New Book Says There is More to 'The Secret'
A best-selling book and documentary about success, titled The Secret, has been seeing large growth since its release in late 2006, but a Christian author is saying that it lacks the most important aspect to achievement - God.
Author and pastor Ed Gungor critiques the new "Secret" craze in his book There is More to the Secret, which released two weeks ago. In it, he explains the positive attributes that the theory teaches, but how its removal of God leads to a dangerous path.
"The Secret contains some very helpful information and gives us a life-transforming glance at an ancient truth," explained Gungor, in a statement. "But there is more to be told than Ms. Byrne (the author) and her team have revealed. In fact, without a deeper look into the 'more' I speak of, I fear heartache may outweigh what help has been realized in people's lives."
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The Secret, written by Rhonda Byrne, is based off the principal of the law of attraction - that everything coming into your life is based off what you have been attracting. In her book and documentary, Byrne explains that anybody can get everything they want just by focusing their mind on gratitude, good emotions, and visualization.
"It has been passed throughout the ages, traveling through centuries … to reach you and humankind," explains The Secret website. "This is The Secret to everything – the secret to unlimited joy, health, money, relationships, love, youth: everything you have ever wanted."
While the theory does teach about many of the same positive values taught in the Bible, it clearly opposes a belief in God. This, as Gungor expressed in his new book, is a big problem.
There is power from the mind and people do often become what they think about, but it is incomplete if one does not acknowledge the role that God plays in our everyday lives, according to the Christian author.
Rather than simply tearing down Byrne's arguments, however, Gungor took the beneficial values offered in her book and looked at them from a Christian perspective. He also offers logical questions that cannot be answered by the "attraction" theory.
"Do people really 'attract' car wrecks and other disasters?" questioned the pastor and writer.
Gungor tries to address that there is a spiritual thirst inside of people that is leading them to read The Secret, and he encourages his audience to hold onto that. It is also beneficial to wake up in the morning and have a positive attitude much like the book urges.
But he does insist that people cannot turn themselves into their own god and that the world does not revolve around them. He wants to help those misguided individuals who just need some direction.
"The apostle Paul taught us that the new-age representation of 'individual as God' is a dangerous contention," concluded a description of the book by the author on the Thomas Nelson, Inc. website.
