Yeah, I am not sur­prised either.

My wife showed me this video yes­ter­day — I was blown away that peo­ple are buy­ing in to this. My wife said over 500,000 peo­ple signed up for Oprah’s web­cast. When then sat down to eat din­ner and she asked me to pray. I said “I don’t know, I don’t really “feel” God right now — He must not be there.” But, I took a leap of faith and prayed any­way, because, some­how, I’m not sure how, God is beyond my feel­ings, (What?, Wha…no, really? God is that big?)

As we talked about this video I said, “You know, God is jeal­ous because He knows all other gods are false, and it is you that will be hurt and dis­ap­pointed if you fol­low them, not God.” But, yeah, Oprah’s per­spec­tive was cer­tainly twisted.

I’d tend to take a more com­pas­sion­ate view. What Oprah is reject­ing is protes­tant Chris­tian­ity, but sees no alter­na­tive except self directed mys­ti­cism. She actu­ally touches the hem of the gar­ment that God IS indeed the source of all con­cious­ness and He is not merely an intel­lec­tual con­struct but ulti­mately to be expe­ri­enced. That’s Ortho­dox. Its too bad the Church didn’t get a hold of her in her twen­ties, she might be Greek by now.

Nicode­mus:
Yep, def­i­nitely can’t start to pray until you get the God-feeling. It reminds me that the Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage sign for Quaker is twid­dling thumbs. Why? Because Quak­ers have to sit there and wait until some­one feels moved in the spirit to begin preaching.

See? You learn some­thing every day.

s-p:
I don’t know. She cer­tainly is try­ing to avoid error in one direc­tion, but I wish she didn’t have so much influ­ence over so many peo­ple. Because there seems like a lot less chance to me that any­one would get from this “New Earth” par­a­digm to Ortho­doxy Chris­tian­ity, or even (lower-case-o) ortho­dox Christianity.

Because with all its faults, Protes­tantism does at least say that Jesus Christ is Lord and God, that He is our Sav­ior, etc. etc. So aren’t they at least on the same play­ing field? Oprah and this author def­i­nitely refute that Christ is the only way to God — I don’t know whether they give Him any sin­gu­lar atten­tion, except maybe as the “good teacher” type of thing that C. S. Lewis refuted so well.

Ok, so now I’m curi­ous, Grace — what is the ASL sign for Ortho­dox? Do you know?

Mimi:
Had to Google it, but HERE YOU GO.

Mind you, I don’t know if that’s nec­es­sar­ily Ortho­dox Chris­t­ian, but you could prob­a­bly com­bine the sign.

Not that I expect to ever need this infor­ma­tion, but you never know.

Cool! Thanks!

Good thoughts, Grace. I guess I often see peo­ple who reject the “pen sub” angry God who kills Jesus instead of us and turn to new age “all you need is love” and won­der which is really worse? Appeas­ing the vol­cano pagan deity or feel­ing good about your god­ness? Its true they acknowl­edge Jesus, but how “real” is the Jesus they acknowl­edge? I dunno. In my mind its degrees not black and white. I guess Idon’t worry so much about her influ­ence, she’s just tick­ling people’s ears… if you’re not in the mar­ket for it you won’t buy it and she’d go out of busi­ness. KnowwhutImean,Vern?

I *think* so. I con­fess, I don’t under­stand the “pen sub” ref­er­ence. And I’m hav­ing to guess a lot about the the­o­log­i­cal con­struct of the non-Orthodox I know. I didn’t know so many were fully involved in a juridi­cal under­stand­ing of sal­va­tion — I thought they just wanted to con­sider that God had stamped a big smi­ley face over every­thing and they didn’t have to think about *any­thing* *ever*. Maybe I just don’t know enough non-Orthodox religious-thinker types. Or any, now that I think of it.

It seems to me that most peo­ple I meet — reli­gious and non-religious — aren’t inter­ested in any­thing remotely the­o­log­i­cal, which means they end up believ­ing a lot of odds and ends of things they’ve heard (or thought they heard): vague impres­sions of Bible verses, bumper stick­ers, bon mots from the Matrix series, etc. etc. The rea­son this Oprah thing raises some hack­les is that it’s The­ol­ogy Light for the The­o­log­i­cally Chal­lenged and may reach peo­ple who didn’t want to go to all the bother of fig­ur­ing any­thing out.

On the other hand, you’re prob­a­bly right that peo­ple prob­a­bly still won’t care overall.

Pen sub: I think it’s short for “penal substitution.”

My pas­tor shat­tered that with one pow­er­ful state­ment this week­end: GOD IS A LOVING EXPERIENCE!!! Remem­ber, God so LOVED the world. Greater LOVE has no man than this.… GOD IS A LOVING EXPERIENCE. Let’s not be fooled!

Wow, talk about wishy washy polit­cally cor­rect­ness. Regret­fully, Oprha Wine­fry would have been in the group back in the New Tes­ta­ment that would have wanted to have Jesus killed because He was mak­ing peo­ple feel bad for their sins.
These new beleief well„simply put are evil. Plain and sim­ple. Scary stuff.

Scary is exactly what they are. I think prob­a­bly her whole series of pod­casts has come and gone at this point and hasn’t made a tremen­dous dif­fer­ence one way or the other (unless I’m miss­ing something).

But peo­ple SHOULD have rejected it out­right. Even if the the­o­log­i­cal I.Q. in Amer­ica leaves some­thing to be desired, they should have made a stink about this.

Oh well. I’ll just get myself worked up if I keep think­ing about it.

OPRAH … from spend­ing sev­eral years in Jere­miah Wright’s anti-American racist church, lis­ten­ing to ser­mons like “God Damn Amer­ica”, and giv­ing life time achieve­ment awards to the likes of Louis Far­rakhan … to her newest oppor­tunis­tic reli­gious beliefs … who could pos­si­bly take Oprah seri­ously? This woman’s ego is soooo big, being a bil­lion­aire celebrity isn’t enough, she has to start her own reli­gion … not to men­tion all the addi­tional money she is going to make sell­ing all those book, tapes, CD’s, etc. to her poor fol­low­ers. Oprah’s new power hun­gry ambi­tions include efforts to replace tra­di­tional Amer­ica with Obama … and access to a Pres­i­dent she puts into office … to her efforts at replac­ing Chris­tian­ity with a new reli­gion she con­trols. I think it’s time for Amer­ica to deny Oprah access to our tele­vi­sion sets.

I really had so much respect for Oprah but after this, i really dont respect her any­more. There’s only one true God and its def­i­nitely not Oprah. Repent Oprah or God’s judg­ment will come on you.