Conversations with my Selfby Brian Flynn
In the last couple years there have been an unusually high number of movies that have an obvious and clear New Age message. Indigo Children and Bee Season are two of those along with more recent releases such as Peaceful Warrior. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Now, soon to be released (October), is Conversations With God, based on the very popular book series by New Age writer Neale Donald Walsch.
Neale Donald Walsch, who wrote Conversations With God, is considered one of the most prominent people in today's New Age spirituality. His book took shape when Walsch became frustrated with his life after four failed marriages, and he decided to write a letter to God. He picked up a yellow legal pad and began to pour out his frustrations. He wrote:
What have I done to deserve a life of such continuing struggle? To my surprise, as I scribbled out the last of my bitter, unanswerable questions and prepared to toss my pen aside, my hand remained poised over the paper, as if held there by some invisible force. Abruptly, the pen began moving on its own. I had no idea what I was about to write, but an idea seemed to be coming, so I decided to flow with it. Out came...
Do you really want answers to all these questions, or are you just venting?
Thus begins Walsch's conversations with God, and we get to read what God says....
Let's take a look at some of these conversations Neale has had with God. In this particular conversation, Neale is discussing right from wrong with God:
Walsch: But those who have taught me all about the rights and wrongs, the dos and don'ts, the shoulds and shouldn'ts, told me all those rules were laid down by You-by God.
God: Then those who taught you were wrong. I have never set down a "right" or "wrong," a "do" or a "don't." To do so would be to strip you completely of your greatest gift-the opportunity to do as you please, and experience the results of that.... To say something-a thought, a word, an action-is "wrong" would be as much as to tell you not to do it.... To prohibit you would be to restrict you. To restrict you would be to deny the reality of Who You Really Are.
This kind of talk is sweet music to the moral relativist who loves to hear and believe people are Divine and are thus God. Walsch later asks God about good and evil only to get the following response:
God: Evil is that which you call evil. Yet even that I love, for it is only through that which you call evil that you can know good; only through that which you call the work of the devil that you can know and do the work of God. I do not love hot more than I do cold, high more than low, left more than right. It is all relative. It is all part of what is. I do not love "good" more than I love "bad." Hitler went to heaven. When you understand this, you will understand God.
Let's examine what God is saying. God's plan is to allow you to do as you please even if it harms others. One of the few behaviors left in our society that makes even New Agers recoil is pedophilia, so let's use that as the example. Is it therefore God's plan to allow us to harm children to teach us to know what good is? God doesn't love the good of protecting children from a pedophile more than the bad of allowing it to happen? Neale's God is sick.
And what was that he said about Hitler? He's going to Heaven too? Why does Walsch's God write this? Is it to convince us Hell or punishment do not exist-that we can do no wrong in the eyes of God? We can do anything we want without consequences or guilt; in which case we do not need to ask for forgiveness and therefore certainly have no need for the Cross of Jesus Christ. This is the freedom man has longed for-to be autonomous, to be God. The declaration in Walsch's first book that Hitler too will go to Heaven must have caused a stir, even for New Agers, for in his second book, he clarifies:
God: Hitler went to heaven for these reasons: There is no hell, so there is no place else for him to go. His actions were what you call mistakes-the actions of an unevolved being-and mistakes are not punishable by condemnation, but dealt with by providing the chance for correction, for evolution. The mistakes Hitler made did no harm or damage to those whose deaths he caused. Those souls were released from their earthly bondage, like butterflies emerging from a cocoon.
He did no harm or damage by the deaths he caused? The families of the millions he killed never wept a tear? The children of parents who died in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Auschwitz never experienced loss? The wives that survived their husbands' murders and torture never experienced pain? In this next exchange God describes the way in which to know what truth is and how to make all of life's decisions:
God: You cannot know God until you've stopped telling yourself that you already know God. You cannot hear God until you stop thinking that you've already heard God. I cannot tell you my Truth until you stop telling Me yours.
Walsch: But my truth about God comes from You.
God: Who said so?
Walsch: Leaders. Ministers. Rabbis. Priests. Books. The Bible, for heaven's sake!
God: Those are not authoritative sources. Walsch: They aren't?
God: No.
Walsch: Then what is?
God: Listen to your feelings. Listen to your Highest Thoughts. Listen to your experience. Whenever any one of these differ from what you have been told by your teachers, or read in your books, forget the words. Words are the least reliable purveyor of Truth.
Whenever you are told something different by teachers or what you have read in books, ignore them and do as you wish. I feel it, therefore it is right. I wonder if Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold who committed the murders at Columbine High School took this same type of advice.
It would seem that Walsch's God allows you to do anything you please, but no, wait a minute:
God: If you ever lit a cigarette in your life-much less smoked a pack a day for 20 years as you have-you have very little will to live. You don't care what you do to your body.
Walsch: But I stopped smoking over 10 years ago!
God: Only after 20 years of grueling physical punishment. And if you've ever taken alcohol into your body, you have very little will to live.
Walsch: I drink very moderately.
God: The body was not meant to intake alcohol. It impairs the mind.
Now all of a sudden God is upset with a choice. It is okay for Hitler to kill millions of people but not okay for Neale Donald Walsch to smoke or drink?
Walsch: But Jesus took alcohol! He went to the wedding and turned water into wine!
God: So who said Jesus was perfect?
It seems that God is now contradicting Himself. If he was the true God, wouldn't you expect him to be consistent? Unchanging? He allows you to do what you please, but if you drink or smoke, that is ... wrong? I thought no rights or wrongs existed!
Is Walsch's God a God of love? If you can remember back to the time when you were a teenager and your parents had control over you, I'm sure there were times when you wished they didn't. If only they would allow you to do as you please.
Isn't one of the expressions of love a parent shows his or her child that of setting boundaries? Telling them right from wrong? Restricting them? I'm sure you felt as a teenager that discipline wasn't fun, but now as an adult and as a parent you realize it was an expression of love and caring.
Walsch's God doesn't care. Does he meet the standard of the New Age as a God of love? No, he is a God of indifference:
God: You are living your life the way you are living your life, and I have no preference in the matter. This is the grand illusion in which you have engaged: that God cares one way or the other what you do. I do not care what you do, and that is hard for you to hear.
If there is one thing we want God to tell us, it is that we can do anything we want when it comes to sex. Walsch's God delivers:
God: Put away your pointless taboos and restrictions upon sexual energy-rather, help others to truly understand its wonder, and to channel it properly.
God: But ... may sex be used for purposes of simple personal gratification? The surprising answer is yes-because "personal gratification" is another word for Self Love.
Does God mean that the sex as described above is to be contained within the confines of marriage? According to Walsch's latest book, apparently not:
My most romantic moments, by the way, were moments when I chose not to withhold anything.... I recall meeting a woman years ago at a party and looked right at her and said, "I want to go to bed with you. Sorry I have put it that way, but I only have about 5 minutes here." And she said, "I wouldn't mind doing that with you, either." And that was the most exciting weekend either of us had ever had ... We asked ourselves at the end of that weekend: Why can't we just do this all the time? By the way, we have never seen each other again since and we knew that we probably wouldn't.
I think these last two conversations between Neale Donald Walsch and God sum it all up:
Walsch: I've searched the path to God all my life.
God: I know you have.
Walsch: [A]nd now I've found it, and I can't believe it. It feels like I'm sitting here, writing this to myself.
God: You are.
God: Come to Me along the path of your heart, not through a journey of your mind. You will never find Me in your mind. In order to truly know God, you have to be out of your mind.
In order to know Walsch's God I couldn't agree more. Include this on your list of movies to avoid this fall.
For more on the New Age and it's infiltration into Christendom, read Running Against the Wind.