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Rhonda Byrne, the author of The Secret, makes the claim: “As you travel through its pages [of “The Secret”] and you learn The Secret, you will come to know how you can have, be, or do anything you want. You will come to know who you really are. You will come to know the true magnificence that awaits you.” Wow! What a promise!--if it were true. This promise is seductive. Who wouldn’t want to have, and be, and do whatever he or she wants? But what if whatever you want collides with whatever someone else wants? There can be only one president of the United States at a time, for instance. What if someone wants to have complete dictatorial control over the United States and the population does not want that? What then? I’m sure the reader can think of many other scenarios in which this promise has a few problems attached to it. The Secret (capitalized by the author or editor) is revealed to be what is called “the law of attraction.” Enough truth is mixed in to make the whole poisonous mix palatable. Certainly our thoughts, feelings, and actions do affect the results we achieve in this life. But this truth is mixed in with Pantheistic philosophy (god is not a Being but an inner force within all things in the universe) and other worldviews. The author and those she quotes mixes in pop psychology, misused quotes from the Bible, and pseudoscience. The book makes the claim that if you just keep replaying the right thoughts you can attract everything you want to yourself. There is no emphasis on whether or not what you want is good for you and others. There is no emphasis on the labor needed to achieve life goals. Just keep repeating the mantra: “I AM [the author’s capitalization] receiving every good thing. I AM happy. I AM abundant. I AM healthy. I AM love. I AM always on time. I AM eternal youth. I AM filled with energy every single day.” Christians who read their Bible will recognize that I AM is a name by which the Creator God calls himself. We ought to become extremely nervous about repeating that paragraph every day. As a student of the Bible and a disciple of Jesus Christ, I can’t help but think of Satan’s promise to Eve that she could become like God by consuming the fruit he forbade her to eat. Satan told her God had lied to her, that she would never die. Disobedience to God would make her just like God. The problem is Satan does not have the power or the authority to give us eternal life in the likeness of God. (Genesis 3:1-7) No amount of thinking on our part can do that for ourselves either. We still need a Savior. The author claims: “The Secret is within you. The more you use the power within you, the more you will draw it to you. You will reach a point where you won’t need to practice anymore, because you will Be the power, you will be the perfection, you will Be [again the author’s capitalization] the wisdom, you will Be the intelligence, you will Be the love, you will Be the joy.” The Bible tells us that it is Jesus dwelling
within us through the Holy Spirit who is our hope of glory. (Colossians
1:27) Only God, who is a real spiritual Being and who is separate from
the universe he created, can promise and deliver what this book promises
you can get for yourself apart from God. Jesus asked the question, “What
good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his
soul?” (Matthew 16:26)
There are some true principles in The Secret, but all of the true principles we need can be found in the pages of The Bible without all of The Secret’s distortions that will mislead and eventually disappoint the practitioner. (Please also read the review of There
is More to the Secret in this issue.)
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