It's trendy in Hollywood your own religion, like Tom Cruise's Scientology. Oprah's new faith is a conglomeration of many others, it is a feel good, self-indulgent philosophy, and is getting an enormous following. It's such a shame that people are following her into a realm she knows nothing about while they ignore their own Christian faith. We need someone out there to start speaking the truth in love, and telling Oprah to stop playing the prophet. Chuck Norris may not have been my first choice to do that, but he's speaking the truth. Here's an excerpt from Chuck Norris' article on World Net Daily which includes one of my favorite CSLewis quotations,
"My battle is not with Oprah – she has her guru (Tolle), and I have mine (Jesus). The real war is between those who espouse to be bearers of the truth, like 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 "Narnia" series 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 a 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."
HT World Net Daily
8 comments:
Chuck quoting C.S. Lewis. You go guy!
Consider Jeremiah 23:16:
This is what the Lord says -
"Do not listen to what the false prophets are prophesying to you: they fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds not from the mouth of the Lord. They keep saying to those who despise me, 'The Lord says: You will have peace.' And to all who follow the stubborness of their hearts they say -'No harm will come to you.'
The "New Age" gurus fit description of the false prophets we were warned about millenia ago.
The problem that is faced is that Jesus has become so far removed from the people that it is difficult to believe in him. The average church even tells you that you can never be like him. The New Age promises that you can at least come close to him and people believe this to be true.
The problem is that people "need" a path that helps them to improve in their abilities. Christianity no longer, maybe never did, offer this improvement of human ability. It has for centuries argued: Believe in Christ, believe in God, and when you "DIE" "THEN" you will have something of value. The people are tired of being told that they can't have heaven while they are on earth, that they have to wait till they die, or they have to wait till the Second Coming. But, don't be confused it isn't the waiting that I think bothers most people it is the "promise" that there is little evidence to support will actually ever happen.
It is being argued that you cannot believe these Guru's, and this is probably true. Yet the very reasons why you would think you can't believe the Guru's is the same reason the common person is having trouble believing in Christ. With the modern Guru how do you know you can believe what they "say now", yet with Christ it is worse, it is, "how do we know we can believe what was said long before we were born, by a person we never met, and who we are hearing about only in writing. Not only in writing but writing we know for a fact has been rewritten, and altered by many different people over the years. And it is writing that often, at least seems, to contradict itself."
Further the representatives and translators of this knowledge that exist today (priests, ministers, popes, nuns, etc) usually can not adequately handle these and many other issues that modern man has with the words of the Bible. More often than not a series of well thought out questions will end with one answer and only one answer: Because God said so. This is the fit all answer I hear come from every religious man, even the brightest ones, when they get tired of the inquiring minds desire to question everything, and are faced with questions they really can not answer.
Lets face it the common person wants hope. Perhaps the Gurus offer false hope, but Christianity offers NO HOPE. A hope of something to come after you die, that has little to no evidence to support that it will ever actually happen, is no real hope at all.
We have so many problems here on earth and Christianity offers no productive proactive solution to them.
Lastly there are some forms of Christianity today that do offer greater hope in this life. Yet even they make one big mistake. They expect people to believe in Christ with little to no evidence. You might say what is the big deal? It is just belief right? The point is this that if we believe then we are more susceptible to the manipulation and coercion perpetuated by religions throughout history. The only reason for a religion to demand that you have to believe this one little thing is so as to make every other word that religion says more credible. After all if Christ isn't what they say he is than everything else in the Bible can be open to objective scrutiny, on the other hand if have to believe that Jesus Christ was what they say he is then everything else in the Bible becomes a whole lot more credible and less arguable.
Sincerely, Surfin Cyperz
Cyperz,
I have read your comment and decided that you were out of the country this week when Pope Benedict was here in the USA. He spoke of how the truth of Christ CAN be arrived at through use of reason, since He IS the Truth, all truth leads to Him. Benedict also addressed how belief in the Truth keeps one from despair that the world, with it's false ideologies leads teens to suicide and drug addiction. I was there at Dunwoodie with 25,000 youth who heard the message and left full of joy to go change their world for the better.
Spend some more time on my blog, read the speeches of Pope Benedict, not the media soundbites, and you fill find the heart of Catholicism, the faith that built Western Civilization, and without which, it will meet it's destruction.
Leticia,
This post was made after my very first visit to your blog. I would like to say that you have a nice place here. I have been reading some more and I still like it, it is very well written. I will poke around from time to time and hopefully since you seem to agree with the importance of reason you wont mind me placing a few counter arguments here and there.
As for our new Pope, I'm sorry, but I was in the country. Unfortunately the Popes words really don't counter my arguments. A Catholic can not be a Catholic and be skeptical of Christ. Plain and simple, unless I missed something, this rule has not changed. My argument was that: Whatever Christ was or was not why does it really matter if I believe in him? He "supposedly" did these magical things. Okay, that is nice, yet so did the Buddha; supposedly, so did Krishna; supposedly, so did Muhammad again supposedly. So who cares, does a miracle have the same value as proof if I didn't get to see it myself? No of course it doesn't because that is what proof, and I think miracles are all about showing you something so you will believe. I don't invest my hard earned money in car if I don't give it test drive first. Why would I invest my life, my mind, in something without proof or at least a substantial amount of hard evidence that the belief system I am curving my thoughts to fit into is valid. Changing the way a person thinks changes the way they feel emotionally, the way they perceive the world around them, and the way they behave. Changing one belief in your head also effects all other beliefs. So it is a big deal to decide whether or not to be a Catholic.
Hopefully you will forgive my grammar, I'm not as good of a writer as you.
On the note of counter arguments. If the pope sees the importance of reason in finding the truth, then I'm guessing so do you. If you see the importance of reason in finding the truth then why did you only reply to the aspect of my comment concerning reason? Maybe you misunderstood and thought that my main objection was the lack of critical reasoning and evidence to support the beliefs of Christianity and Catholicism. I will say that the Pope has a lot of good views, but I think a rational understanding of Christianity leads us to questions that you can not adequately counter by bringing up that the Pope says that reason can lead one to the truth (or Truth, if you will) of Christ.
You mention these false ideologies that lead people to despair, suicide, and addiction. These things are easy to see because they are happening in a new environment; the new age movement's environment. The question is how many people have been, and are being, lead to depression, despair, suicide, and addiction by the Catholic faith?
Not everyone with these problems is a follower of some ideology you would consider false. I have met people who are in despair because of their Catholic belief system. I have met people of other major religions in despair because of their beliefs. If a Catholic feels you can not live as a Catholic and wants to be Muslim becomes Muslim and his happy would you begrudge him that? What if the same Catholic person felt he would not be accepted by his piers as a Muslim, but new he would never be happy the way he was, and was in deep depression decided to killed himself? Would you then say that this person would be wrong for becoming Muslim? Don't say that such a decision wouldn't lead someone to thoughts of suicide. I myself went through a similar decision process involving thoughts of suicide and depression.
That is why Jesus said that a rich person has as much of a chance of getting into heaven as an elephant getting through the eye of a needle. Sometimes money and power causes people to think they are a god. If you follow Jesus Christ, you will walk in the path of righteousness.
That is why Jesus said that a rich person has as much of a chance of getting into heaven as an elephant getting through the eye of a needle. Sometimes money and power causes people to think they are a god. If you follow Jesus Christ, you will walk in the path of righteousness.
Dear A Christian Heard,
Do you guys actually know anything about Eckhart Tolle or just that he teaches people a spiritual path that isn't Christianity?
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