My post on Oprah's "secret" gospel has generated some great comments. If you haven't read them, stop over to the original post and do so!
I promised to post about what I got from the short 10 minutes that I watched all about the "secret" and I will deliver!
One of the panel "experts" was detailing the idea that we are all made of energy and the principle of like attracting like. He said something to the effect of (in other words, not an exact quote here) "The more energy we put out to something, the bigger it gets. So if you are constantly focused on all your problems then they will only get bigger."
What a great example of our thoughts about God! The more we learn about Him, the more we dwell on Him and meditate on His Word, the bigger He gets in our life! Now, I don't believe He gets any bigger in reality, but in our estimation of Him. And that is worship, to attribute to God the glory that He possesses and the glory He deserves from us.
Unfortunately, I don't think that is what the panel experts were thinking about!
All this talk of positive thinking, Oprah's secret and Joel Osteen led me to a great article written by John Piper about the deciet in prosperity preaching. Go and read it here to be challenged and blessed.
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4 comments:
Joel Osteen is a fave target among the LifeWay employees I am often around. NO, we don't carry his books, but we enjoy joking about him as if he were "one of the greats". I have read part of "Your Best Life Now" to try to figure out what the big fuss was about (my old boss's mom LOVED him and ordered STACKS of his books). YIKES! Total heresy! I could figure out really soon what the big deal was -- everybody likes to hear good things about themselves and feel good about themselves! That's pretty much what it was all about.
In relation to what you mentioned about Oprah's show -- I love the philosophy of Children Desiring God's curriculum (this is in the same vein, I promise). They point out that if your curriculum is designed to teach children to be good and share and so forth then the mark you aim at is far too low. Instead, constantly putting before children a God who is BIG, and AWESOME and POWERFUL and WRATHFUL and GRACIOUS paints for them something huge to admire and worship. And we tend to imitate what we admire, so all that sharing stuff kind of just falls into place because the children are so taken with our gracious Lord!
First of all Donette--I commend you for making it through an Oprah show. :-) I cannot stand her or Dr. Phil, and stopped trying to get anything out of their shows. But it was really cool to see what you took away from it,despite the heresy. :-)
Josh and I have talked about this subject alot lately....if our focus is all on our great God, everything that we think about falls into the right places. And our awe of Him is magnified the more we focus on Him! Thanks for the great thoughts, Donette.
Good article! It made me think, if the churches are offering prosperity like the world does, then what is the difference in being a Christian? Is it that we believe in the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ to save us from our sins vs. trying to merit our way to heaven?
Pastor Steve Thomas visited our church last year and spoke about What's the Truth? He made that same point, as that is what separates Christians from the world.
I have to admit, I did see part of this Oprah show, although I usually just occasionally see her makeover shows, too. I almost posted something on my blog about it. It was so disheartening to me to see this panel think that they had it all figured out, but were so far from the Truth. But it was a great reminder, as a parent, how important it is to show GOD to my children, not just GOOD. It scares me to think of the millions of followers that Oprah has, believing the garbage that was being fed that day. Thanks for the posts!
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