Not-So-Secret Problems With 'The Secret'.

RELIGION IN THE NEWS

Now, Religion in the News, a report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media.This week’s item is from the New York Times, April 26, 2008, with a headline:“Legal Tussles Among Creators of The Secret.”The following are excerpts:The Secret does seem to have brought happiness to some of those involved in the creation of The Secret, but perhaps high priced lawyers will help.This popular straight to video movie and the best self-help book based on it, promised adherence to its philosophy will receive unlimited happiness, love, help and prosperity.According to the official website, thesecret.tv. all they need to do is follow the Law of Attraction, an ancient principle that holds that the universe will make your wishes come true if only you really, truly believe in them.Following that creed before the movie’s release in 2006, Rhonda Burn, the project’s creator, held parties celebrating its success envisioning world-wide acclaim.Nasty legal squabbling is most likely what Ms. Burn wished for, but it has nevertheless come to her.The director of the movie and the developer of The Secret website are separately claiming she has reneged on promises of a cut of the project’s profits.On Monday, the movie’s director, Drew Harriet filed a copyright suit in United States District Court for the Northern district of Illinois Eastern division against Ms. Burn and her production company.The suit claims that Mr. Harriet is the co-author of the screen play and the book and is therefore entitled to up to half of what his lawyers estimate as three hundred million dollars in Secret revenue.The battle over proceeds seems a far cry from the munificent spirit Ms. Burn espoused as her movie was first entering the self-help pantheon.In an interview in February 2007, she recalled how she had mortgaged everything she owned to finance the movie because she wanted to give the knowledge it contained to the world.Success was never about profit she said, but about the journey of discovering what she was intended to do with her life.One of the big things in discovering The Secret she said, was discovering me.

Tom:

Dave, as you know, and we worked on it for a number of months and maybe some of our viewers or listeners that don’t know we produced a DVD addressing The Secret, using, you know, much of their content so that we could say, this is what they are saying, and then we analyzed it, we critiqued and so on.And the conclusion was, this is worse than the theater of the absurd.The claims that they make, number one, is not fulfilled in their lives.Oh yeah, they’ve made money, there isn’t any doubt about that, but they’ve made money because they sold a bill of goods incredibly, irrational, illogical and they couldn’t substantiate anything that they said.

Dave:

Let me give a quick example, Tom, I don’t want to interrupt your thought here.Look, “the universe will give you anything you want.”The universe doesn’t know anything, the universe is inanimate, but anyway, let’s say it will.Now, this is a simple illustration:We’ve got a company here, let’s say Tom’s the VP and I’m the CFO, chief financial officer, and we’d each like to be sitting in the president’s chair right now, quick!Well, but the auto mechanic who works on the limo that chauffeurs the president around, he’d like to be in the president’s chair, so would a whole lot of other people in this company.They’ve all been following The Secret, they’ve got the DVD, and they’re convinced that the universe will give them the president’s chair!Now who is going to get the president’s chair?I mean, we’ve got the universe really confused now.It is absurd!

Tom:

Well, Dave, it’s worse than that, as we mentioned, when they move into the area of healing.We’ve seen this in the positive confession of the prosperity gospel that’s been a part of modern Christianity for decades.It puts people in a position in which they may not go and get the help that they need, because No, they have to have the faith, or they have to believe, or they don’t want to give a negative confession because the great mind, or the power of the universe somehow is going to be affected by a negative thought, and they are going to get the bad results that they don’t want.Now Dave, on the other hand, what makes me angry about this, and startled to some degree, Christians are getting involved in this.As you know, the people of The Secret, they appeal to the Bible, and they are saying, Oh, all the great teachers of the world, Jesus and so forth, they knew The Secret, they understood The Secret, and so on.Now, just the other day I was going through the Scriptures and I was reading—Jesus is on the cross now, well, how did that happen?It certainly wasn’t a positive confession there, but then He cries out from the cross, My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken Me?A fulfillment of prophecy, right?Now, that seems to me to be a very negative statement, and certainly not consistent with what they teach in The Secret.

Dave:

Well, Tom, I can’t recall now the names of all of these people who were some of the great—Emerson, and so forth—

Tom:

Edison, you go down the line, Lincoln.

Dave:

Right.Well, go back and look at some of them.Some of them died in the 50’s.I think, was it Waddles?I don’t remember his exact name, but anyway, he had his big book coming out, and he died one year after the book came out.Now surely he would have wanted to live longer, to gain more of the revenue from that book, and to be there to get the praise, and so forth.What comes to all of them, the Bible says:“It is appointed unto man once to die and after this the judgment…”I guarantee you it’s not going to be the universe that gives you anything you want, that will judge you, it’s going to be the God who created the universe!

Tom:

You know, again Dave, we produced a DVD addressing this because it’s a fraud, it’s a major fraud.

Dave:

Well, who was it backed by? Ophra and by Larry King.

Tom:

Well, he gave them an opportunity to present the material.But my concern is that those who have Christian friends who are getting into this who don’t understand how fraudulent it is, I would recommend picking up the DVD in which we go through it almost frame by frame, and give you the biblical perspective.