Echoes in Eternity

I happened across this column by Chuck Norris (yes, that Chuck Norris, the guy who has tears that cure cancer but unfortunately never cries). Simply put, it is amazing. Not because it says any great new truth, but because it is truth and only truth. No wishy-washiness allowed.

On March 3, a live 10-week webinar hosted by Oprah Winfrey and Eckhart Tolle, author of "A New Earth," began. Both the book and the online course purport to be able to awaken you and our world to life's grand purpose.
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But will this religious text and its subsequent Internet churchlike gathering really lead you and our world to God's gates of splendor? Is it merely a coincidence that Winfrey and Tolle's spiritual quest aligns with one of Christendom's most sacred times of year? To me, it is more evidence of the paradigm shift in our culture from its moral absolute and Judeo-Christian basis to a relativistic worldview, in which anything goes and everything is tolerated. The fact is Tolle's "A New Earth" is being adopted and transformed into Oprah's new Easter.

Like most self-help spiritual texts of this type, it is a blend of half-truths and half-fabrications. One easily could save the purchase price of "A New Earth" -- and subsequently avoid its misleading remarks -- by reading the Bible, which gives a much more thorough and accurate picture of life's purpose and the methods for overcoming its obstacles.
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The reason Tolle's psychology and spirituality is marketed so easily is that it is an eclectic mix of conventional and unconventional wisdom, and Western and Eastern beliefs, presented in a tolerant, non-threatening and nonsectarian way. In other words, it's Religion Light, in which one can be spiritual with little down and no credit.

Tolle only quotes relatively benign sayings of Jesus, avoiding the more difficult ones. For example, Tolle notes that Jesus taught that the "kingdom of heaven" is already present on earth and can be experienced right now, but Tolle overlooks Jesus' teaching that one must be born again (by believing in him as the Son of God and Savior) to see that kingdom in the future.
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My battle is not with Oprah; she has her guru (Tolle), and I have mine (Jesus). The real war is between those who assert to be bearers of the truth, such as Tolle and Jesus. And the question is: With contradicting truths, will we believe a mere man or one who claimed to be so much more? As C.S. Lewis -- the great Oxford scholar and writer of "The Chronicles of Narnia," who was once an avid atheist -- wrote:

"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a good moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. …

"You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great moral teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

That might not be what Oprah, Tolle or others around the world want to hear on their webinar, but he is everything we all need to obtain peace with God and peace with one another.

Again, the question is: Will we turn from what's easy, what's new, what's popular -- even what's "Oprah" -- and take a step back and rediscover the answers that have been there all along? As C.S. Lewis also said: "We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive."