By Rick Pearcey
A friend writes via email:
A friend writes via email:
I think most of you know how I feel about "forwarded messages." This one was so striking, however, that I felt I needed to pass it on. I recommend that, if at all possible, you spend 6 minutes looking at this You Tube video. It is startling.
In it is an Oprah quote regarding Jesus: "There couldn't possibly be just one way." (She says it, that settles it.)
Oprah discusses "God" with an author of one of her book-club selections: "God 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 . . . " (But what if God is a fact of life -- say, of the sort that could be born in a place called Bethlehem?)
Also noted is Oprah's endorsement of Barack Obama for president.
The YouTube video concludes by pointing viewers to a website that promotes a new book, Don't Drink the Kool-Aid.
Biblically, of course, the data demonstrate that God is a rational, personal, objective being who thinks, acts, feels, and has spoken in history, space, and time so that human beings as thinking people do not have to escape from the facts of reality to affirm meaning in life, the dignity of man, or solid answers to moral dilemmas in an ethical universe.
This is not about big or small churches, big or small TV ratings, mesmerizing gurus, pantheistic celebrities, private belief systems, or private faiths where "God" is no longer in a "box" but can be whatever floats your boat, diet, gender, weekend, or TV show -- whatever you want he, she, it, or all of the above to be, since rational categories no longer apply.
But if rational categories no longer apply, how do we rationally conclude that Jim Jones and his suicidal Kool-Aid theology were wrong? His "god" was out of the "box" and people died. If rationality is irrelevant to spirituality, then we cannot say Jones was "wrong," for the word "wrong" is a meaningful linguistic symbol bound to the box of rationality beyond which certain gods, apparently, live.
Yes, there were warning signs, but the cult leader preached community and "welcomed people of every race and ethnicity," notes a PBS story. Apparently the Kool-Aid reverend did nice things for lots of people before the real world came crashing down upon his private theology and those who drank deeply of it.
The humanness of the Biblical data provides a way out. Here, human beings get to ask tough questions and resist sales pitches. Here we observe a concern for objective truth, fact, evidence, and that which accurately describes the world in which all people must live irrespective of their subjective imaginations, bank accounts, or political affiliation.
"Test everything," says 1 Thess. 5:21. That includes celebrity, religion, prophetic wannabees, presidential hopefuls, "God," etc., etc. It's the Biblical, humane, and wise thing to do.
_______________
Rick Pearcey is editor and publisher of The Pearcey Report (articles).
3 comments:
Thank you for your intelligent response to the world and religion of Oprah.
I could only stomach 1:33 minutes of the short video. Oprah's own words condemn her in light of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures.
She clearly believes in a hodgepodge of secularist ideas and politically correct ideologies.
It is sad that when Christ speaks His Words on that Last Day that Oprah [baring repentance on her part] will not be included in the following group:
"Come you blessed of My father -- inherit the kingdom prepared for you..."[Gospel of Matthew 25]
Oprah, by her own words and volition chooses to distinguish herself and her ideas apart from a loving Redeemer God. She will, be given her place on the "left" and be counted as one of the "goats." All her worldly wealth and fame and work's righteousness will not stand one iota in the presence of a holy and just God. Oprah must come, with her sinful self, by way of Christ's Cross.
So much......for those who would like to "wing it" through this life and the next, by rejecting the Christ of history the ONLY good Shepard and Savior of their sinful souls. [Gospel of John, 10]
This video is really getting around and I am glad. I believe God is exposing the lies and therefore, people will be set free. Thank you. I really enjoy your work and your commitment.
Sincerely,
A young woman who is trying to do her part.
Great observation: "She says it, that settles it."
O's reliance on a creature's childish sense of what's "fair," is irrelevant to the Truth of the Creator. She has no authority for her position, and no credibility on the issue other than her celebrity.
But God is Holy and Other. The pot cannot simply pontificate on the Potter, and by speaking make it so.
A chronicle of her strange pronouncements would be insightful. I remember only one other--years ago, speaking of the same issue, she said she was turned off when she heard that God was a jealous God. O went on to say that if we are supposed to worship Him only, then He is self-centered(!).
But God is Holy. He is not just another creature. He's not like us and His ways cannot be "judged" by us.
What O does not realize is that God is not self-centered---instead, the universe, all of creation, is GOD-centered. One day every knee will bow, every skeptic's questions will be answered.
"Who are you, Oh man, that answers back to God? The pot cannot say to the Potter, 'Why are you making me this way?' can it?"
You do great work, Pearceys.
Post a Comment