Albert Mohler, of the The Albert Mohler Radio Program, is really, really mad about the huge success of Rhonda Byrne's book, The Secret. "We should be very concerned to live in a country in which so many citizens evidently want to be told that they, individually, are the very center of the universe. The Secret is just the latest form of American esoteric positive thinking run amok. [...] Can anyone actually believe this stuff?"
The "secret," so far as I can tell, is the "Law of Attraction," which holds that positive thoughts attract the things you want. Yes, your brain is a sort of cosmic transmitter, and if you just send out happy messages then all the goodness in the cold, dark reaches of space will naturally gravitate toward you, just as a moth is drawn toward a light - or something like that.
Mohler's self-help schtick, which he peddles with a perfectly straight face, goes as follows:
- Two-hundred generations ago a man and a woman ate a bad piece of fruit, which is why...
- The world is imperfect, and you're no good, but...
- Seventy generations ago the Creator of the Whole Big Universe sent His son to die horribly as a blood sacrifice in payment for the sins of 130-generations earlier, and all subsequent generations, and...
- If you will only submit passively to whatever degradation life hands you, and tithe, Albert Mohler will console you with lurid promises of punishment for your tormentors in the next life.
Both sound loopy as all get-out to me, but Byrne's book only costs $14.37 at Amazon, and she doesn't want to run your life, the world, or even the Republican Party. She wants only to get rich and appears to be doing just fine, thank you, without expensive seminaries or choruses of theologians. She would probably say it's working. You can see why Albert is so irritated.
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