Have you heard of ‘The Secret’? If you’ve a Christian and a member of the Pentecostal movement and have never heard of ‘The Secret’, you will definitely feel left out of something BIG. And ‘The Secret’ is big – Hollywood-blockbuster big; New-York-Times-best-seller big.
‘The Secret’ is a film consisting of a series of interviews designed to demonstrate that everything one wants or needs can be satisfied by believing in an outcome, repeatedly thinking about it, and maintaining positive emotional states to “attract” the desired outcome. In a nutshell, it’s the “Law of Attraction” in video format. As a movie, it raked in over 65 million dollars at the box office (not bad for a movie that cost $3.5 million to produce). As a book, it has sold millions of copies and comes in various forms: cassette, CD, Kindle, etc. it even has a version for teenagers. Oprah Winfrey championed it in two of her shows and said its principles were what she lived her life by. Impressed? You should be. ‘The Secret’ comes packaged with its own endorsement. Not only is it presented by well-known personalities who are bestselling authors in their own right; but it claims that this “Secret” is the principle that renowned icons of our human history lived by: Plato, Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, Hugo, Beethoven, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, the list goes on.
How did I know all this? Well, I was forced to. While I admit to being curious by nature, my curiosity didn’t get me into all this; the hype did. Everyone seemed to be talking about it. And pastors (some unwittingly, some flagrantly) endorsed the movie and the spinoff book from their pulpits. I decided I had to know what this “secret” was all about. I finally got the book; and found myself stuck – on page 1! There was something odd about what was being spoken. I couldn’t put my finger on it yet. However, it just didn’t fit. Then all of a sudden, three things struck me:
1. The title, “THE SECRET”, promises to let the reader in on some hidden knowledge that others do not have access to: a promise that was once promised about two millennia ago by the GNOSTICS. [Gnosticism was an esoteric religious movement that flourished during the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD and presented a major challenge to orthodox Christianity. Most Gnostic sects professed Christianity, but their beliefs sharply diverged from those of the majority of Christians in the early church. The term gnosticism is derived from the Greek word gnosis (“revealed knowledge”). To its adherents, Gnosticism promised a secret knowledge of the divine realm. (source: Microsoft® Encarta® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.)]
2. The presentation was all too smooth and too Dan-Brownish to me and rang too familiar with the Da-Vinci Code brouhaha and all the “Lost Gospels” drama 10 years ago: Dan Brown’s source materials were, of course, the discredited “Gospels” of 200+ A.D. – written by the GNOSTICS.
3. Finally, with shock, I realised that this type of presumptuous claim of possession of some special knowledge was exactly the problems the Apostolic writers tackled with in their days. Specifically Paul (in Colossians), John (in 1 John), and Jude. And surprise, surprise, those claims were being made then by, well, GNOSTICS.
I quickly discovered that this material wasn’t a secret at all; at least not to Bible students. Mark Earley, President of Prison Fellowship, summed up ‘The Secret’ in just four words: “New Book, Old Lie”.
I put these observations of mine to a brother in my church who I found reading the book and he attacked me for being ignorant. He said the authors of the book were well-versed and well-learned and even know the Bible much more than I would ever know. I remember particularly pointing out to him that it was stuff like these that made Paul write to the Colossian church in the 1st century A.D. But he would have none of it and I let him be.
So you would understand my shock and amazement two days ago when I read Colossians chapter 2 from The Message Bible. The Message is a Bible translation by Eugene Peterson that is notorious for its extreme idiomatic and dynamic equivalent paraphrasing of the original Greek and Hebrew texts. (You need to read Genesis 1:1 in that version to see what I mean). Well, I was reading Colossians 2 in the Message version and this is what I found in verses 2 – 4. (Emphases are mine).
“I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God. Then you will have minds confident and at rest, focused on CHRIST, God’s great mystery. All the richest treasures of wisdom and knowledge are embedded in that mystery AND NOWHERE ELSE. And we’ve been shown the mystery! I’M TELLING YOU THIS BECAUSE I DON’T WANT ANYONE LEADING YOU OFF ON SOME WILD-GOOSE CHASE, after other so-called mysteries, OR “THE SECRET”.
Yes, you read it correctly; he put THE SECRET in quotation marks. Colossians was translated by Eugene Peterson in 1993. “The Secret”, by Rhonda Byrne, was released in 2006 – 13 years later.
SELAH.
Greg Elkan
