Solving Light Books

THE SPIRITUAL AND MORAL CONTRAST

By Robert Bowie Johnson, Jr.

Oprah Winfrey has said she will have Sarah Palin on her show after the election. I doubt that Sarah will appear on Oprah’s show then or at any other time. I don’t think Oprah is going to follow through, either. They both understand what the other represents. The spiritual contrast between them is too stark, starker than that between the sun at high noon and midnight in a dismal swamp. Sarah worships the Creator of the heavens and the earth. Oprah worships herself.

As we examine the striking exhibition of spiritual and moral unlikeness between these two women, we’ll see with crystal clarity exactly what is at stake in this election. Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, is John McCain’s running-mate. Oprah Winfrey has been called “the richest and most influential woman in the world.” Given all her support and enthusiastically reciprocated praise for Obama, Oprah may as well be his real running-mate. Michelle Obama has called Oprah an “incredible force.” Is she a force for good or a force for evil? The contrast between Oprah’s worldview and Sarah Palin’s will tell us, and by extension, we’ll find out where Barack Obama really stands.

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SARAH believes that the Scriptures (Genesis to Revelation), in the original Hebrew and Greek, are the inspired, infallible words of the Creator and that these words speak the truth to our minds, and to the eyes of our heart.
OPRAH believes that divine revelation comes through the words of her New Age guru, Eckhart Tolle, whose exclusive, esoteric, “infallible” interpretation of all spiritual traditions she avidly embraces. Oprah insists that Tolle’s words supersede the words of Christ and all of Scripture. Oprah sees herself as an “awakened” and “evolved” human being who partakes fully in the supreme “it” behind all things, “universal intelligence.” Being plugged in to this “universal intelligence” generates for Oprah “awareness,” “presence,” and “flowering consciousness,” all disguised terms for self-adoration.

SARAH believes that she was created in the image of God, and that she is descended from Adam and Eve through Noah and his wife.
OPRAH believes she evolved by chance out of some kind of primordial ooze over hundreds of millions of years through worms, reptiles, and ape-people.

SARAH relies on the word of God and the Holy Spirit to guide her into truth.
OPRAH relies on a spirit or a force Tolle calls the “Source” which he claims resides within him and Oprah. That “Source” has told him that the word of the God of the Bible is not reliable, that there is no death, and that he and Oprah both are as God, able to say of themselves “I Am That I Am.” These things that the “Source” has told Oprah and Tolle are the same things the serpent told Eve in the ancient garden.

SARAH sees herself as a sinner saved by the grace of God through the blood of Christ.
OPRAH believes that to sin means “to miss the point of human existence,” and since she believes she “gets it,” she does not sin. Oprah considers herself to be “indestructible, immortal,” a “divine presence” and a “radiant essence” for whom salvation is an irrelevant issue.

SARAH’S foundation is Jesus Christ whose coming was prophesized throughout the Old Testament, and whose résumé is quite impressive, our year 2008 referencing the number of times the earth has revolved around the sun since His birth.
OPRAH’S foundation is Eckhart Tolle whose “awareness” began at age twenty-nine during a psychotic episode that he himself describes. Tolle therein realized his “true nature as the ever-present I am,” supposing himself qualified to save the world, showing others how to get rid of “egoic delusion” by relying on the “Source.” No reporter has yet been able to trace anything firm about his life prior to his psychotic split. He took the name Eckhart from the 14th-century German mystic, Meister Eckhart. No one knows whether his last name is real or fake.

SARAH believes that her Lord and Savior is the Son of God who loves us and humbled Himself for our sakes, even to the extent of his shameful death on the cross, and that we are to model our own humility after His.
OPRAH believes that humility and self-esteem “are one and the same,” being pleased to exalt her guru to the ultimate heights, proclaiming him to be the greatest living spiritual teacher. Oprah believes that “there is no need to go elsewhere for truth,” and that Tolle’s teaching “is not derived from external sources, but from the one true Source within, so it contains no theory or speculation.”

SARAH connects to God through thanksgiving and prayer.
OPRAH believes that “anything you enjoy doing connects you to the power behind all creation,” known to her as “universal intelligence.” Oprah prays to herself: “Oh, glorious future . . . How can I be used to serve the greater calling that is my life? I surrender to that.”

SARAH exhibits faith in God, believing that God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
OPRAH mocks Christian faith, insisting that “God is a feeling experience, not a believing experience. If God for you is still about a belief, then it’s not truly God.”

SARAH, in her family and personal life, exhibits the kind of active, sacrificial love described in Scripture.
OPRAH believes that “real love doesn’t make you suffer.” To Oprah, love is something akin to a mere sensation: “To feel the presence of that One Life deep within yourself and within all creatures . . . a feeling-realization of oneness.”

SARAH is part of the body of Christ of which Jesus is the head, and in which each member, ideally, contributes his or her own gifts to the edification of all.
OPRAH is the head of a New Age “emerging tribe,” a “global community of seekers,” who look to her and Tolle for their “spiritual understanding.” Oprah and her guru imagine that they hold “the key to ending conflict and suffering throughout the world.” Oprah sees her tribe as a supremely enlightened “new species” arising on the planet that will bring “awareness” to the “still unconscious majority of the population.”

SARAH’S thinking demonstrates that God has given her a sound mind.
OPRAH’S thinking demonstrates the opposite. Her guru is a case study in the development of the mental illness of malignant narcissism. Like the original Narcissus, Tolle is obsessed with the two-dimensional reflection of his image. In his The Power of Now, Tolle writes about what he learned from viewing his own image in a mirror: “If you accept the image, no matter what it is, if you become friendly toward it, it cannot not become friendly toward you. This is how you change the world.” Here, in a nutshell, Tolle expresses the fundamental delusion and extreme grandiosity of his own malignant narcissism. A mirror image is not a true image, but a backwards one. Tolle is not the greatest spiritual teacher in the world as he imagines, but one of the least competent. Oprah welcomes Tolle’s preposterous claims with uncritical glee because they justify the adoration of her own backwards and exalted mirror image of herself. Oprah’s mind is not sound, filled as it is with shallow self-exaltation and global megalomaniacal intentions. (Tolle, Winfrey, and Obama all manifest the characteristics of malignant narcissism. For more on the subject, please see The People of the Lie by M. Scott Peck and Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited by Sam Vaknin).

SARAH believes it is her purpose to do what she can to maximize American liberty and prosperity, and to keep our country safe from foreign and domestic enemies.
OPRAH believes it is her purpose to get all of humanity to “awaken” and fall in line with “the evolutionary impulse of the universe” by promoting the anti-Christian doctrine of her pathologically narcissistic guru.

SARAH, when in doubt or difficulty, looks to the Author and Finisher of her faith, Jesus Christ.
OPRAH, when her “self-image is threatened,” looks to herself and, following Tolle’s instructions, intensifies her “awareness” of her inner “Being,” a ritual that amounts to little more than concentrated self-adoration.

SARAH is a sincere and truthful person.
OPRAH has lied from the very beginning about her worldwide anti-Christian crusade. Even as she spreads the messages that the God of the Old Testament is a mere projection of the human mind, that Jesus is not the only-begotten Son of God, and that her guru is superior in intelligence and wisdom to Christ, she claims to be a Christian. In response to questions from concerned Christians in her audience, Oprah responds disingenuously that Tolle often quotes Jesus. What she does not say is that the quotes are always crudely yanked out of context, always in contradiction to the clear sense of the passage, and always reframed to back up Tolle’s perverted teaching. Where do these lies come from? According to Oprah’s own doctrine, they must come from that same “Source” which tells her that the word of God is not valid, that she will not surely die, and that she may say of herself “I Am That I Am.”

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So then, there is indeed a gaping spiritual and moral chasm between the worldviews of Sarah Palin and Oprah Winfrey. Barack Obama has firmly planted his feet on Oprah’s side of that chasm, his life and beliefs intricately and inextricably involved with hers. Obama has called Oprah “a wonderful person” and “my girl.” Obama’s wife referred to Oprah as a woman “who empowers us all” and who “touches the souls of so many of us.”

Mrs. Obama has written that “Oprah is a wonderful friend . . . Her friendship and support have meant so much to Barack and me . . . Using her platform to serve as a global role model, she challenges us [Barack and me] to make the world as it is, the world as it should be. And she is always the first to show us how it can be done.”

The idea of a president who would look to a talk-show host as his “global role model” who in turn looks for guidance to a pathological narcissist with an extremely sketchy past, reveling in his latest “incarnation as a spiritual teacher,” frightens me, as it should frighten you, whether republican, democrat, or independent.

Oprah has said that Obama has “the gift of wisdom” and a “tongue dipped in unvarnished truth.” Thus, Oprah puts Obama in the same inflated, fanciful category as she puts her mentally deranged, grandiose guru. Oprah has said that Obama not only tells the truth but knows how “to be the truth,” a straightforward messianic reference.

Oprah has referred to her endorsement of Obama as “very, very personal,” calling him “brilliant,” “my favorite guy,” “my choice,” an “evolved leader,” and “the one.” Oprah has said that “my own truth . . . has led me to Barack Obama.” We’ve seen above just what Oprah’s “own truth” is: her subjective feelings linked in some obtuse way to a divine inner “Source” whose welcomed proclamations precisely match those of the Genesis serpent.

Obama claims to be a “committed Christian.” In contradiction to his assertion, we may legitimately infer from the above that it would not have been possible for Oprah to endorse Obama for president if he were a bona fide Christian; that is, a member of the body of Christ. By Oprah’s own boast, the expansion of her anti-Christian tribe is the most important thing in her life, and as Christians and Christianity are the foremost obstacles to the spread of her doctrine, she would never, she could never, endorse a Christian, someone who actually believes the word of God. Oprah needs someone who approves of, and is willing to go along with, her grandiose plans to bring her brand of “consciousness” and “awakening” to an “unconscious” world, not someone who would balk at the flagrant and delusional megalomania of it. Oprah could only be attracted to someone who also entertains grandiose global delusions.

Oprah endorsed Obama because she knows how much like her he is. And that’s why Obama’s connection to Oprah, and their moral and spiritual contrast to Sarah Palin and John McCain, ought to be continuously explored and questioned on blogs and in newspapers, and discussed on talk radio every day until this election is over.

Mr. Johnson, a West Point grad and an airborne ranger infantry veteran of Viet Nam, is the author of “The Parthenon Code: Mankind’s History in Marble” and “Noah in Ancient Greek Art.” His Web sites are www.welfaregame.com and www.solvinglight.com, where you can find more details on the Obama/Oprah connection.