Jesus Christ is the must-have supplement for today's made-to-order religious practices. He is used like a healing herb or a trace mineral. Mix a tablespoon of Jesus into your daily religious smoothie and you're good to go. Jesus flavors any religion, belief system, principle or spiritual practice on earth. He is the binding agent, the innocuous role model for perfectly executed belief.
He's a very cool additive only when you peel away the messy crucifixion, that blood-as-sacrifice-for-sin stuff, His statements about being the only way to God, and that wild notion about resurrecting bodily. But for those who prefer their Jesus tame, the Jesus who taught about blood and sin is passive aggressive and His Daddy is a cosmic control freak.
For example, the crucified and risen Jesus doesn't flow with Oprah and Eckhart Tolle, author of the "A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose," and other self-made faith practices today. Faith is self-actualization, consciousness and an untethered spirituality that says: We have seen god and god is us.
(Courtesy of : lsim13 from YouTube.com.)
I'm a huge fan of Oprah and the way she embraces mass media to supply forums for a variety of people, interests, and ideas. Hosting a global webcast featuring Tolle is a brilliant use of today's technology and further proof that she is a master storyteller and entrepreneur. She has her fingertips on what matters so much to so many.
But "A New Earth" and other books that turn away from the crucified and risen Christ reveal not the greatest story ever told, but the greatest lie ever believed.
Long before Oprah became a beloved media personality, she was a person with a question. Oprah herself has said that when she heard a minister talk about a "jealous" God, she was disturbed by that description. The God she knew was loving, so how could God be jealous? Her question was real. Her curiousity was normal. Did anyone in her former Baptist church share with her about what a "jealous God" meant? Did one of the "mothers of the church" put her arms around her and explain the full story about the God of All Love?
Whether they did or not, Oprah's question was left to take unruly root.
More tomorrow about this.
