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From touchandchange.com Ask Jeff I just read Eckhart Toller's bestselling book, A New Earth. It has sold millions, Oprah is doing a web class and seminar on XM radio with the author. The book claims it is a spiritual call to a better way of living. What do you think about it? Is it helpful for a Christian to read this?
The most helpful book to read would be a book called Visible, Vibrant, and Vital. (I know, a shameless plug...sorry I could not resist) Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth has stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for weeks. Some accounts claim to have it selling over three million copies—one million of which are due to Oprah's picking it for her book club. I have heard and read that over two million people are participating in a ten-week interactive webinar that Oprah hosts with Tolle . I have seen this book as people guzzle coffee in Starbucks and it has become the book of choice in watercooler/chatroom/chit-chat/book club conversations. Many people reading this book call themselves churchgoers. The book's back cover calls Tolle's work "a profoundly spiritual manifesto for a better way of life—and for building a better world." So, is it? Nah...The reality is A New Earth is like a drive-thru fast food diner offering up samplings of modernism, humanism, and the New Ageism of the '80s, with hints of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity offered as part of the combo-meal. (I'd like my self-help enlightenment combo with a side of Hinduism please!) Now while that is surely an accomplishment for any author to manage, it does present some problems if it is to be looked at spiritually. A New Earth basically represents Tolle's version of Paul's old-man/new-man theology. (Romans 6–8) Then of course he co-ops the term New Earth from the pages of Scripture...so the book sure does have a spiritual looking wrapping. So, here is the book in a nutshell... SMACKDOWN!!!! (Cue the introduction music...which you understand is the highlight of any WWE wrestling match. As the match begins they walk down the ramp toward the ring) The Ego (in A New Earth) is the old man, while the enlightened self (to use the phrasing in the book) is the new man trying to wrestle the beast to the ground. The winner is the champion...so there is a smackdown going on. But there's a huge difference between the apostle Paul and the author Tolle in their view on this old man/new man wrestling match. The effort to overcome the Ego is a human effort—which is what got us into trouble in the first place and usually keeps us in trouble. When the wrestling match is over, Tolle's new man is really nothing more than a man who happens to be at best a bit more evolved. Paul's new man, on the other hand, is new because he is a follower and his future is in Christ.
A Place in This World or a New Earth? In A New Earth we read, "Before you ask any other question, first ask the most fundamental question of your life: Who am I?" —A New Earth, p. 186
This is a particularly important question for anyone to ask. People ask it all the time. In fact, it's a biblical one (Ecclesiastes, anyone?). The chief problem is Tolle offers only half of the question that needs to dance in his readers' minds: "Who am I in light of who God is and of who I know God to be?" It's not terribly surprising that Tolle ignored the important second half of the question with the first half. A New Earth, works hard to collapse God into man, making them one in the same. If Tolle is willing to dismiss the God-man for an enlightened man, then man is to be considered God. Though Tolle flirts with the idea of a divine being with his use of capitalized terms like "Presence," "Life," "Peace," or even "Truth," he ultimately settles for "I," "me," and "myself." He aims for God and settles for himself. To sum it all up, Tolle writes: "The Truth is inseparable from who you are. Yes, you are the Truth." (p.71) So, as you can see...that creates a problem if you really follow Jesus. Throughout the book Tolle focuses on our need to discover our "I Am-ness." Though we heard hints of this in the New Ageism of the '80s, the boldness of that ideology still manages to make us gasp when we realize that the elevation of "I Am-ness" is an attempt to overthrow the I AM.
The book also goes on to say... "The new spirituality, the transformation of consciousness, is arising to a large extent outside of the structures of the existing institutionalized religions. There were always pockets of spirituality even in mind-dominated religions, although the institutionalized hierarchies felt threatened by them and often tried to suppress them. A large-scale opening of spirituality outside of the religious structures is an entirely new development." —A New Earth, p. 18
Tolle's consistent use of "I" and "me" leaves little room for "you" and "us." This makes Tolle's A New Earth a bit odd in that at the very same time it denounces my Ego, it offers it quite a feast with its promises that I can get everything ironed out on my own. If you have read The Secret or seen the DVD you should be seeing the image of the genie in the bottle bottle popping out offering the universe at this point. The irony is that Tolle himself does not practice what he preaches concerning rugged individualism lived radically outside the supposed prison of larger-scale systems. Every thought he develops in his book is born out of major world religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity). By his own acknowledgment, most of his own "consciousness" was brought about and is now sustained by the consciousness of others—in community. Now in partnership with Oprah, Tolle has begun a "church" of 2 million via webinars and other videos. A spirituality made beautiful by existing outside confining systems is quickly becoming a system of its own. And I think that is the dead give-away that this is just another entry into the "self help you can be your own god" library. Remember the world's self-help self-discovery teachers have long said we need only to look into the mirror to find our salvation. The only thing Tolle does differently is make us look a little longer—and we're not impressed by what we see. It isn't long before we notice that there is but one person reflected, meaning we are going to go it alone in fear of getting it wrong with no one else to set it right. So...as is often the case with these types of bestsellers...Scripture is taken out of context or rewritten to mean something it doesn't. Sadly, people don't know Scripture well enough to see it or notice. There is a huge difference in Tolle's enlightened man and the God-man. Still there are 3 million people reading A New Earth—and thousands more are intrigued by it—it is a powerful reminder that people are looking for something...the something that can only be found in God. So that is the book in a nutshell... If Oprah has embraced it and gotten excited about it, there is a good chance with her track record that it probably isn't Christian. This is the newest craze since The Secret in the "you can be like god" series of publishing spectacles. Oprah tends to like those. It would probably be more helpful for a Christian who wants to improve their life to read something besides this offering...just because when read without any kind of balance you walk away with a meshing of spiritual sounding junk that has little or no basis in Scripture.
Below are some additional multi-media resources that might be helpful as you explore this subject. The two below relate to The Secret and the impact it has had in the culture today The Secret (The Secret Law): The Law of Attraction vs. The Law of Trust The Secret: The Secret Whispered in Your Heart
The information used in the answer to this question has been composed from a variety of sources, documents, and resources researched for the response © Copyright 2003 by CCC Ministries |
