Thursday, May 07, 2009

The Secret vs. Christianity Pt 2: You Are God

On page 164, Byrne writes:

“You are God manifested in human form, made to perfection...You are God in a physical body. You are Spirit in the flesh. You are Eternal Life expressing itself as You. You are a cosmic being. You are all power. You are all wisdom. You are all intelligence. You are perfection. You are magnificence. You are the creator.”


I alluded to this earlier. Since you are in the universe, and since (according to Byrne) the universe is God, then it follows that you, actually, are God. So, the question is, is this teaching compatible with what Christianity teaches?

Again, we need only go as far as the twenty-sixth verse of the first chapter of Genesis to see a conflict:

Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."


Once again we have a conflict. God created man. In the same way that God cannot be the universe if God created the universe, God cannot be man if God created man. God must be something distinct from man and man must be something distinct from God.

Now I can see where someone might get hung up on the part about making man "in God's image", but it's not hard to understand what is meant by this. The word "image" here is from a Hebrew word which means "likeness". It doesn't mean that man is an exact duplicate of God. It merely means that man has attributes which are similar to God's, or that correspond to God's attributes in some way.

Let's see what other conflicts we can find:

Romans 5:6 says men are "ungodly":

“For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.”


Jeremiah 17:9 says men are desperately wicked: (far from perfection, I'd say)

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.”


Mark 7:21-23 says that man is full of evil. Again, not exactly "perfection".

“For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a man.”


4. 1 Corinthians 2:14 says that man cannot know spiritual things without God’s help:

“But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”


And Numbers 23:19 makes it all too clear:

“God is not a man.”


So, here we have a second fundamental conflict between what is taught in "The Secret" and what is taught in the Bible. And notice once again, you don't have to accept either book as true in order to see the conflict. One book teaches that you are God, the other book teaches that you are not God. No compatibility.

As for the other question, I still think it's a bit premature to accuse Byrne of intentional deception here, but I must admit it's getting more difficult to give her the benefit of the doubt. At this point, I'm really just trying to be charitable.

Let's see what's next, though…

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