Oprah’s Got a Secret

Greg Koukl writes of Oprah Winfrey and her “church”:

Oprah Winfrey is the “pastor” of the largest church in the country.“The Church of O,” Christianity Today noted, has a congregation of 22 million vigorous, faithful, evangelistic members, making Oprah Winfrey “one of the most influential spiritual leaders in America.”1

Oprah’s theology is based on a secret. That secret is in a book: The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne.2 Oprah and Bryne think their secret is consistent with Christianity, as do tens of thousands of their followers. Many of them consider themselves Christians.

The Secret, though, has no kinship with Christianity. It is something completely different. It trades on Christian language and biblical prooftexts, but uses them to construct a view of reality that is totally foreign to the worldview of Jesus. In fact, the secret of The Secret is that it is not the deep wisdom of the universe, but the oldest lie in the universe.

What Is “The Secret”?

The Secret, introduced in the book by Rhonda Byrne and 24 other “teachers”-and aggressively promoted by Oprah-is what Byrne calls the “Law of Attraction.”According to the authors, the universe responds to each of us according to an inviolate natural law that works like a magnet in reverse. (7) With magnets, opposites attract. According to this secret law of the universe, though,“like attracts like.” (25, 157)

Think good thoughts and good things will happen because you attract them to yourself. Like a genie who always says,“Your wish is my command” (46, 59), or a catalog you flip through and point to the person, product, or experience you want (48, 101), the Law of Attraction discharges on your every desire.

Think bad things, though, and bad things find you just as easily. If you are poor, it’s your fault because you “are blocking money from coming to [you] with [your] thoughts” (99). If you are in a car accident, you have no one to blame but yourself because you
attracted it (27-28). For good or for ill, the Law of Attraction is at work creating your reality from the thoughts and images you give it to work with.

The Secret endows its user with virtual omnipotence: “There isn’t a single thing you cannot do with this knowledge,”Bryne writes. “It doesn’t matter who you are or where you are,The Secret can give you whatever you want” (xi).

According to this book, the greatest thinkers and the finest creative minds in history have known The Secret, from Plato to Lincoln, from Galileo and Newton to Shakespeare and Beethoven, from Carnegie to Emerson, Einstein, and Edison. You alone, it seems, have been left behind.

And this, Byrne claims, is the same secret known and practiced by all great religious masters- including Jesus-and taught by all religions-including Christianity. Indeed, Byrne writes,“The creative process used in The Secret…was taken from the New Testament in the Bible” (47)-with verses cited in support (54). Even Mother Theresa knew, understood, and practiced The Secret (143). Therefore, The Secret is consistent with Christianity.

But is it?

For the full article, view Stand to Reason’s Solid Ground