She is the quintessential rags to riches story. She started life without any of the breaks that you normally associate with those who will go on to dominate their field and she has made it all the way to the top. Probably one of the most powerful and influential women in the world she is Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama rolled into one. Some people have said that she could be President if it wasn’t for the cut in pay and influence.
And every one has an opinion about her, you might love her or hate her but it is very difficult to be ambivalent about Oprah Winfrey.
Born to Vernon Winfrey and Vernita Lee in 1954 in Kosciusko Mississippi her life didn’t have the most auspicious beginning. Her story is that she was the result of a one time sexual encounter between two young people in rural Mississippi, as a matter of fact her father, a twenty year old soldier who had been home on leave found out that he a daughter when he received a newspaper birth announcement in the mail at his army camp along with a note that said “Send clothes.”
Her name was supposed to be Gail Orpah Winfrey, she was named Orpah from the book of Ruth in the Old Testament but the midwife misspelled her name when she was filling out the birth certificate. And I always thought it had been chosen because it’s Harpo spelled backwards.
Shortly after her birth her mother moved to Milwaukee to work as a maid and baby Oprah stayed in Mississippi to be brought up by her grandmother Hattie Mae Lee on the family’s small pig farm. At the age of 6 her mother reclaimed her and she lived in Milwaukee until she moved in with her father in Nashville at the age of 14.
Beginning her media career in radio at the age of 19 she quickly made her way into local television first in Nashville, than in Baltimore and finally in 1984 she moved to Chicago and began a talk show that eventually went national and the rest as they say is history.
According to Oprah’s web site, the Oprah Winfrey Show is the highest-rated talk show in television history, seen by 46 million viewers each day in the U.S. in 205 television markets, and in 134 countries. In fact, it has been the number one talk show for 21 consecutive seasons. Since it’s beginning in 1986 it has received 32 Emmy awards.
Sometimes thought to be the richest woman in the world she’s not, and neither by the way is Queen Elizabeth, J.K. Rowling or my wife. She is however the richest female entertainer with assets estimated at 1.5 billion dollars. Although she is 54 and the Olsen Twins are worth 100 million dollars and they are only 20, although there are two of them so they are like 40 between them.
Oprah is now one if not the most influential woman in the world. Vanity Fair Magazine made this statement “Oprah Winfrey arguably has more influence on the culture than any university president, politician, or religious leader, except perhaps the Pope,”
When she puts her seal on a book in her book club it is guaranteed to become a major best seller and when she smiles and nods at a guest who is teaching any manner of spiritual content people take it as a personal endorsement from this lady whom they invite into their home like a friend on a daily basis. And because she offers such a hodge podge of New Age, Eastern, contemplative and past life teachings she has the potential to influence people’s spiritual life and consequently their eternal life.
On the opening page of her website is the statement: “Want to Get in Touch with Your Soul? Oprah sits down with leading spiritual thinkers and authors to talk about matters of the soul. Watch every Monday night at 9/8c exclusively on Oprah.com and XM Channel 156.”
With Oprah’s last foray into spirituality, the ten week video course she is offering in conjunction with Eckhart Tolee, I decided that I should give the good folks at Cornerstone a heads up with what’s involved in that, after all according to demographic and survey guru George Barna “Oprah has a 83% favorability rating among born-again believers”
So what would Jesus say to Oprah?
I think that the first thing he’d say is 1) Way to Go I don’t think God has anything against success and I think that in the same way that it pleases us as parents when our kids do good that God enjoys seeing his creation accomplish all they can. I think we have all been created for personal greatness. I don’t think God expects us all to be Mother Theresa’s or Billy Grahams, or Ghandi’s or for the matter Oprah but I think he expects great things from us and I truly believe that we all have the capability to accomplish great things. That might not translate into become independently wealthy and famous but it will mean doing the best we can at what we chose to pursue as a career, being great parents and committed Christians.
Love or hate Oprah you gotta admit she has come a long way from a pig farm in rural Mississippi. Sure you are saying, but she got the breaks. Sure she did, shuffled from her Grand mother to her mother, to her father, back to her mother and back to her father again. She spent the first third of her childhood living in a rural poverty, the next third living in a ghetto in Milwaukee, sharing a small apartment with her mother, two younger half siblings and her mother’s boyfriend. She was raped at 9 by a cousin and by the time she was 13 she was by her own admission sexual promiscuous and out of control.
He mother tried to have her committed to a Milwaukee home for wayward girls but there was no room so Vernita sent Oprah back to her father in Nashville. A few weeks after she had moved into her new middle class life with her father and step mother it was discovered she was pregnant and miscarried a male child. She was fourteen.
Now I am not a betting man but if’n I was and I was presented with Oprah’s life story up to that point I wouldn’t have put much money on the story having a happy ending.
Oprah says that if it hadn’t been for the intervention of her father that she was destined for failure. And I quote “My dad really held me in with a tight rein, without his direction, I’d have wound up pregnant and another statistic. I was definitely heading for a career as a juvenile delinquent.” And yet her she is 40 years later, a net worth in excess of 1.5 billion dollars, there are three commas in that number. And while she is not the wealthiest woman in the world the women at the top of the list got their money they old fashion way, they inherited it. She is only the third woman to own a major production studio, Mary Pickford and Lucille Ball being the other two, and her influence is literally felt around the world.
In no uncertain terms Oprah has done good. Now I understand that material things aren’t the only measure of success but they are certain one measure. And contrary to popular belief God has nothing against wealthy people. Read through the Bible and see how wealthy people like Abraham, Jacob, David, Job and Solomon were. Jesus was less concerned with how much people had then with what they did with what they had.
Oprah beat the odds and proved that you can either blame the circumstances of your life or you can rise above them. And whether or agree with her philosophical and spiritual views or not she is concerned with making the world a better place.
Oprah’s Angel Network exists to help build more schools, and create programs to educate impoverished women and children around the world. To date it has funded 60 new schools in 13 countries. Her ChristmasKindness program has helped over 50,000 children in South Africa since it was founded. And her Leadership Academy Foundation is having a life changing impact on literally hundreds of young women in South Africa. At least on one level I think Oprah would agree with J. Paul Getty who said “Money is like manure. You have to spread it around or it smells.”
I think that Jesus would say “Well done Oprah.”
But I think there it comes with a warning. In the second chapter of the book of Revelation Jesus speaks to the Church in Ephesus and he’s bragging on them talking about what a great job they’ve been doing. Basically he’s saying “Way to Go!” but it comes with a warning.
Revelation 2:4-5 “Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.”
And so I think Jesus would say to Oprah Return to Your First Love The first six years of Oprah’s life revolved around Faith United Mississippi Baptist Church where jealous peers often called her “Miss Jesus” or “the preacher.”
It appears that the 8 years that Oprah spent with her mother were spent in a spiritual wilderness and it wasn’t until she moved in with her father that church became an important part of her life again.
Weekly services at Progressive Missionary Baptist Church in Nashville were the exception not the rule and she spoke in church on a regular basis and at the age of 16 she was asked to travel to Los Angeles to speak to a church youth group.
And she continued along that path even as she pursued a career in Television She tells a story that happened in 1986 shortly after her show was syndicated “Last Sunday I was in church, and a deacon tapped me on the knee and asked me for my autograph, I told him, ‘I don’t do autographs in church. Jesus is the star here.’ “
It’s hard to believe this is the same woman who on national television said “One of the most important books I’ve read is Eric Buttterworth’s Discover the Power Within You. In it he said ‘Jesus did not come to teach us how divine He was but to teach that divinity was within us.’”
On one show Oprah stated “… one of the biggest mistakes humans make is to believe that there is only one way. Actually, there are many diverse paths leading to what you call God.” And when she was corrected by an audience member with Jesus’ words in John 14:6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. Oprah went on a tirade stating “There couldn’t possibly be only one way...Does God care about your heart or whether you called His Son Jesus?”
Well actually Oprah he does Matthew 3:16-17 After his baptism, as Jesus came up out of the water, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and settling on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my dearly loved Son, who brings me great joy.” And we are told in Acts 4:12 There is salvation in no one else! God has given no other name under heaven by which we must be saved.”
I Think there is an bit of an issue here, not to mention Jesus words in Matthew 10:32-33 “Everyone who acknowledges me publicly here on earth, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But everyone who denies me here on earth, I will also deny before my Father in heaven. Ouch that’s kind of scary.
Now some of you are thinking, but Denn my neighbour feels that way and you don’t make a big fuss over that? True but your neighbour probably doesn’t have an audience numbering in the tens of millions. Jesus brother James warns us in James 3:1 Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.
So I think the third thing that Jesus would say to Oprah is Be Careful What you Teach. I wish I could go back and count how many times I have heard someone say “But Oprah says.” Or “I saw on Oprah the other day.”
LaTonya Taylor an editor with Christianity Today notes, “With a congregation of 22 million viewers, Oprah Winfrey has become one of the most influential spiritual leaders in America.” Whether Oprah wants to call herself a teacher or not millions of people are tuning in and taking her views and the views of the people she gushes over as the gospel. And it may be a gospel but it’s not the gospel.
The gospel that is preached on Oprah’s show includes teachings by the whole gamut from New Age, Eastern religions, self help and Reincarnation. Shirley MacLaine was speaking on a show describing how to meditate, going inside yourself, asking your own “intuitive Self” to seek answers to life’s questions. And Oprah makes this observation: “When you connected to the higher Self...knowing that you can do anything that you want to do-is it what other people describe as being ‘born again’?” Not what I describe as being born again and certainly not what Jesus was describing in John 3:3-6 Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.” “What do you mean?” exclaimed Nicodemus. “How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?” Jesus replied, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life.
Another frequent guest and teacher on the show Marianne Williamson, writes “We are all one, we are love itself. ‘Accepting the Christ” is merely a shift in self-perception.”
Oprah has most recently embraced the teachings of Eckhart Tolle author of New Earth on her website we read Are You Ready to be Awakened? Millions have experienced Oprah and Eckhart’s A New Earth classes. They’re transforming their lives and so can you.
But what is the transformation they are promising? In the Power of Now Tolle writes “Don’t get attached to any one word. You can substitute ‘Christ’ for presence, if that is more meaningful to you. Christ is your God-essence or the self, as it is sometimes called in the East.”
Craig Parshall of the National Religious Broadcasters Association observes “The content of Tolle’s religious philosophy is, by his own admission, a combination of Buddhist and Islamic thought, with some measure of what he calls ‘Christianity’ (in actuality a few New Testament verses misapplied and then sprinkled into the mix).”
So let’s go back to James 3:1 Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. While Oprah may think she is simply offering people choices she is influencing their eternity and as such will be judged on that basis. Jesus warns us in Mark 9:42 “But if you cause one of these little ones who trusts in me to fall into sin, it would be better for you to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone hung around your neck.
I’m not an Oprah fan, but she has done a lot of good and she has achieved a lot in her personal and professional life. But that becomes negated if what she teaches and promotes leads people away from Christ. She would tell you that these teachings compliment and complete the Gospel but the Gospel doesn’t need completing, it is complete.
And the greatest defense for Christians against false teachings isn’t knowing what people like Tolle and Williamson and Oprah teach it’s know what the bible teaches and what you believe.
Maybe this would be a good time to remind ourselves of the basics, let’s read the The Apostle’s Creed together:
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:
Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead. The third day He arose again
from the dead.
He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty,
whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Church Universal the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting.
Amen.
Perhaps the kind of teaching that is promoted on both Oprah’s television and satellite radio is simply a lead in to my series starting next week on the end times because the bible tells us in 1 Timothy 4:1 Now the Holy Spirit tells us clearly that in the last times some will turn away from the true faith; they will follow deceptive spirits and teachings that come from demons.
PowerPoint may be available for this message email me at denn@cornerstonewesleyan.ca
