The Secret
It’s a beautiful day.
I’m sitting on my deck reading Ephesians in the New Living Translation.
My eye fall upon these words:
“God’s secret plan has now been revealed to us; it is a plan centered on Christ.” (Eph. 1:9)
I pause for just a moment with this thought floating in my head:
God’s secret plan.
Just that moment Peri comes out on the deck and hands me an article in Newsweek.
“Decoding The Secret”
Spooky.
The Newsweek article was about the mega-bestseller book, The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne.
The article begins like this:
Oprah lives by it. Millions are reading it. The latest self-help sensation claims we can change our lives by thinking.
The book is basically a mishmash of pantheism, pseudo-science and the-power-of-positive-thinking. The latest in a long line of “the secret of success” books dating back seventy years to Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich!. This one is written by a savy Australian TV talk show producer. Whatever.
The “secret” of The Secret is what Byrne calls “the law of attraction,” which holds that you create your own reality through your thoughts. Deepak Chopra meets Norman Vincent Peale. Byrne goes on to back up the law of attraction with her “understanding” of quantum physics.
And this could be the best line in the whole book:
The discoveries of quantum physics are in total harmony with the teachings of The Secret. I never studied science or physics in school, and yet when I read complex books on quantum physics I understood them perfectly because I wanted to understand them.
That’s funnier than a Dilbert cartoon!
Anyway, Rhonda Byrne says she got The Secret.
From the back of the book:
You hold in your hand a Great Secret. It has been passed down through the ages, highly coveted, hidden, lost, stolen, and bought for vast sums of money. This centuries-hold Secret has been understood by some of the most prominent people in history: Plato, Galileo, Beethoven, Edison, Carnegie, Einstein [who had a hard time understanding quantum physics and it’s just a darn shame he didn’t have a TV producer to explain it to him.] — along with inventors, theologians, scientists, and great thinkers. Now The Secret is revealed to the world.
Wow!
Interestingly, the Apostle Paul made a similar claim when he said, “God’s secret plan has now been revealed to us; it is a plan centered on Christ.”
Paul says the secret is centered on Christ.
I wondered what The Secret had to say about Christ.
So I did an Amazon Online Reader search for “Christ” in The Secret.
This is what I got: Click here.
No reference to Christ
Well, that about sums it up.
No reference to Christ.
To be fair there is one reference to Jesus. From page 107:
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and Jesus were not only prosperity teachers, but also millionaires themselves, with more affluent lifestyles than many present-day millionaires could conceive of.
I suspect Byrne’s grasp of the Bible somewhat approximates her grasp of quantum physics.
OK, enough of poking fun at Rhonda Byrne’s silly book.
What is The Secret?
The secret is the New Humanity in Christ.
From Ephesians Chapters 2:
(Keep in mind the you’s are all plural.)
And you were dead in your trespasses and sins…like the rest of mankind. Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man[kind].
And from Ephesians chapter 3:
As I mentioned earlier in this letter, the secret plan was made known to me by revelation. This is the secret plan: That the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus. I was chosen to explain to everyone this plan that God had kept secret from the beginning. God’s purpose was to show his manifold wisdom to the principalities and powers in the the heavenly realms. They will see this when Jews and Gentiles are joined together in his church.
The secret is…
The New Humanity.
The New Mankind.
The New Creation.
The New Covenant.
The New Community.
The New Kingdom.
The New Body.
The New Israel.
Jews and Gentiles together living the new way of being human.
Check out Galatians 6:15-16 in two translations:
For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. And for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God. (ESV)
It doesn’t make any difference now whether you have been circumcised or not. What counts is whether we really have changed into new and different people. May God’s mercy and peace be upon all those who live by this principle. They are the new people of God. (NLT)
The New Israel is the New Humanity.
The New Mankind in Christ.
The secret is…
The Christian life is not primarily about where you go when die–
But about the new way of living…now and forever.
THIS IS THE SECRET:
Christianity is an entirely new way of being human.
-Maximus the Confessor
Christianity is not about religion–
It’s about humanity, and making it as God intended it to be.
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The glory of God is a human being fulling alive.
-Irenaeus
The Secret
Christ is forming a new people
Who will live life in a new way
They will be the beautiful people
Living beautiful lives
They bring the beauty of salvation
To a world lost in ugliness
All who put their faith in Christ
As the Way the Truth and the Life
And learn to follow his beautiful life
Will be part of the new humanity.
That’s the secret.
Can you keep a secret?
I hope not.
It’s a beautiful Day.
BZ
PS
The song I’m hearing right now:
Beautiful Day
U2The heart is a bloom
Shoots up through the stony ground
There’s no room
No space to rent in this townYou’re out of luck
And the reason that you had to care
The traffic is stuck
And you’re not moving anywhereYou thought you’d found a friend
To take you out of this place
Someone you could lend a hand
In return for graceIt’s a beautiful day
Sky falls, you feel like
It’s a beautiful day
Don’t let it get awayYou’re on the road
But you’ve got no destination
You’re in the mud
In the maze of her imaginationYou love this town
Even if that doesn’t ring true
You’ve been all over
And it’s been all over youIt’s a beautiful day
Don’t let it get away
It’s a beautiful dayTouch me
Take me to that other place
Teach me
I know I’m not a hopeless caseSee the world in green and blue
See China right in front of you
See the canyons broken by cloud
See the tuna fleets clearing the sea out
See the Bedouin fires at night
See the oil fields at first light
And see the bird with a leaf in her mouth
After the flood all the colors came outIt was a beautiful day
Don’t let it get away
Beautiful dayTouch me
Take me to that other place
Reach me
I know I’m not a hopeless caseWhat you don’t have you don’t need it now
What you don’t know you can feel it somehow
What you don’t have you don’t need it now
Don’t need it now
Was a beautiful day