn Grabhorn explores "the astonishing power of feelings." And while I agree that how you feel impacts your behavior, the author's premise is that "we create by feeling, not by thought." Let her explain:

" . . . the energy that flows out from us comes from our highly charged emotions to create highly charged electromagnetic wave patterns of energy, making us powerful - but volatile - walking magnets. . . . The electromagnetic vibrations you send out every split second of every day are what have brought - and are continuing to bring - everything into your life, big or small, good or bad. Everything! No exceptions." (p. 8, emphases hers)

While discovering some great nuggets in Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting, I also found that, like most self-help books with a gnostic bent, the author leaves an independent acting and thinking and feeling (emphasis mine) God out of the equation. End result, a self-as-central view of reality. Myopic and unsatisfying.

Beyond Positive Thinking Update

My premier post to Thought Renewal was Saturday, June 04, 2005 and it was a short response to one of the first books I'd read that mentioned the concept of attracting things - positive or negative - into our lives based on our thinking (i.e., the "law of attraction").

Yes, I'd heard that what we focus on grows and that we reap what we sow. But Robert Anthony's book Beyond Positive Thinking opened an interesting perspective for me by clearly demonstrating the power of "right thinking."

My concern with his book is that, while many of the concepts are sound, it is based on a gnostic worldview - as much of this type of literature is. Here's what I wrote in my first blog entry:

Interacting with Beyond Positive Thinking, a book by Robert Anthony. One of the many self-help resources available online and anywhere. I like the challenge to move beyond positive vs negative thinking and begin right thinking, but listen to this:

The truth is we are in darkness because of our ignorance. (p 2)

Really? Is lack of knowledge all that is wrong with our world? Hmm. Let's put this to the test over the next few weeks. Whenever I do something wrong I'll just go to my bookshelf and get more knowledge. I suspect I'll be reading quite a bit.

Today: Although I was a bit cynical in that first post, I still hold that knowledge is not the supreme answer to our darkness. We see educated derelicts all around us (and no, I'm not trying to be political here :-) We need something more than right thinking to save us from ourselves. Anthony's answer to the world's darkness is ultimately that of the gnostic. And gnosticism is simply salvation by knowledge:

This definition, based on the etymology of the word (gnosis "knowledge", gnostikos, "good at knowing"), is correct as far as it goes, but it gives only one, though perhaps the predominant, characteristic of Gnostic systems of thought. Whereas Judaism and Christianity, and almost all pagan systems, hold that the soul attains its proper end by obedience of mind and will to the Supreme Power, i.e. by faith and works, it is markedly peculiar to Gnosticism that it places the salvation of the soul merely in the possession of a quasi-intuitive knowledge of the mysteries of the universe and of magic formulae indicative of that knowledge. (New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia)

The quasi-intuitive knowledge of the mysteries of the universe. Magic formulae. Doesn't that mark this current surge of interest in this movement? And the teachers of The Secret are right there lead us into salvation. Well, that path has already been laid out:

"God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." (Colossians 1:27)

Mind Power Into The 21st Century

This book by John Kehoe provides Techniques to Harness the Astounding Powers of Thought. But it actually does more than that. While some of the techniques are helpful and true, this book propounds a philosophy behind such techniques which I find disturbing. It teaches that the universe is a giant hologram - that is, an entity in which the whole is contained in each of its parts. Here's how the author puts it.

Everything at its purest and deepest essence is energy, and whenever you think, you are working with an immense amount of this energy in the quick, light, mobile form of thought. Thought is forever attempting to find form. . . . (p. 8)

What this means for us is that we can manifest anything we desire through our thoughts. I'm convinced our thoughts have power. That is why we can be called to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. But the biblical philosophy undergirding this truth is quite different than that which Kehoe proposes.

Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting

This book by Lynn Grabhorn explores "the astonishing power of feelings." And while I agree that how you feel impacts your behavior, the author's premise is that "we create by feeling, not by thought." Let her explain:

" . . . the energy that flows out from us comes from our highly charged emotions to create highly charged electromagnetic wave patterns of energy, making us powerful - but volatile - walking magnets. . . . The electromagnetic vibrations you send out every split second of every day are what have brought - and are continuing to bring - everything into your life, big or small, good or bad. Everything! No exceptions." (p. 8, emphases hers)

While discovering some great nuggets in Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting, I also found that, like most self-help books with a gnostic bent, the author leaves an independent acting and thinking and feeling (emphasis mine) God out of the equation. End result, a self-as-central view of reality. Myopic and unsatisfying.

Beyond Positive Thinking

Interacting with Beyond Positive Thinking, a book by Robert Anthony. One of the many self-help resources available online and anywhere. I like the challenge to move beyond positive vs negative thinking and begin right thinking, but listen to this:

The truth is we are in darkness because of our ignorance. (p 2)

Really? Is lack of knowledge all that is wrong with our world? Hmm. Let's put this to the test over the next few weeks. Whenever I do something wrong I'll just go to my bookshelf and get more knowledge. I suspect I'll be reading quite a bit.