MH writes: “Besides praying for the Holy Ghost to enlighten my friend’s mind, on Oprah’s Life Classes, do you have any suggestions as to what to say about them not being Christian? I’ve been to her site where she has New Age speakers, and know about Oprah, from reading your excellent article on her under New Age. Any explanations or other good information on these classes would be very helpful.”
Oprah’s Life Classes are totally focused on the self, which is a hallmark of the New Age movement. They are mostly motivational but are riddled with the idea that we are all in control of our destiny, something that is very much a part of the Human Potential Movement.
Here are a few examples from a blog by a woman named Lori Deschene who attended a webcast of the classes:
I know I am a product of what I believe to be true. I know I hold the power… all the power to change when I want to.
Changing your thoughts can change your life!
The energy you put out is the energy you get back.
I am the only one powerful enough to stop me and the only one powerful enough to set me free.
The energy we attract is what we subconsciously feel we deserve.
These lessons are intermingled with others such as “It’s easy to give up on yourself” and “Failure is the path to success.”
These all sound well and good – until you understand what the Human Potential Movement is all about and why it is so subtly deceptive.
The Movement derives from the New Thought Movement of the 19th Century which basically taught that “Whatever the mind can conceive, a person can achieve.”
Evidence of this is everywhere in Oprah’s work and in some of the New Age gurus she has hosted, such as Wayne Dyer who writes in his book, Power of Intention, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” Tony Robbins claims “We can change our lives. We can do, have, and be exactly what we wish.”
In other words, if you think the right way, the right thing will happen to you. Statements such as these make the mind into a “god”. It’s not God’s will that determines the outcome of our life, it’s what the mind does or doesn’t do. This is crediting the mind with a power it doesn’t have. This is a classic example of New Age thinking – which is founded in a humanistic psychology that always glorifies the self.
Oprah’s message is thoroughly riddled with New Age thinking and a mish-mosh of beliefs taken from other religious denominations. Her Life Lessons appear to be more of the same.
