The Dangerous "Secret"
By Richard Eyre

Publisher's note: Perhaps the three most pursued and coveted things in our modern world are control, ownership, and independence. In Richard Eyre's mind, they are the three deceivers — and are ultimately both unobtainable and undesirable. They are, Eyre believes, the "false gods" that separate us from Heavenly Father and rob us of the things of the spirit. This column, exploring the obsessions we have developed with “CO&I,” and later outlining a better and more spiritual alternative for each, will open you to a new world of thinking that may change how you live. Richard welcomes your feedback and inputs. Take a guess at what you think the Three Alternatives are. Write to him at Richard@meridianmagazine.com . If you missed any of the four earlier columns in this series, you can go to the Deceivers Archive (see right sidebar) and catch up.

What's Dangerous about "The Secret”?

I wasn't going to do it, but I have to! I wasn't going to say anything about "The Secret" because, when someone first told me about seeing it on Oprah, I thought "No one is going to go for that, at least not my readers at Meridian."

But guess what, just about everyone is going for it! More than two million books and a million and a half DVDs sold in three months, and no end in sight! And you (you Meridian readers) have been writing me about it. Oprah has spent two full hour shows on The Secret, and says that she has lived by its principles all her life, even though she didn't know it. If it wasn't a best seller before Oprah, it surely was after, and a topic of discussion throughout the world of magazines, talk shows, and opinion.

The Secret, for those few of you that may not have heard of it (actually, I admire you, because it means you don't watch as much of the popular media as most) is a book and video by an Australian woman called Rhonda Bryne. Essentially, it says that we control things by our thoughts, that we create our own reality by what we think about, that we can change and manipulate objective reality with our minds, and that we can have whatever we want by following the formula "Ask, Believe, and Receive."

Bryne calls this process (of thinking things into reality) "the law of attraction" — meaning that whatever we think about will be attracted into our lives. If we think about a particular car, or piece of jewelry, or a certain weight or body type, it will become ours. On the other hand, if we think about illness, we will be sick more, and if we notice or think too much about fat people, we will become one of them.

Now wait, before you assume that what I am doing here is criticizing or blasting this whole idea, let me say this: The reason The Secret is dangerous, in my opinion, is because a lot of it is true. It is an interesting and appealing series of half truths that have just enough of the ring of truth to pull us in and cause us to buy off on the wrong parts along with the right parts.

That is the way self-help literature has always been; it contains some optimistic, motivating, proactive ideas that make it almost too easy to believe, but it leaves out (or doesn't give enough emphasis to) the biggest truth — that we need God to bring about real and lasting change in our lives, and that the power is His, not ours.

Sometimes self help (and The Secret is the perfect example) actually tells us some powerful potential truths, but forgets (or doesn't know how to) tell us what we have to do to reach that truth. Changing objective reality by our thoughts really is possible. God does it. By the power of His word (or His mind) he made the worlds (see Moses 3:5). And we, as His children, have the embryonic seeds of that power, but we can activate it or learn it only through our faith in Him.

And thank goodness for that, because if we could really do it independently, we would probably want, ask for, and create all the wrong things — things that would bring us misery and stagnation instead of happiness and progress. And this is borne out by Bryne's book, which concentrates mostly on achieving or attracting cars, houses and vacations, on winning the lottery and possessing the jewelry we see in the window.

It is a dangerous collection of half truths because it points us toward the wrong things, and perpetuates the myth of self — that we, independently and alone, can control what we own and what we are. And there you see it, by the way — all three deceivers in the same sentence. The bottom line of what Bryne is talking about is “CO&I” — Control, Ownership, and Independence, the Three Deceivers.

Oprah

Now let me back off a little and tell you about Oprah, who ushered The Secret into widespread popularity and acceptance. I think Oprah is, in many ways, a wonderful person, (and one who, by the way, is largely responsible for at least one of our books being a national best seller). I want to be personal for a moment to make some points about influence and about being influenced. So let me tell you a story.

We were sitting at dinner a few years ago when the phone rang. It was Oprah's senior producer, and she said that Oprah had read our book Teaching Your Children Values and wanted us on her show. When we got to her studio in Chicago a few weeks later, with six of our nine children in tow (the other three were on missions) we had no idea of what awaited us. We had done a lot of TV, talking about our books, and had experienced national attention on shows like Donahue and The Today Show.

But we had not realized that Oprah was in a world of her own. We were limo-ed to the Drake hotel, where we were told three shocking facts:

I learned a new definition of fear.

When we got there, there was a seating chart, and my fear grew as I saw that Charity and Eli, our two youngest, who had never gone more than 10 minutes without fighting, were seated next to each other. We also worried that Eli, who was 8 and a little irritated at Donahue for not letting him talk on an earlier show, would vent in some way. Most of all we were worried that questions would be asked that we couldn't answer.

But Oprah is just as she seems, warm, sincere, and truly interested. And she loved our book. She held it up and waved it around, as though the show was an infomercial, and told the parents of America that they had to read it and that they had to teach values to their children.

God in his mercy let Eli and Charity be so dazed with the lights and cameras that they forgot to fight and actually made some very cute comments, and during questions from the audience, one woman, miffed at how perfect our kids looked, asked where the other three were (obviously hoping for "prison" or "rehab"). Oprah, who had made it a point to get to know us a little before the show, answered herself, saying they were in Romania, Bulgaria, and London, "doing missionary work and humanitarian service." The show was atop the ratings and, the next week, our book shot to number 1 on the New York Times bestseller list.

My point? Simply that people like Oprah (even those not quite like Oprah) have enormous influence in what we read, and what we think! The pop culture that surrounds us oversimplifies many things, and we must be truly careful that we filter what we take in, and of course the best filter is the Gospel. Things like The Secret, when viewed through the lens and within the framework and Spirit of the Gospel, can be very helpful. We can appreciate the power of our thought within the context of wanting the right things and depending foremost on the spirit and power of God and not on our own desires for control, ownership and independence.

History

Actually, the very name "self help" should be a warning to us, because it is all about self, about me, about what I want. And there really is a "gospel of self help" click here to read my earlier column by that name) that has grown up and built itself upon intriguing and appealing half truths.

The oversimplified (and often inflating and then deflating) idea that we can be whatever we want, on our own, by ourselves, and right away, just by thinking about it, got its popular start more than a hundred years ago by authors Emile Coue ("Every day, and in every way, I am becoming better and better") and Wallace Wattles (The Science of Getting Rich — the book that inspired Bryne). It continued through writers like Napolean Hill (Think and Grow Rich), and it grows stronger every day with advocates like Depak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, and Tony Robbins.

Again, there is truth in these writings, important truth, but it takes the Spirit to separate the accurate from the exaggerated, and to add the correct twists that make it serve rather than deceive. And it takes wisdom and guidance to know that the goal is not to be the source but to connect to the source.

Let me end positively. I love some of what The Secret has to say. The emphasis on choosing gratitude over resentment is wonderful, and whenever someone says "ask" or "be thankful" they are at least implying that we direct those things to God. And I believe in the power of the mind, although I think that its power works more by awareness and by noticing the connections and opportunities God puts in front of us than by actually attracting or magically giving you whatever you want. (I will get further into that thought in a future Deceiver column.)

To me, the most interesting (and in a way depressing) thing is that we often have a propensity to accept a half truth rather than a full truth, and to be attracted to a "star" when we have access to the "sun." We have the scriptures, the actual word of almighty God, and we have the Lord Jesus Christ himself, willing to teach us and give us all He has. This does not mean we should not read the ideas and the philosophies of our fellow travelers on this earth, but it means that we should read them in perspective, and never accept any part of them that is not in harmony with eternal, revealed truth.

Having said that, I put myself on notice don't I? As you explore the Three Deceivers with me, and as we search together for the Three Alternatives, may we be true to the revealed word, and not try to create anything more than a useful and timely interpretation of God's truth that can help us to better understand and better live in today's complex and often misled world.

To take a guess on what The Three Alternatives are, or to express your ideas or feedback, write to Richard@meridianmagazine.com As you make your own search for the Three Alternatives, or as you send them in to me, remember that they must preserve all of the good aspects of CO&I (positiveness, initiative, discipline, and so on) but eliminate all of the negative aspects (judgment, jealousy, conceit, presumption, envy, covetousness, and other deceiving and damaging qualities). The three Alternatives must draw us closer to God rather than distancing us from Him