OPRAH RE-WRITES JESUS' PURPOSE

In my seminary class on evangelism and discipleship tonight there was a lot of hype about some series of talks Oprah is doing. I heard everything from she is trying to start her own religion to she should be taken off the air to she is very confused and lost.

So I googled it in class and found it on her website here. She has put a lot of energy into this because this book study she's doing with author Eckhart Tolle on his book, A New Earth ("awakening to your life's purpose" is the subtitle which I swear I've heard before somewhere!), is available to be downloaded for free in one of 3 forms: audio, video, or written transcript.

I downloaded the transcript from episode one and read it during my extremely engaging seminary class. I found this piece very interesting. Seems to be along the lines of Dan Kimball's, "They like Jesus, but not the the church" pretty well. This would make great material to get students talking in a discussion group on what they believe. It is super new age and trendy and full of cultural norms we need to address. It is very western trendy all religions should just like each other in a happy soup bowl- a thought the middle east will never ever buy into, but that western cultures seem to think is very natural. I just might download the whole thing and use it to frame a whole series of talks that might really get students thinking. Here's several paragraphs from a 43 page PDF transcript that capsulate it pretty well in the framework of a question a viewer asked live via skype I think:

KELLY (ILLINOIS): Well, my question is regarding religion and spirituality.

OPRAH WINFREY (HOST): Big one.

KELLY (ILLINOIS): I had a Catholic upbringing, I married a Catholic, and we're raising our children this way. In reading books such as Tolle's, I've really, it's really opened my eyes up to a new way of thinking: a new form of spirituality that doesn't always align with the teachings of Christianity. So my question is to you, Oprah, how have you reconciled these spiritual teachings with your Christian beliefs?

OPRAH WINFREY (HOST): Oh, the question's to me. I was resting knowing it was going to about—I've reconciled it because I was able to open my mind about the absolute indescribable hugeness of that which we call "God." I took God out of the box because I grew up in the Baptist church and there were, you know, rules and, you know, belief systems in doctrine.

OPRAH WINFREY (HOST): And I happened to be sitting in church in my late 20s, and I was going to this church where you had to get there at 8 in the morning or you couldn't get a seat. And a very charismatic minister, and everybody was just, you know, into the sermon. And this great minister was preaching about how great God was and how omniscient and omnipresent, and God is everything.

OPRAH WINFREY (HOST): And then he said, "And the lord thy God is a jealous God." And I was, you know, caught up in the rapture of that moment until he said "jealous." And something struck me. And I was like, I think about 27 or 28. I was thinking, "God is all, God is omnipresent, God is—and God's also jealous? God is jealous of me?"

OPRAH WINFREY (HOST): And something about that didn't feel right in my spirit because I believe that God is love and that God is in all things. And so that's when the search for something more than doctrine started to stir within me. And I love this quote that Eckhart has, this is one of my favorite quotes in Chapter 1, where he says, "Man made 'God' in his own image. The eternal, the infinite, and unnamable was reduced to a mental idol that you had to believe in and worship as 'my god' or 'our god.'"

OPRAH WINFREY (HOST): Now I think that's very eloquently put by Eckhart Tolle in Chapter 1. But that is exactly what I was feeling when I was, you know, sitting in church that Sunday listening to the preacher. And you know, it's been a journey to get to the place where I understand, as I said on the preshow here, that what I believe is that Jesus came to show us Christ consciousness.

OPRAH WINFREY (HOST): That Jesus came to show us the way of the heart and that what Jesus was saying that to show us the higher consciousness that we're all talking about here. Jesus came to say, "Look I'm going to live in the body, in the human body, and I'm going to show you how it's done." These are some principles and some laws that you can use to live by to know that way. And when I started to recognize that, that Jesus didn't come—in my belief, even as a Christian, I don't believe that Jesus came to start Christianity.

OPRAH WINFREY (HOST): So that was also very helpful to me. And as I said earlier in the preshow here, there is a wonderful book called Discover the Power Within You by Eric Butterworth, which helped me reconcile the two. So that might be really good for those of you who are Christian and trying to balance the two. What would you say?

OPRAH WINFREY (HOST): Because one of the things that Eckhart says in the beginning of this book on page 6 is, "This book's main purpose is not to add new information or beliefs to your mind, or to try to convince you of anything, but to bring about a shift in consciousness, that is to say, to awaken." He says that on page 6. And one of the reasons why I appreciate him so much is because he truly isn't out to become your next guru. He doesn't want, you know, all of you who are online with us tonight and those millions who will now hear about this book, he's not interested in being your guru, correct?

ECKHART TOLLE (AUTHOR A NEW EARTH: AWAKENING TO YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE): Yes, correct.

OPRAH WINFREY (HOST): Yeah. How would you respond to that? That's one of the biggest questions that we have coming into our message boards about the same thing that Kelly is addressing here from Alton about spirituality and religion. This is not trying to tell you how to believe. And how do you advise people to reconcile this with their religious beliefs?


ECKHART TOLLE (AUTHOR A NEW EARTH: AWAKENING TO YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE): Well, religion can be an open doorway into spirituality, and religion can be a closed door. It prevents you from going deeper. So that I love reading the New Testament, and I also read the Old Testament. Sometimes there's some incredible jewels in there. And when I went through this inner transformation, and for the first time accidentally I picked up a copy of the New Testament at my mother's place.

ECKHART TOLLE (AUTHOR A NEW EARTH: AWAKENING TO YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE): And I started reading, and I immediately recognized the deep truths that is there, and I realized the truth that is deeper, that is expressed in what Jesus said, is much deeper than what you, how the church interprets it. There's a depth to it. And it reflects your own depth when you read it. So there's no conflict between this teaching, which is purely spiritual, and any religion.

ECKHART TOLLE (AUTHOR A NEW EARTH: AWAKENING TO YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE): Because if you go deep enough in your religion, then you all get to the same place. It's a question of going deeper, so there's no conflict here. The important thing is that religion doesn't become an ideology—so, "I believe this." And the moment you say "only my belief" or "our belief" is true, and you deny other people's beliefs, then you've adopted an ideology. And then religion becomes a closed door. But, potentially, religion can also be an open door.