The "Secret"?

In a culture so inebriated with things like “The Secret,” it seems common knowledge that our thoughts have a great deal of influence on not only our behavior, but our situation. Try to remember back five years ago. Where did you picture yourself five years from then? Is it quite close to where you are now? Maybe you don’t like where you are today. I would venture to guess that you didn’t know where you would be. You probably didn’t have a plan. If you did have a five-year plan five years ago you probably are there now, or very close to it.

Things may be continuously evolving, but everything we have here on Earth is what was already here. This is true with inventions, chemicals, etc. so then it is also true with natural and spiritual laws. Even the Bible talks about this. Just because Newton was the first to “discover” or “prove” the natural law we refer to as the “Law of Gravity,” doesn’t mean that he created it and it also doesn’t mean that gravity didn’t exist before he made this revolutionary finding of common knowledge.

So would be true about the writings in “The Secret”. The Secret refers to spiritual laws, most prominent “The Law of Attraction”. This means that the Law of Attraction has been around all this time and has only recently been “re-released”. It was never a secret at all. It was never hidden or burried.

The Law of Attraction states that you are, in a sense, a magnet that attracts whatever it is that your thoughts focus on. I am not saying that I think that it, in and of itself, is untrue or bad, but I have a few problems with this. If we control everything in our environment by our thoughts, then what happens when our thoughts clash with another’s thoughts who shares our environment? Whose thought “trumps” the others’?

Did your parents used to say, “The universe doesn’t revolve around you, you know?” Mine did. Frankly, I don’t think they were dream killers, I think they were right. The universe does not revolve around me. If it did, it would stop revolving when I died, which I’m sure that it won’t. If we all could have all of the desires of our heart and we all had these great big dreams, then all of us couldn’t have them at all. Let me explain.

If there is nobody doing the jobs that no one dreams of, then the jobs that people do dream of could not be possible. If your dream is to drive a Ferarri and there are no construction workers paving roads, you wouldn’t get very far. If we all dreamed of being rich enough that we could buy anything we wanted, then none of us could. If we all were that rich, then the value of money would go down and the prices of items would go up, putting us right where we began.

Humans have a need for continually trying and working and striving (think of our survival instinct). Picture someone you know who received a large inheritance. Did they value it and manage it as if they had worked every day for every penny? Or did they burn through it? Do you know someone who has an enviable bank account who, all too often, seems miserable? Even 80% of the lottery winners in this country file bankruptcy within five years. Clearly money doesn’t buy happiness. In fact, it many times buys the opposite. A catchy tune, but amazingly true song was Notorious B.I.G.’s “Mo Money, Mo Problems”. In the wake of all of the major celebrity deaths we’ve seen this year, we have learned that fortune cannot buy your way out of death.

Maybe money is not what you care to attract to yourself. I remember at a young age, girls wanting to play with “love spells”. I quickly realized that I did not want someone dating me because I had willed, wished, or spelled them to, but rather that they would want to. We can “attract” all of these things to ourselves, but at the end of the day, they will not and cannot truly fulfill us, especially if they come to us because we willed them and not earned them. If we don’t show ourselves worthy of having things, then it loses its’ value.

Good things in life are so much more appreciated and valued when we earn them or they come to us because of another person’s free will. This is the same answer to many people’s question of “If God created us for a relationship with Him, then why would He not have made us already love Him?” It is more fulfilling that way. More valuable.

What can only truly fulfill us is a personal relationship with the Creator of the same universe that we think revolves around ourselves. The Bible tells us that we all have a place in our hearts that only God can fill, even though we can’t really understand it. (Ecc. 3:11) He designed us that way. Nothing we search for, acquire, or attract will ever fill it. The problem most people have is that they don’t believe that God will truly fulfill their deepest longings.

I challenge you with this: What is it that you would “attract” to yourself? Imagine five years from now, having an abundance of that thing. How much true happiness will it have brought to you? What longings does your heart have that you don’t believe God can fill? 1 Tim. 6:20-21, Romans 16:18