I'm posting this video clip because I found it to be very... weird. It's about 'The Law of Attraction' - it essentially maintains that anything and everything that happens to you in life is because you have attracted it to yourself by your thoughts, whether positive or negative. If you have fearful, angry or anxious thoughts, those things that you fear, are angry or anxious about will be attracted to you and therefore happen to you. If, on the other hand, you have positive, happy and successful thoughts, positivity, happiness and success will be attracted to you.
Now, I believe in the power of positivitiy. I think it's important to be positive and to maintain a good frame of mind. I believe we ought to 'take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ', but I have a really hard time believing that my thoughts alone control my destiny. One of the philosophies of this video (if you managed to watch that far) is that Thoughts = Things. If you think you are rich, you will become rich. If you think you want that nice car, you will one day have that nice car. They claim that all rich and successful people past and present know this and employ this tactic every day, which is why they are rich and successful. On the other hand, they also maintain that if you are poor and embattled, you have brought that upon yourself because this is what your thoughts have attracted to you.
Is it just me, or does this sound like rich people trying to make themselves feel less guilty for being rich? If it was their positive thoughts that brought them wealth, success and happiness and it was poor people's thoughts that made and kept them poor, then the rich people don't have to take any responsibility for the world's poverty and hunger issues. If the poor people would just get their act together and start thinking rich, everything would be okay.
This whole thing just seems to be a 'prosperity gospel for non-Christians' and it's one of the most humanistic approaches to the world I've encountered in a long time. People are inherently good. People are in control of the future. If only you had enough stuff, then you would be truly happy. Turn your thoughts to that stuff and all will be right in your world. What a crock.
Unfortunately, my world is too marred by sin and the consequences of sin. If the theories held in this video were true, there would be no murder, no unhappiness, no suffering, no struggling - and all if we just started thinking positively. Well, if only I'd known.
Man, there's just so much more I could say about this. The more I think about it, the angrier it makes me. Truth twisted ever so subtly to make it palatable and manipulative to those who can't articulate what they believe about God, sin and humanity.
Anybody else up for a rant??
2 comments:
yeah, those women in africa who got infected with HIV because their husbands were sleeping with prostitutes?
it was all a case of negative thinking.
this kind of thinking DRIVES ME NUTS and i am a pretty positive person. and while it might "work" in north america and europe, it is downright insulting to 2/3 of the world.
I think they should keep their "secrets" to themselves. What a sham.
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