Other Scriptural passages:
Deuteronomy 30:9-14
Colossians 1:1-14
Luke 10:25-37
Psalm 25 or 25:3-9
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Amen. (Psalm 19:14)
One of my favorite television programs when I was a child was “I’ve Got a Secret.” This was back in the stone age of television, when changing the channel meant getting off the couch, walking over to the television and twisting a knob with only 12 numbers on it, 2 through 13. Only three of those numbers carried a signal, since there were only three broadcast networks.
CBS first aired “I’ve Got a Secret” in 1952, and it was a big hit. The format was simple: a contestant with a secret was brought out and seated next to the moderator, and a panel of four celebrities took turns asking questions to try to figure out the person’s secret. The contestant received a small cash award if the panel couldn’t guess his or her secret.
Probably the best secret in the show’s history aired in 1955 when a 95-year old man came out and the audience saw his secret: He was the last survivor of the audience that was present at Ford’s Theater the night President Abraham Lincoln was shot.
He said the only thing he could remember was seeing John Wilkes Booth grab hold of an American flag and crash to the stage. The contestant was five years old when that happened. He didn’t know who Booth was but had a vivid memory of him falling unto the stage. It was a powerful moment in early television history. And his secret was first-hand knowledge of something other people had merely heard about.
We like finding out secrets. I believe that psychologically we think that if something is a secret, it must be good information because only a select few know about it.
And if we can wheedle ourselves into that select group, we’ll have knowledge that others don’t and be ahead of the rest of our competition in the rat race.
The Gnostics had a similar view in the early history of the Christian Church. They believed that salvation came from a special, secret, magical knowledge; that all material things, including our physical bodies and all of creation, are evil; and that only the spirit is good. Thus, since our bodies are already evil, anything you choose to do with your body is OK, since you’re not able to make it any worse. So sin is not an issue.
Life as a Gnostic, which means one who knows, is the most pessimistic existence in all theology. Life is a mad rush to free oneself from this corrupt universe, and if we only knew the correct words, we could undo the cursed spell of our existence.
That mindset has resurfaced recently, with a plethora of books discussing the so-called “Lost Gospels,” such as the Gospel of Peter or the Gospel of Thomas.
The truth is these “Lost Gospels” were neither lost nor Gospels. They were written by people other than those claimed in the titles, many years after the supposed authors’ deaths, and contradict many of Christ’s teachings. They were recognized by the early church as forgeries and false doctrine and were not lost, they were discarded and never considered truth.
Copies of them have existed since the first century, and have been reprinted many times since then. They have never been “lost.” But they have been thrown out many times.
No one walks into their kitchen and says, “Honey, our garbage from last night is lost.” We throw it away because it’s worthless. And no one goes out to the San Diego landfill searching for the lost garbage of Pastor Austin. Theologically, the Gnostic “Gospels” are every bit as worthless as anything else we throw out.
I know it sounds harsh, but listen to what the Apostle Paul had to say about the false Gospels that were surfacing in the first century. In his letter to the church in Galatia (1:6-9) he writes:
"I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel — which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let that person be under God’s curse! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let that person be under God’s curse!"
And in his first letter to Timothy (6:20-21), to whom he was turning over his ministry upon his execution, he writes,
"Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to your care. Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed and in so doing have departed from the faith."
The Greek term Paul uses for knowledge is "gnosis," from which Gnostic comes. He was referring to Gnostic claims, and telling Timothy that even though their name means “the ones who know,” even their name is false.
As the old saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same. So today, 20 centuries later, we’re still looking for secret knowledge to set us apart from everyone else. We suck up the myth that knowing some secret will bring us success. A quick search of book titles with the word “secret” on Amazon.com results in 439,900 hits, including:
• Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth
• The Secret: What Great Leaders Know - And Do
• Secrets of Longevity: Hundreds of Ways to Live to Be 100
• Secrets of Power Negotiating
• Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun
• Success Secrets of Super Achievers
• The Secret of Success
• 10 Secrets of Success and Inner Peace
• Applying the 10 Secrets of Success and Inner Peace
The latest “Secret” book is actually called, The Secret. In a nutshell, the “secret” is a universal “Law of Attraction” that philosophers and successful people have discovered over the centuries, and that will bring you everything you want in life: good health, riches, success, whatever you want.
The downside is that everything you want, as well as everything you don’t want, is attracted by your thoughts. Thus our poor victim in today’s Gospel, robbed, beaten, and left on the side of the road to die, brought it on himself.
Likewise with the slaughter of the Jews by the Nazis during the Holocaust, and the hundreds of thousands of Rwandans slaughtered by their fellow countrymen in 1994, and even the current slaughter of innocents in the Sudan. According to the “Secret,” they all brought it on themselves.
That’s not just my interpretation of what the book says. Dr. Joe Vitale is one of the contributing authors of the book. During an interview about the book on Larry King Live, King asked him whether Jessica Lunsford, a nine-year old Florida girl who was brutally raped and murdered, attracted this horror to herself. Vitale’s response was, “We are attracting everything to ourselves and there is no exception.”
The authors try to add historic legitimacy to their drivel. They claim the secret is found in the writings of Socrates and others. Apparently they never checked their sources, because we have no writings of Socrates. We know of Socrates only by the references to him made by Plato in his writings.
They also misquote the Bible. For example, contributing author James Arthur Ray asks, “Do you treat yourself the way that you want other people to treat you?” The Golden Rule is actually that we should treat others as we would like them to treat us. They have twisted a command to show true generosity and selflessness toward others into a selfish, self-centered, “what’s in it for me” approach toward life, while passing it off as God’s command for us.
The Secret also has no time limits. When you bring your clothes to the cleaners, you’re told when they’ll be ready, whether it’s Tuesday, tomorrow, or in a few hours, there’s some kind of deadline. The “Law of Attraction” has no time constraints, so the authors can claim that two weeks after you stopped believing in this nonsense the universe was ready to have you win the lottery, but your negative thoughts caused it to not happen.
Knowing that very few physicists will actually read this sort of book, the authors claim a scientific basis through quantum physics, stating that thoughts become things.
Yet the real secret to abundant living is not a secret. It’s not putting faith in our own power to fulfill our earthly desires for more stuff. Rather, it’s learning to live according to the real Gospel of Christ, storing up “treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Matthew 6:20).
What The Secret really reveals is how self-centered we’ve become. Many popular preachers these days preach a Gospel of Prosperity, a Gospel that promises wealth, health, and happiness if you devote your self to God. It’s a nice message, something we all want to hear, and maybe that’s why they’re such popular preachers. The truth is that if you decide to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ, to truly follow in his footsteps, the prosperity of this world may never happen for you.
Our purpose in this life is to please God, not to gain as much stuff as we can. A prayer from the book, 31 Days of Praise, by Ruth and Warren Myers begins with,
“Lord, I’m yours. Whatever the cost may be, may Your will be done in my life. I realize I’m not here on earth to do my own thing, or to seek my own fulfillment or my own glory. I’m not here to indulge my desires, to increase my possessions, to impress people, to be popular, to prove I’m somebody important, or to promote myself. I’m not here to be relevant or successful by human standards. I’m here to please you. …”
It almost sounds like this book was written in response to The Secret, doesn’t it? It wasn’t though. This prayer was published in May 2005, a full year-and-a-half before The Secret went to press.
Race car driver Bill Vukovich won the famous Indianapolis 500 race in 1953 and 1954, a level of success that few other drivers had matched. When he was asked the secret of his success in Indianapolis, Vukovich replied, “There’s no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and steer left.”
Likewise with following Christ. There’s no secret. He sent apostles and all of us since then to make disciple in all the nations, preaching, teaching, and baptizing them. He promises us joy in his heavenly kingdom, but never says it will be easy for us here on earth.
In fact, he tells us it will probably be very rough. He tells us that families will be torn apart because of belief in him, that we’ll be persecuted and hated because of him. And so far, he’s been right.
Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 11 (23-28):
"I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches."
Not exactly upward mobility, is it? And this was a guy hand-picked by Jesus to bring the Gospel to the Gentiles.
The other Apostles didn’t fare very well either. All lived in persecution, and all except John died violent deaths as martyrs. According to Eusebius, who wrote about Church History in A.D. 325:
• Matthew was killed by a sword in Ethiopia.
• Mark died in Alexandria, Egypt, after being dragged by horses through the streets until he was dead.
• Luke was hanged in Greece.
• Peter was crucified upside down on an x-shaped cross, according to church tradition because he told his tormentors that he felt unworthy to die in the same way that Jesus Christ had died.
• James, a son of Zebedee, was beheaded.
• Bartholomew, also know as Nathaniel, was flayed to death by a whip in Armenia.
• Andrew was crucified on an x-shaped cross in Patras, Greece.
• Thomas was stabbed with a spear in India.
• Matthias, the apostle chosen to replace the traitor Judas Iscariot, was stoned and then beheaded.
• Paul was tortured and then beheaded.
• John faced much torture and persecution, but died as an old man, the only apostle to die peacefully.
Yet, our reading from Deuteronomy today seems to contradict this. It seems to bolster the prosperity gospel and The Secret.
(Deut 30:9-12) Moses said to the people of Israel, “The LORD your God will make you abundantly prosperous in all your undertakings, in the fruit of your body, in the fruit of your livestock, and in the fruit of your soil. For the LORD will again take delight in prospering you, just as he delighted in prospering your ancestors, when you obey the LORD your God by observing his commandments and decrees that are written in this book of the law, because you turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.”
That sounds a lot like “Get God, get rich,” doesn’t it? But we have to remember that in 1500 B.C., God was establishing his covenant with his chosen people through Moses. He had just brought them out of Egypt after they had suffered as slaves for 400 years, just as he’d told Abraham it would happen. They had no Christ to follow, no understanding of an afterlife with many mansions in my father’s house as Jesus describes it. Positive reinforcement for proper behavior was the first step in bringing people to God at that time. The prophets and their miracles had not yet appeared. The salvation of Christ’s atonement for our sins was still 15 centuries away.
While many aspects of Mosaic Law are still in force today, many are not. We are not sent forth to conquer the Canaanites and Philistines today. We’re not forbidden to wear clothing with blended fabric. The promises of treasures in heaven would make no sense to a people enduring misery for centuries in the time of Moses.
When we fast-forward 15 hundred years, to Paul’s letter to the Colossians, we read that Paul is praying that these devoted followers of Jesus would “be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.”
No one has ever had to “endure” prosperity. No patience is required in accepting a life of ease. And an inheritance requires that the one providing it has to die. Also, sharing in the inheritance in the light, means leaving the darkness of this world.
Following Jesus is not a “get-rich quick” scheme. It often involves a lifetime of trials and tribulations, and sacrifices that most of the people in this world are unwilling to make.
But the joy, the peace, the blessings that come from doing his will instead of our own, and from being a part of his kingdom are worth so much more than any earthly treasures we may want to attract to ourselves.
The famous evangelist Dwight L. Moody said, “We can stand affliction better than we can prosperity, for in prosperity we forget God.”
I think we should remember that Paul started out as a rising star among the Pharisees, a shoo-in for the Sanhedrin, which was the top-level deciding religious body of Judaism. He had more prestige, power, and property than most people. And yet he had to give all of it up when he chose to follow Jesus.
In his letter to the Church in Philippi (3:7-9 NLT), he writes,
“I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him.”
That’s the real secret. God bless you all.
