Someone sent me a link to this YouTube video on “The Church of Oprah Exposed.” Oprah Winfrey has launched a series of webcasts in partnership with New Age author Eckhart Tolle, and claims viewership of 2 million people. I invite you–Christians, in particular–to view the YouTube video. I think it’s pretty persuasive, especially for those who begin with a Biblical mindset, but I’m not going to comment further on that here. Instead I’ve gone to Oprah’s website to see what she has to say for herself. (I’ll come back to the video in a bit also.)
Actually, the most telling reading on Oprah’s site was from Tolle. There is, for example, an excerpt from his book A New Earth. It gets off to a classic New Age beginning:
Is humanity ready for a transformation of consciousness, an inner flowering so radical and profound that compared to it the flowering of plants, no matter how beautiful, is only a pale reflection? Can human beings lose the density of their conditioned mind structures and become like crystals or precious stones, so to speak, transparent to the light of consciousness? Can they defy the gravitational pull of materialism and materiality and rise above identification with form that keeps the ego in place and condemns them to imprisonment within their own personality?
The possibility of such a transformation has been the central message of the great wisdom teachings of humankind. The messengers—Buddha, Jesus, and others, not all of them known—were humanity’s early flowers. They were precursors, rare and precious beings.
This online class is not for or against any religion. It is intended to help all human beings, all over the world, bring about a shift in consciousness. Eckhart says, “How spiritual you are has nothing to do with what you believe but everything to do with your state of consciousness…. When I occasionally quote the words of Jesus or the Buddha…or from other teachings, I do so not in order to compare, but to draw your attention to the fact that in essence there is and always has been only one spiritual teaching, although it comes in many forms.
I do not accuse Tolle of willful deception. For all I know, he may be fully convinced this is true. Nevertheless this is entirely wrong. These sorts of things are commonly believed among adherents of new spirituality, but they are quite simply and thoroughly false.
In one aspect, the New Age is not wrong: in its calling persons to spirituality. I have written in support of that, as has Christian psychologist and author Henry Cloud. I fully endorse the search for something deeper, stronger, better than day-to-day material existence.
But this new spirituality is wrong–most obviously wrong, that is–in its claim that it supports, completes, and unites all the sages’ wisdom. This cannot be done, and I object in strongest terms to the distortion of Christianity–and of Jesus Christ himself–that this entails.
Jesus Christ did not say that spiritual fulfillment is about developing a new state of consciousness. He most decidedly did not say (as new spirituality proponents typically do) that it’s about recognizing one’s own divinity. He did not say, as Oprah did in the video linked above, that “There couldn’t possibly be one way;” that there are millions of paths to God. He did not say, as Oprah said in the video, “God, in the essence of all consciousness, isn’t something to believe, God is; and God is a feeling experience, not a believing experience… if God for you is still about a belief, then it’s not truly God.”
In fact, when Jesus rebuked his followers it was for their lack of belief. He said he was the one way to the Father. He said that spiritual fulfillment comes from recognizing we are not God, that we need God, and that we can only come to God through recognizing and believing who he is, how we fall short, and how he graciously draws us to himself anyway through Christ. Tolle cannot reconcile that with his supposedly all-inclusive teachings.
Supposedly all-inclusive, I emphasize. In another video Tolle says that “the moment you say that only my belief or our belief is true, and you deny other people’s beliefs, then you’ve adopted an ideology, and then religion becomes a closed door.” Mr. Tolle, I ask you this: do you believe that? Do you then deny what I wrote in the previous two paragraphs? You say you are not for or against any religion; but Christianity does claim to have an exclusive claim through Jesus Christ: are you not opposed to that exclusive claim?
Christianity’s scandal in today’s mindset, which I have fairly emblazoned in fire across this page, is its exclusivism, its claim that it is true and contradictory beliefs are false. For this I do not apologize. It is nothing more nor less than saying that what we believe is true, we believe is true. Tolle, for his part, is saying that if his way is true, then Christ’s claims are false. He excludes my religious beliefs. In fact all belief systems are exclusivistic. (Hindu teachers in Asia are appalled at Western versions of Eastern religions that claim to accept all truths as equal. They at least know better.)
Yet, oh, this new spirituality sounds so inviting! It sounds so marvelous that we could enter into a new form of consciousness and find the freedom we so desperately want! Indeed there is freedom to be sought and to be found, in Christ. There is light, and enlightenment, and spiritual guidance, and refreshment, and all the things the New Agers tell us they can provide. There is also one thing they cannot offer: truth. For their way is patently self-contradictory, and further, it requires us to believe that we are God ourselves, that we have it within ourselves to solve all our own eternal problems (really, now!) and that Christ’s life, his death on the cross, and his resurrection were just one among many of the universe’s nice ideas.
I have great sympathy with the new spirituality’s rejection of modernist materialism. Thus far, so good. The rest, however, is rubbish.
Related: Knowing the True God
Oprah’s been getting more and more comfortable with the new-age hoodoo, and all the while claiming to be a Christian. Some of what she says makes me wonder how many of her fans are buying into her postmodern caricature of spirituality.
Wow…I had no idea about this. I guess Oprah could by Obama’s false prophet, if he turns out to be the antichrist! lol.
UGH!!!!!!!!
My friend, who has been in failed relationship after failed relationship is always buying “New Age spirituality self-help” books.
He lives according to the books ideals and standards for about a week…. and then is back moping around about how much of a failure he is, how he’ll never find the love of his life, and how he’ll never be truly happy.
Recently he was talking about some hokum he got from a new book that is “showing him” how to shed his ego and “unshackle” himself from his personality…. or something like that.
Reading your post makes me think that this is what he stumbled on.
This book will be “It” for a solid month or two, then that flock will become disillusioned again and try to find the next big thing promising them to finally fulfill their lives. Whatever that is supposed to mean.
Foxnews.com has an article on this.
I thumbed through Tolle’s book A New Earth in Costco today and a couple things just made me feel sick to my stomach.
The first was that Tolle writes of his readers, “You are the Truth!” and goes on to praise the words of Jesus, “I am the way, the truth and the life…” but in a sense that has Jesus leading the way for all of us in that we all ought to be saying this “I am the truth” about ourselves. Tolle turns the obvious exclusive claim of Christ right on its head. One may even think Jesus is wrong about his claim, but still understand that Jesus’ claim about himself is exclusive. Tolle’s approach to authorial intent is mindless blather. I gave up trying to even read some of the paragraphs because the flow of logic was so utterly absent.
The second was the number of people walking up to the book to read it and buy it, as if it was to be taken seriously and to heart.
I think it’s sad that you came to the hasty conclusion of calling it rubbish.
Did you use the same critical process when you read the bible?
Hasty? No, I’ve read many, many books and articles by New Age authors. I’ve outlined in this article (and others) why I think it’s on the wrong track.
I have indeed applied critical thinking toward the Bible–in fact, three-plus years of interacting with skeptics on this blog has surely forced me to do that over and over again.
People who do so well for themselves in “this world’s” terms have a very difficult time dealing with it. Winfrey has looked to Tolle (for now) because he is telling her what she wants to hear or believe…or feel (whatever term they want to use). It is difficult to for them to imagine that this in itself is ideology as you said, Tom. And easily could produce a “religion.” The truth is no one knows. We believe we know, we feel we know, we think we know, we have faith but we don’t know.
“Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. 3For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.” 2 Timothy 4
This has been happening since the first century and will continue to. We should not be afraid but do our job, to “preach the Word”.
“18Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. 19They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.
20But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth.[d] 21I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. 22Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a man is the antichrist—he denies the Father and the Son. 23No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.”
24See that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father. 25And this is what he promised us—even eternal life.
26I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray. 27As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him.”
1 John 2
I read Eckhart’s first book 10 years ago, saw him probably a dozen times and had a simple faith that, as Jesus said, “the kingdom of heaven is within.” Experiences are only pointers and I at first had some incredible glimpses and otherworldly insights which inspired my continuing faith in this teacher. I would suddenly see that there was no “me” - just this pure awareness and the whole world appeariing in this awareness. There was no separation from those around me - I vividly remember setting in a hotel lobby, experiencing the pride of the janitor in his freshly polished floors, the joy of two young girls headed for the spa, and the sadness of the concierege who was talking softly into the phone about a death in her family. I was all them, and they were me. My thinking would completely suspend itself leaving me with the most profound sense of unity and joy. But experiences are not “it” because experiences come and go. And what YOU are, never changes. I discovered that I was the screen on which all of these appearances occured. I am the aliveness of life. I now see what Jesus meant by “no one comes to the Father but through me.” He WAS referring to each of us…why, in his compassion, would he claim such exclusivity? The Father comes as joy, peace and love of others…I know of no other definition of God. I also took opportunities to be with others who had come to the same understanding as Eckhart. Some through the pointers of teachers, some through suffering, some with spontaneous awakenings. They all say the same thing as Eckhart, with their own delightful differences in personality. Now life is very ordinary, very simple, often with wonderment at the simpliest things. I go to sleep and wake up laughing spontaneously, with joy that wells up from deep within. No one on the street would guess that so much peace abides here. You, each of you, ARE the light of the world. Because the world cannot appear without your “light” - your awareness. Do you think Jesus would have wanted it any other way?
Suzy, the timing of your comment is interesting, since I just posted this, and your comment could have fit there as easily as here.
My short answer to “Do you think Jesus would have wanted it any other way” is another question: “How would we know what Jesus would or would not have wanted?” That other post points toward the only answer that makes sense, which is to find out what we can about Jesus from the best sources we have available….