As I continue to read A New Earth, a book being promoted daily by Oprah as a life-changing experience, I am amazed at how the author loves to quote Jesus periodically right along with Buddha and other ancient philosophers. He seems to treat Jesus as if he were a man who had some good deep thoughts but who was not quite understood in His time. The author even states at one point that the teachings of Jesus as well as Buddha and others “like them” were “largely misunderstood and often greatly distorted.” He goes on to say they “certainly did not transform human behavior except in a small minority of people.” WOW! This is scary stuff. Scary if you do not have a firm foundation in God’s Word.
Jesus could not be a “rare and precious being” as stated by the author if He claimed to be the Son of God and really wasn’t. He would simply be either a liar or insane. There is no way to take Jesus half way. You either accept His Words as true – totally or not at all. If you do not accept that He is the Son of God and the Savior of this world than you cannot take His teachings and apply them to your life. Who would embrace the teachings of someone who was crazy or lying? Noone! So how can the author of this book refer to teachings of Jesus as foundations of his philosophies without accepting that Jesus was so much more than a wise teacher? How can he lump Jesus’ teachings into a list with those of Hinduism or Buddhism?
I am about halfway through Mr. Tolle’s book, and I have to say that so far I have not seen any proclamations about Jesus being anything more than a great teacher. Mr. Tolle does refer to God from time to time, although He does not credit God with the creation of the world as He tells the story of the beginning of our planet. I am still not sure how he fits God into his belief system.
The scariest part of this book is that the author tosses in a Bible verse often enough to keep you hanging and hoping that somehow he is going to proclaim the Bible as something more than a “good book” with some “good ideas.”
If you are reading A New Earth, PLEASE be a deep thinker!