F4F | Happy Lies Interview with Melissa Dougherty

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00:14
Welcome to another installment of Fighting for the Faith. My name is Chris Roseborough. I am your servant in Jesus Christ, and this is the channel that compares what people are saying in the name of God to the word of God.
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Now, fun thing, from time to time, I get asked to take a look at books, especially that relate to topics regarding comparative theology or discernment and things like this, and I recently was reached out to by Melissa Doherty to take a look at her new book that is coming out today.
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Now, not the day that we're recording this. I'm recording this ahead of time, but today, the day that we're releasing this interview, and her book is called, hang on a second here, it's called
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Happy Lies, and it's all about something you've probably never heard of, the
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New Thought Movement, and how it has impacted different streams within visible
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Christianity and evangelicalism. And so, I've invited Melissa on to Fighting for the
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Faith today to discuss the topic of New Thought and the impact that it's having on Christianity, and to discuss her new book with the hopes of you going out and getting a copy of it.
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We'll put a link down below to amazon .com where you can purchase the
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Kindle version or purchase a hard copy of it. That's down in the description of today's episode of Fighting for the
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Faith. So without any further ado, Melissa Daugherty, good to see you. Yeah, it's good to see you too.
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It's been far too long since we've talked. I remember you and I chatted when you started talking about, thinking about doing this book, and now it's here.
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So that's kind of a big deal, don't you think? Yeah, it is. I did, I talked to so many people, everybody
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I could in the research for this book, and you were one of them because of Gnosticism.
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I wanted to pick your mind about that, and yeah, you were one of the vast variety of people that I talked to.
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I also did a lot of interviews that people will find in the book. Okay, now let me just ask you at the beginning, you've been talking about this topic on your own
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YouTube channel. Have you gotten any pushback from people saying, nah, come on, this new thought stuff hasn't really crept into Christianity?
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Has anyone basically kind of said that your conclusions are incorrect? No, if somebody has that somewhere in my comment section, the argument is very different if I get pushback.
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Because believe me, there's something for everybody in this book to kind of wrestle with. Yeah. And yeah, and usually what it is is like, oh, okay,
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I don't like that. Like, here's why this is still valid is usually the argument that I get, where yeah, that's new thought, that's wrong and bad, and we shouldn't do that.
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But here, here's something good about whatever aspect of new thought that has helped them or worked for them.
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So the argument isn't that it's invalid, and the argument isn't that it's infiltrated Christianity, it's that, oh, it's helped me, and therefore
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I shouldn't demonize it. That's usually typically the argument I get. Or if there's a beloved teacher or somebody connected to this movement in any way, typically there's a defense of that somehow, somewhere, but the conclusion, to my knowledge, hasn't been debunked.
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Okay, so people are saying, okay, yeah, you've identified where it really comes from.
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But here's the thing. I'm gonna just ask you up front. Is new thought Christianity?
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Is this what the Bible teaches? No, absolutely not. It's, if anything, like a cult of Christianity.
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It's a counterfeit Christianity. It's a false gospel. It's, and again, you were one of the people
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I talked to about this. It's more rooted in Gnosticism, if anything. So it's a alternative.
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They would say it's metaphysical Christianity, which I can unpack later what that actually means, but it's very much like progressive
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Christianity. It's a better version, a more spiritual, a powerful version of Christianity.
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At least that's what the box says, the packaging, yeah. Okay, so real quick then.
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If I were to push you, I need a simple, easy to understand definition of new thought.
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And since you're dealing with the metaphysical, coming up with a concise definition may be hard. But if somebody were to say, okay, at its core, new thought teaches what?
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That you are divine as a Christian. It's the message that, uh -huh, yes.
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And you'd be surprised how that's packaged, Chris, because the fundamental overlap, if you will, with the new age in that regard is that you are somehow divine.
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And it's metaphysical Christianity in a word. And in a sentence, it's the positive thinking movement in America with Jesus as its mascot.
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It's about the power of the mind and not what's material. The material world is a response to your mind and what you're thinking about.
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So who has the power? It's you. It's just secret. It's being suppressed. You need to discover it.
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And so the core message is the serpent's lie. In fact, that's what I wanted the original title to be, was the oldest lie in the book.
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But I like happy lies much better because it kind of puts both of that together and describes the unique package that this goes into.
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So I can absolutely see the connection with Gnosticism because the big secret of Gnosticism is that you've forgotten that you're divine.
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That's kind of, at the end of the day, all of the initiations you go through in Gnosticism lead to you going, oh,
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I forgot that I was divine. And humans love this.
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They love the secret, hidden knowledge. We love it when we think we've stumbled upon something profound like that.
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It makes us feel powerful. And that was the draw for me. I felt powerful. I felt like this is what
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Jesus was really trying to teach us. And this is where it can get really tricky, as far as it looking
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Christian because lots of Christians watching are like, what, as a Christian, you think you're divine? That's the opposite of it.
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But no, the way that they posture this, it's very, I would say, subtle.
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But for somebody like me, I went years and years. I went to a church, right? I went to church for years, believing these beliefs, not realizing that's what they were, and defining it.
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I take two chapters to really go into the history, what it is, and defining it, even though there's so much more.
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There could be an academic volume on new thought in relation to Christianity.
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But I hopefully defined it well for people to understand the definitive differences between the two belief systems.
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Right, so then the idea then, you're divine, and which oftentimes is not stated outright in the visible versions of Christianity.
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I remember back in the day when Ken Copeland openly said that I am
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God, okay? And he had Paul Crouch say, I am God, with Ken Copeland there on TBN.
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And they got so much blowback and pushback from people that it's become kind of the unspoken cornerstone of the prosperity gospel and the name -it -and -claim -it guys.
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But at the end of the day, the only thing that can basically explain that they believe they have the power through their words and their positive thoughts to create things in the universe and decree and declare stuff is because they believe that they share divinity with Christ.
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Yes, so they wouldn't say, oh, now you're exactly right. They were way more honest.
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That's the word I'm gonna say. They were very honest about what the Word of Faith movement taught.
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The thing is, they still teach it. Yeah, it's a very, here's the thing, and you know all of this,
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I'm sure, but there's an implication of why you can command the weather. There's an implication for why you have the power to decree and declare and heal yourself, and an implication for why you have a birthright to be always healthy and prosperous.
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And that implication is that you have the same power as God. This is the thing with New Thought.
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I read a lot of dusty history books about New Thought in my free time, and they're fascinating because the origin, the whole point of this movement was, oh,
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I have the same attributes. I share the same attributes as God.
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Something that only belonged to Him was now given to humanity in a Christian context.
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And scriptures were taken out of context. Many of them that were saying, hey, look, right here.
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It says it right here. Jesus is saying that you're God. You're the great I am, just like Him. And there was this redefinition of these terms, and honestly, we loved it.
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Humanity loved this because it gave us power, and I think that's really what we want.
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And so in these movements, in the Word of Faith movement, you're absolutely right. When you hear
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Ken Copeland saying, I'm the great I am, too, this is so aligned with New Thought, and then taking the
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Bible and putting it on there with it, again, is a very New Thought thing to do.
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Now, here's kind of one of the things that you address, and there's a quote, I love your quote here, is that the way these ideas are packaged, number one, they go out of their way to make it look like this is biblical
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Christianity, and so they'll quote biblical texts out of context to kind of make it, cobble it together to make it look like it's biblical.
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But the other thing is is that when you listen to somebody like Joel Osteen or others, they are so positive.
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They are so upbeat, and they legitimately sound like they're just trying to get you to have a more positive outlook on life and things like this.
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How can that possibly be dangerous? And you said something in your book, you said, deception isn't supposed to be obvious, it's supposed to be beautiful.
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And I thought that was one of your best quotes, by the way. Thanks, man. And so, talk about this.
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So many people, they think that deception, when it comes to us, is gonna smell like sulfur, it's gonna look like some kind of really gross groceries that's molded in your refrigerator for six months and things like this, but when deception comes to us, it doesn't look or smell or feel anything like that.
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So talk about kind of like what is the, how have they packaged this in a way that really makes it appealing?
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Everything, I mean, you have to think about if there is a way to deceive you, if I were the devil,
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Chris, I wouldn't think, wow, I'm gonna come looking like a red dude with a pitchfork and a ponytail. In fact, that's why
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I satirically, when I do satires and I play Satan, that's exactly how
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I make it look because everybody thinks that's what he looks like and he doesn't. If I were
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Satan, I'd come looking like Joel Osteen. I'd come looking as much like Jesus as I could.
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I would preach peace, I would preach positivity, I would preach wholeness, I would preach to you about everything that you want to hear.
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I would tickle your ears and I would tell you everything that makes you feel like you have some sort of self -empowerment, some sort of purpose.
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In other words, I would take everything about God that makes him God, the wonderful, beautiful things, his goodness, his holiness, everything, and I would exploit it for you.
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I would put it on you. And that's the bait and switch is that he's an angel of light.
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He's not some gross black demon -looking creature, you know? And so if there's things coming from Satan that are made for you to be deceived, it's gonna look like light.
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In fact, this is a quote that I have in the book and a theme is the light that's dark.
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It's like light dark or dark light. And Warren Smith, he has a book by that name as well, The Light That Was Dark.
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And there's a concept within these teachings of that that be careful that the light you have isn't darkness, which implies that there's dark light, there's deception.
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So it comes looking like everything you want. And that is what it was for me is that the enticement was
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I wanted answers. I wanted to know more. I had a lust for knowledge and for power and for the supernatural.
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And whenever you get that, you feel important. You feel like, oh, I know things.
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I know things more than these other Christians. And it makes you feel like you have some sort of knowledge and hidden secrets of the universe that you gotta tell everybody.
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And so I think that's part of what makes it very popular. And then to top it all off, to make it look like it's a better version of Christianity is particularly sinister because we want to believe that.
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Who wants to believe in hell? I don't. You know what I mean? It's an uncomfortable thing.
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So anything that brings you, yeah, anything that brings you discomfort as a Christian, as a believer, well, this gives you a pass.
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This gives you a pass to make you look really good, to look really tolerant, really accepting, and spiritually open.
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And that's what you end up marketing, not the gospel. The gospel is love. It's not this repentance of, it's not about this
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God that's holy that made you to worship Him. And the reason why you feel a disconnect from everything in your life is because you don't give
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Him your life. You want to take that and live it on your own terms in that regard.
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And ironically, in the pursuit to become whole, you become empty.
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And so that's, I think, what it is, is that it exploits these intrinsically good things.
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Joel's saying there's a lot of things he says that are good and true. But what's happening is when you sign up for that, all of a sudden, there's a whole other set of beliefs that you don't realize that you're signing up for.
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And the example that I keep giving is like a cookbook. You know, you get a cookbook and say you're trying to get healthy, and you're following the recipes in this cookbook, and they're working, they're helping you, but you don't realize that you just signed up for like the keto diet, or Atkins, or even worse.
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Let's just say that you sign up for a diet that will kill you in two years. You don't realize that you just signed up for a whole set of different beliefs and philosophies that in the long run will hurt you.
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But it's working. Hey, it's working, though, at first. And that's the point, is that it's not sustainable. So that's kind of how
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I would describe that. Okay, so you're very clear, and you make a really compelling, and I would say solid case, that these doctrines, these ideas, these teachings, they come from outside of Christianity.
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And one of the terms you use in describing it, you call it toxic positivity. So kind of a two -part question here.
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Why are you referring to this as toxic positivity? How can positivity be toxic?
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But, and then a second kind of follow -up is, who are the true parents of these doctrines?
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Who are kind of like the immediate grandparents who influenced those who brought it into Christianity, and then who were those who really brought it in?
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You understand what I'm saying? Because this comes from outside of the body of Christ. This is not actually taught in the scriptures.
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So let's start first with toxic positivity. How can positivity be toxic? Come on,
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Melissa, you're just being negative. Okay, well, anything can be toxic. And that's the thing is that,
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I mean, I think everybody, some people understand exactly what we mean when we're talking about toxic positivity, because we think of a person who's like that.
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And I particularly would wanna draw somebody's attention to,
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I'm trying to think of like a person in culture who might be somebody of a face of this.
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Oprah is one of them. But when I think of toxic positivity, I think of somebody who is not the person that you would call when you have a problem.
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They are the person that's always trying to be lifted up mentally, always.
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And this is not always a good thing. I mean, this is scriptural. Weep with those who weep, laugh with those who, like be with those who are being in that moment.
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And there's a level of healthy empathy. And even Ali Bestaki just wrote a book called, Toxic Empathy.
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That's probably, you know what? That's probably the best example I can use right now as far as toxic positivity. Because right now, especially in our nation, we have people who are really wanting to do the right thing.
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They are thinking so much with their heart and they think that that is absolutely the loving right thing to do for these people.
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Open up the borders, right? Open up your home. Love this. Love is love. Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.
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There is no playing the movie forward. There is no thinking about, hmm, is there something bad about me living this way and believing this way that might actually have a bad outcome?
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Think of parenting, okay? Toxic positivity. Let's think of permissive parenting for a second.
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Think of a parent who cannot say no because they always want their kid to feel good.
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They wanna feel good about themselves. And in fact, anytime they feel guilt, that's they're doing something wrong.
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They are letting their feelings dictate the truth of the matter, okay? This is where it gets really bad and this gets toxic because you don't realize that you are creating a creature, a human being, to go out in the world that's never had anything bad happen to them, thinks they are the best person in the world, and that anybody that says anything bad to them is hurting them, right?
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There's no boundaries and there really is an element there of putting something on your child that's making them less resilient.
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But you feel good about yourself and Johnny feels good about himself. So you're doing, everything's great.
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These are examples of what I would use about toxic positivity. And in a personality, think of the friend that they can't go where you're at.
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They can't go where you're at mentally and emotionally because they can't handle it because they might have issues, right?
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Like they can't actually cross that line with you because they might actually not be able to empathize because they have their own problems.
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So they have to stay in the mental space of always being positive and always being in a place of always being happy because they think that that's going to bring them blessings or it's a burden that they carry on themselves.
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And that's ultimately what it becomes is a burden. It becomes a burden because you don't allow yourself to feel those things.
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So that's just scratching the surface. There's so much more on that. And then the second thing you asked is the parent, the parent of new thoughts.
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So now how far back do you want to go? Are we talking? I think the garden's too far, but you've already made reference to the fact that this is really connected to Satan's lie in the
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Garden of Eden. And so I would try to keep the history like in its
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American context. We can go into Europe and talk about the Gnostics, but let's talk about in the American context.
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Yes, and there's a whole chapter on this. And I want to reemphasize, even with the big players that I talked about in my chapter about the history of new thought, like what is it?
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It could be five to 10 times as long. But the big players, the people, my favorites.
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Okay, let's just say it, put it that way. My favorites, you have, let's start with a man named Anton Mesmer. This starts around between, it's post -Enlightenment.
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Okay, so you're coming out of this time in history where, I mean, a hot air balloon just flew in the air.
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I mean, you're having inventions, rethinking about religions. It's no coincidence, by the way, that so many cults came out of post -Enlightenment thinking.
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Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mary Baker Eddy, you have all these movements. So, but -
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I'm just saying. Let's tack them on. You know, like, yes, you're exactly right, though.
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You have these new thoughts about God. And so scripture was no longer the authority in that regard.
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And then morality started changing. So just giving everybody kind of a frame of mind of where we're at, okay?
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You had a man named Franz Anton Mesmer, and he is a
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French physician. And this man, people might recognize him, his last name as Mesmerize, because he's the guy we know for hypnosis.
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And he was, in my opinion, fascinating, but odd at the same time, because he believed that there was like magnetic energies within everything, and it could heal you, all right?
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And so he would do these seances, basically, where people would, it's like a bayonet, like a bathtub, and it was magnetized water.
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And there would be tools that were put into the bathtub, and you would put it on whatever part of your body needed healing, and it supposedly healed them.
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And there's so much to say about Anton Mesmer, but his methods became popular.
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People started becoming mesmerists, if you will, especially in America. They were mesmerizing people as mesmerists, okay.
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Exactly, yes. And he actually thought there was two separate, I don't wanna say studies, people were going to check him out to see if he was legit.
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And they were groups of highly influential men, highly respected. One of them was Benjamin Franklin in this group that had to check him out.
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And both times that they're going to basically fact -check him, they were like, yeah, this guy, it's a lot of pseudoscience.
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The people, in other words, and you would be interested in this, because these people would fall in convulsions, hysterical laughter.
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They would completely be affected by what the other people were doing in the room.
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And if somebody fell down claiming to be healed, and this has nothing to do with hypercharismatic arenas.
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This is something completely separate. This is an area where people are seeing other people do something, and they wanna be healed too.
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And they have a psychosomatic effect, in other words. And that's what they discovered. And so he lost a lot of credibility, because in the long run, none of these healings could be verified.
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So that's Mesmer. There's so much to say about him. I would love to do a deep dive on him someday. But even before him,
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I know I jumped into him, but even before him, an even more important character is Immanuel Swedenborg, which not a lot of people know about, but he's fascinating.
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Yeah, he was a very respected inventor, scientist, well -read.
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And he was known for that, but what he's really mostly known for now is his spiritual experiences that he started having.
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Very intense spiritual experiences where these spiritual beings, which he called angels, would come to him in dreams and give him spiritual information.
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And it started happening during the day as well. He'd get visions. And he claimed that Jesus came to him to tell him the true secrets of Scripture and of the afterlife, okay?
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So of course, people, that's fascinating. That's sensational stuff. That's interesting.
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And especially coming from a man like Immanuel Swedenborg. And so he started writing books about it, and all these other spiritual teachings that were taking
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Christian concepts and putting an allegorical and metaphorical, metaphysical definition to it, really started coming forth.
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And one very important teaching that came from him was the Law of Correspondence, where very
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Plato, think Plato, think Gnosticism. For everything in the material realm, there's a spiritual counterpart.
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So if there's something wrong in the physical realm, including your body, you gotta fix it in the spiritual realm.
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And how do you do that? Your words and your thoughts and your feelings. And so what this ended up doing, though, if there's a spiritual counterpart, that included words.
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So if you're reading the Bible, there's a sense of it not being taken literally that you could do, and you could inform that meaning from within because the truest part of you is spirit.
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So there's a lot of dances there, but that's kind of how that would happen. The next person in our list, and this is the person that really made it
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Christian, is Phineas Quimby. Phineas Quimby is, yeah, everybody mostly would know who he is.
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Phineas Quimby was a mesmerist, which is why I mentioned Anton Mesmer. But over time, he kind of took out the mesmerism and decided, oh, this is like a thought thing.
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It's my thinking that is what's bringing healing to these people. And he really
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Christianized a lot of these concepts, even though Emanuel Swedenborg did too. And it's very apparent, if you look at both
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Emanuel Swedenborg and Phineas Quimby, Quimby borrowed a lot from Swedenborg.
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Even though he would deny it, we can see the similarities there. And like Christ consciousness, for example, was a very
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Quimby thing. He took this understanding of what the Christ is, gave a metaphysical meaning to it, and tacked on the idea that we're all the
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Christ, that we have the Christ from within us. Yeah. And remember, it's a metaphysical definition though.
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It's not literal. We would have a different, of course, understanding of that, but we don't get it. We're the peons that don't understand the deeper spiritual understanding of what this means.
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We need to awaken to it. And so from him, there's another unknown name We're stuck on the exegetical understanding of scripture rather than its true meaning.
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Yeah, except we would not do this with any other book. It's so interesting to me how the devil plays his hands.
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But Warren Felt Evans is somebody else who really, he was a student of Quimby's, and he really melded together the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg and Quimby, and again, really helped
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Christianize that. Another person that people would really be like, oh,
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I know her as Mary Baker Eddy with Christian Science. I actually don't write about her a lot because she was a cult leader.
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She ended up taking everything that made New Thought what it was, like Jesus without the dogma, right?
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Christianity without the seat belt. She took it and made it a cult and took a lot of Quimby's teachings and said they were her own.
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She was very overbearing, domineering, but there's a lot of New Thought, of course, concepts in Christian Science.
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It is a New Thought cult in essence. So that's another person they would know. And there's a lot of players, but what ended up happening is
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New Thought became a movement with health because people were getting healed. People were claiming that through their right thinking, they were getting healed.
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And then later on, and a later development with that was prosperity. So you had health and prosperity being these metaphysical, spiritual, now scientific teachings that you are a powerful being entitled to health and wealth.
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Well, that took off. That became a movement in not just America, but within the world, the first world world, if you will, at the time.
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And books started being written. This is why the foundation of the self -help movement is
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New Thought authors. You have them taking these concepts of power of your mind, positive thinking, speaking, and they're writing about it, and it's getting out into the popular thinking.
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And of course, these are concepts that are not just bled over into Christianity, but were fully head -on adopted into Christianity because, and this is, again, the tricky part, is that even though there's a secular element to New Thought, it's made to look
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Christian. So these Christian terms are being used, scriptures are being quoted, saying, yeah, Jesus taught this too, look.
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And so there's this higher, deeper, esoteric, higher spiritual understanding of these concepts, and it made
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Christians really anti -intellectual because we're taking scripture, and we're looking at it, and we're reading it, and they're like, this is what this says.
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I clearly see, this is what this says. And they're like, no, no, no, that's not actually what that says.
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There's an understanding here that you're not getting, here's why. And it's very convincing for some people.
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So that's a little bit of the history of it, and how and why we can kind of see it in our culture today.
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And then, obviously, like E .W. Kenyon, he's very open about the fact that he was taking Christian science concepts and trying to bring them into Christianity.
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And the next step after Kenyon is Hagin because Hagin just flat out stole from him.
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So you talk about the fact that Christianity becomes very anti -doctrinal.
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And I would note that that tendency really took off after Darwin wrote his
32:00
Origin of the Species. What ended up happening, it's not a coincidence that you kind of have your romantics and this whole squishy thing coming post -Civil
32:10
War because you have the origin of the species. And what happened is that Christians in the second half of the 1800s, they didn't know how to address and answer the scientific claims that Darwin was basically saying that we all came from monkeys and that we were not a special creation of God.
32:33
And so there was a big kind of cultural push within Christianity, at least in the United States, to come up with almost this kind of two -tiered thinking regarding how doctrines work.
32:45
And because they couldn't answer Darwin at the time, they basically spiritualized
32:51
Christianity and internalized it emotionally. And I think that the
32:57
New Thought guys come along at just that exact time that as people are abandoning thought, abandoning the marketplace of ideas and just completely spiritualizing.
33:11
It doesn't matter if Jesus rose bodily from the grave. What really matters is how
33:16
Christianity makes you feel and stuff like this. How can it not be true because it's so beautiful?
33:23
Yes, and it sounds very good. And it tells you that you're a good person. They get a lot around, oh, there's so many things they get wrong, but the epistemology, the ontology, they get it, the anthropology.
33:36
Everything is stemmed from something in error. It's your truth, right?
33:43
It's you are inherently good. Like the concepts are anti -Christian in the name of Christian.
33:50
It's pride in the name of like, it's humility in the name of pride. They're selling you pride with this humble verbiage.
34:00
And that's what makes it tricky is that it sounds really good and it looks really good.
34:05
And oh, I'm not gonna be put in this box with these other Christians that look really dumb.
34:13
I look smarter. That's kind of how I took it. When I believed in these beliefs as a
34:18
Christian, and that's really how I saw it. I was spiritually superior to you. You're the closed -minded, fundamentalist
34:26
Christian that you don't get it. You do not understand. You can't come outside and understand what
34:32
I'm trying to say over here because I see it and you don't. There's spiritual laws of our thoughts and vibrations and frequencies and blah, blah, blah, blah, that made me sound really scientific and really
34:44
Christian. And there's an allure there. And so, yeah, you're exactly right. And that's, I think what it is is that it's syncretism.
34:51
They took these ideas and they tried to mix it together to make it still seem like it's not as closed -minded, but it's this better version of Christianity.
35:00
Right. Now, two more names. So, post -World War II, Kenneth Hagen and Robert Shuler.
35:08
What roles do they play in pulling new thought into our kind of current evangelical context?
35:15
Man, okay. So, there's always so much more with this. And there's, again, so much more in the book. But I think the unique take that I had with the
35:25
Word of Faith movement and Prosperity Teachings is that we see the same thing, okay?
35:31
I'm out of new thought and I got out of speaking things into existence and co -creating with God and basically manifestation, law of attraction, all these things and the affirmations.
35:42
And I'm like, oh, why is this over here in the church? What's happening here? Same scripture, by the way.
35:48
Same, like a cookie cutter. Other things were not like that, all right? There's parts of the
35:53
Word of Faith movement that are its own thing. But I'm like, what's up with this? And so, I'm trying to draw that direct line back to Kenyon and how and specifically what are those lines drawn over?
36:06
And Hagen is very important because you're exactly right. Kenyon, who was not
36:13
Pentecostal, he was a Baptist preacher. He was exposed to these metaphysical teachings.
36:19
He went to Emerson College, which is a metaphysical new thought college. And was exposed to these teachings, but the question is, did he adopt them?
36:28
And I'm like, yeah, in his own writings. You can see him basically, yeah, you can see him.
36:34
When people argue this with me, I get so, I'm like, okay, you can defend
36:40
Hagen all you want, but I'm over here looking at Kenyon's own writings. And he is saying, oh, there's truth here.
36:47
Let's take this and basically Christianize it. Not repent of it, not call it out, not say this is a cultic, stay away.
36:56
It's gonna work for a reason and it's gonna, no, oh, no, no, there's results there.
37:01
Let's take it, let's Christianize this. And that's basically what he did and wrote about it.
37:07
And so, that's really very damning evidence because it's in his own writings. Yeah, you have the receipts.
37:13
You produce the receipts there, you know? Yes, and that's why I love owning physical copies of these things.
37:19
And so, yeah, so you can see this. Now, here's the connection with Hagen is Hagen is, you know, yeah, he's a
37:27
Pentecostal guy, but what makes it unique, and Hagen is what made the Word of Faith movement what it is today because he took what, you can clearly see again, paper trail, he obviously, obviously plagiarized
37:40
Kenyon, took his ideas, and it's very interesting because the year that he decided to preach prosperity was the same year he was reading
37:49
Kenyon. And I don't find that to be a coincidence at all. He said God told him, but I don't think so.
37:55
And so, what Hagen did is that he took those teachings, bled them over, and started preaching that this is from God.
38:03
And so, all of a sudden, you in essence have these metaphysical new thought teachings being taught on a grand scale, and it's very sensationalized.
38:13
And the nature of these teachings, Chris, and this is the other thing that makes them very deceiving, they are not designed to make you think.
38:24
You're not allowed to doubt. These beliefs are designed to make you constantly say that it works because you don't have a choice to say that it doesn't.
38:35
You have to say that you're healthy and wealthy and this and that, I am whole, whatever it is.
38:41
So, it negates you away from critically thinking. It takes you away from actually thinking about what you're learning.
38:46
And so, what ends up happening is, oh, it works. Look, this is working. Look, we're getting results. Took off like wildfire, and all of a sudden, you have the birth of the
38:57
Word of Faith movement that we know today. And the way I put it is that because the Word of Faith movement does have a lot of hats it wears, if you will, when it comes to its origins, because it's not inherently new thought.
39:08
We can say that. It's not just new thought. It's not a Christianized new thought.
39:13
You have this other line. You have Pentecostalism. You have the Faith Cure movement. I'm sure you know a lot about this too.
39:20
And then you have new thought. And if they were to have a baby, you'd have the Word of Faith movement. And so, some of it's
39:26
Orthodox. Some of it's flat out blasphemy and heretical. And then other parts of it come from this other movement.
39:35
And so, now that's Hagin. And you are free to add on that, by the way, if there's any gaps that you think
39:40
I missed or anything that you can take from that. I think you're doing a great job. I like the fact you're doing all the work.
39:46
Well, thanks, man. I love talking about this stuff. And I'm like, oh, so easy to make. This is an easy video to make. I just gotta ask you a question, just let you go.
39:53
This is awesome. Thanks, man. Oh, yeah, we're jiving. We're doing great. Yeah, and there's so much history here.
40:00
And again, I wanna emphasize in the chapter, what I wanted to do, because you hear a lot of people say, oh, yeah, we see this.
40:09
We understand that there's health and prosperity and this and that. And it looks a lot like New Thought, but I'm saying, oh, no, there's a direct line back.
40:16
The original health and wealth prosperity gospel, even the New Thought historians will say this.
40:24
Even the people that aren't Christians will say, yeah, the health and wealth gospel began with New Thought. It did not begin in Christianity.
40:31
That is not a Christian concept. And that's what I'm trying to do. Oh, and declarations. I draw the line back to declarations being basically affirmations.
40:41
And your words having power, that's New Thought. So all those lines. You mean that when Ken Copeland said
40:47
COVID -19, I have no idea, that that was a New Thought action on his part?
40:54
Yes, speaking things into existence, co -creating with God. Yes, and I even specifically mentioned that.
41:00
The reason why in these movements that there's this innate power given to you.
41:06
The fourth line I draw in my chapter is the little gods. The divine power you have. Because again, they wouldn't say
41:12
I'm God or I'm divine. When you believe in these beliefs as a Christian, you just think you have a power that God has given to you as a birthright.
41:22
The language is different, but the concept is the same. If you believe you have
41:27
God's power to wield because he wills that on you, you are falling for a lie.
41:32
But it makes you feel real good and it works. Yeah, occult things are supposed to work. Whenever you abuse the supernatural, that it's supposed to work.
41:41
Why else would we go there and do that? So that's the allure that we have.
41:47
We love the power. But it works until it doesn't. Yes. And so,
41:53
I have to add that little caveat because I would note that Paul Crouch was a fellow who bought into this stuff and he died of cancer.
42:04
Yes. Tell me then, where does this go when the inevitable happens?
42:11
Because it's this placebo effect that goes on.
42:16
People feel positive things are happening. But then they eventually get that diagnosis from their doctor that says, you got five months to live.
42:25
You need to get your stuff in order. What happens to somebody who is believing these new thought doctrines and then reality hits and they are five months away from dying?
42:40
A lot of them just go and stare at the mirror and say more affirmations, unfortunately. They create the problem to be the solution.
42:50
And that's the example I give in the book is that there's this cycle of deception with them.
42:56
In fact, I just made a satire. I just filmed it and it'll be up next week. And the satire is basically, it's the affirmations having a group meeting.
43:08
And basically, that's the concept is that, yeah, we're more than just words. We are actually trying to make, we have a purpose.
43:15
But the point is is that in one of the explanations is like, hey, we create the problem because they're not enough.
43:23
And if they ever feel enough, then that's wrong. We want them to not feel enough.
43:29
We want them to not feel whole because we're the answer. So if you get a cancer diagnosis, and that's just affirmations.
43:36
It could be mindset. It could be anything. If you get a cancer diagnosis, the answer isn't, oh, this is the will of God.
43:44
The answer is do more. In essence, it's a works -based religion, okay?
43:50
It's just another works -based salvation, a way for you to control what you cannot control.
43:58
And that's where they lose it is that's where they miss it. There's a beauty in submitting to God.
44:04
Being your own God is a burden. That's why He's God. He can bear that. And so that's where the submission to Him in all, in everything, no matter what's happening, the contentment, is
44:19
His grace sufficient for you? That's the idea. And so that's the dance that people have to struggle with is what do you gotta do in order to throw down that burden at His feet and give it to Him?
44:32
Cancer diagnoses are healthy, you know? And so I think that that's really where it is is that a lot of them continue doing, you know, you mentioned
44:41
Paul Crouch, Bill Johnson's wife. You know, she had cancer. Benny Johnson, yeah.
44:47
Man, if she, Chris, if she gets cancer, and if what they believe is true, then all of us are doomed.
44:54
Because if she can't cure herself, nobody can, you know? And that's the sad reality of it is that there's a point where there's a submission there that you understand and realize that God wants you holy, right?
45:11
But that doesn't mean that you're gonna be healthy all the time. Your spirit is redeemed, but your body isn't.
45:18
That's why we have to have a resurrection, you know? And I talk about that as well, you know, the body and how they kind of see it like your mind holds you back.
45:26
And then again, it's what I said before, that these beliefs do not leave you with an area to critically think about what's happening.
45:34
You are in a cycle of deception because you think that it's a higher spiritual thing to always be in that mindset of health, right?
45:47
You have to, in other words, it's not just thinking it, Chris, a new thought, you have to feel it. So if you go to the doctor and they give you that, you are under a constant control of your feelings because you truly believe that is what's gonna heal you because that's what you have.
46:04
You have to believe and have the faith. And everything I'm saying is a new thought, by the way. Everybody, they're probably thinking word of faith.
46:10
No, this is like a manifestation formula. Like this is how you would heal yourself or become prosperous or whatever.
46:18
You have to feel it. So I think it's an amalgamation of those things. Okay, so there's certain parts of scripture, especially parts of the
46:31
Book of Acts and some of the writings of the Apostle Paul and definitely a big thing in the Gospels that just I don't see how they can make it work with their understanding of what
46:44
Christianity is. So for instance, okay, the Apostle Paul, how would a new thought person explain this litany of things that the
46:55
Apostle Paul gives? And where he talks about how he's better than the super apostles.
47:02
And of course, he's very clear to point out that he's behaving like a madman when he talks like this, right?
47:09
And so in defending his ministry, he says, I'm gonna boast about the things that actually make me look weak, right?
47:19
And so he says, he talks about the fact that, listen to this, listen to this how this litany works.
47:28
This is in 2 Corinthians 11. He says, are they servants of Christ? Talking about the so -called super apostles.
47:34
He says, well, I'm a better one. And then he says, with far greater labors, with far more imprisonments, with countless beatings and often near death, five times
47:43
I received at the hands of the Jews, the 40 lashes last one, three times I was beaten with rods.
47:49
Once I was stoned, and this is not talking about Colorado. Okay, he wasn't smoking a blunt.
47:56
Okay, three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day I was adrift at sea on frequent journeys in danger from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my own people, danger from the
48:05
Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and toil and hardship through many a sleepless night and hunger and in thirst, often without food and cold and exposure.
48:21
How do they reconcile a passage like this with their beliefs? Because, I mean, did they just say that Paul just got it wrong?
48:29
No, they would do one of two things. One, they would ignore scripture like that entirely depending on how it made them feel.
48:37
Because you have to interpret scripture through the lens of love. Number one, that's a possibility.
48:42
Number two, and this is what I see personally, this is what I would have done, or I would have, and we see today, and it's very obvious, but it's a metaphor.
48:56
Okay, so if Paul is going through the wilderness, if he's getting this or getting that, that's not literal.
49:03
It means that he's going through something rough in life, Chris, you know, and he's gonna overcome it. He's gonna have victory. It's a metaphor for whatever it is that he's going through at that moment.
49:12
And you take that and you apply it to you. Because the idea is that you are, yes, yeah, yeah.
49:20
So because it's an ever -evolving book, okay? So we understand, it's so interesting to me, and I so respect how you view scripture because you're having such a hard time.
49:31
You respect it. You respect the fact that scripture is written in the time it was written, to the audience it was written, hermeneutics, simple hermeneutics.
49:41
No, no, no, not in this view. Because it's one of many ways to view truth, and it's one of many ways to get spiritual information, it spiritually evolves.
49:53
So if I'm reading that in this, yeah. I'm sorry, because - My head hurts.
49:59
You're hurting me, Melissa. What on earth? I felt your face. I felt your face change before.
50:06
I saw it. That was so, yes, perfectly placed. Think of, okay, all right, let me put it this way.
50:12
If Joel Osteen got a hold of that scripture, how do you think he'd handle it, okay? He would take that everything that you just read, and he's like, yeah, but God has something better for him.
50:23
Paul's going through something rough right now, and the Lord sees him, and he's walking with him, but there's something better down the road for him.
50:30
There's something waiting for him. There's a victory there. There's a healing there. Everybody's clapping.
50:36
That's kind of what you do is you take it, and you rework it with your fresh 21st century eyes.
50:43
This is what a lot of megachurch pastors do. There's a life application there.
50:49
Like Mary and Martha, okay? If Mary and Martha are crying over Jesus not being there when their brother died, then that turns into, has there ever been a time
50:59
Jesus, you felt like Jesus wasn't there for you? Have you ever felt like God abandoned you? That's how
51:05
Mary and Martha felt. Are you a Martha today? Well, let me tell you how Jesus really feels, okay? So that's how it's done.
51:12
This is the root of narcissism, narcissistically reading yourself into the text. Yes, a
51:17
Chris Roseborough term. Yes, exactly, because it's about you. Because, and I break this down in the scriptures in one of my chapters, okay?
51:27
How they would see this on so many levels. But remember, there's a shift in authority, okay?
51:34
There's a God out, okay, let's take a Christian. There's a God outside yourself, but he gives you the authority, right?
51:39
He gives you through your feelings. Now notice the emphasis here. It's on you and your feelings.
51:46
So if you're reading that scripture and you're like, oh, I don't like that. Or what you do is relate to it somehow, which you can do, okay?
51:54
There's a place for that. If I'm reading Paul and I'm trying to understand what he's saying and we're human beings and we are brothers and sisters in Christ with him, there's an element of application, of course, but that's not what they do.
52:06
They take it and they think, how in the world does this apply to me today? What am
52:12
I going through right now that I can get from this and it can subjectively speak to me to guide me through whatever
52:18
I'm going through? That's how that happens. So whenever you read that, I'm like, oh yeah, Paul's wilderness would have been a metaphor for something.
52:27
The lashes, whatever that is, that could have been a metaphor for the lashes that I felt in my recent breakup, whatever it is.
52:35
Does that make sense? Does that help you understand how that would have been? Yeah, so basically this is, what does this verse mean to you on steroids?
52:42
What? Yes. Yeah, I could have just said that. Yes. It hurts my head and my heart to think like this.
52:52
And that's exactly the sentence I use is that new thought helped make what does this verse mean to me popular?
52:59
That movement is part of why we do that. Right, so in the Gnostic movements, and there's not one
53:06
Gnostic movement, there's a lot of different Gnostic groups out there. In the Gnostic movements, one of the big criticisms of Christians, at least guys like me, is that we are stuck in exegesis, that we are just looking at the surface meaning of the text and we're not reading it esoterically.
53:28
And so when you read it esoterically, it opens up all these other interpretive options that are just not there using grammar.
53:37
How is this different than an esoteric reading of scripture? It just seems like rather than talking about the universe and all the weird esoteric things that they talk about, now it's just,
53:49
I'm like the universe. It's not different. Okay. I wouldn't say it's very different at all.
53:55
I would say that it's very much, because that's where the roots are. It's very Gnostic.
54:01
Okay. And even reverends, ministers, people that I personally talk to, like again,
54:07
I did boots on the ground interviews for this book, went into the lion's den, so to speak.
54:14
Very kind, wonderful people. I'm talking to them, but I'm interviewing them. I'm like, give me this stuff. What do you believe?
54:19
Where did this come from? Blah, blah, blah, blah. Why do you believe that? What do you mean by this? Hold on a second. And I'm just,
54:24
I'm digging. And a lot of those interviews, just by asking them questions, made it into the book.
54:31
But very much, many of them, and I mentioned this in the book, mentioned how much respect they have for what we would consider
54:38
Gnostic material, the Gnostic gospels. And I'm like, have you ever read these? You have the gospel of Thomas, and I'm sitting in front of a feminist, and I'm like, you realize that in that gospel.
54:50
You gotta become a man if you're gonna wanna be saved. I couldn't even get it out. Hold on a second.
54:58
Jesus is over here saying that we're all equal, you know, and this and that. And over here, it's saying you gotta become a, okay.
55:04
Whatever, man. But it's like, there's this, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, there's a respect for Gnostic literature.
55:10
Exactly that, because the Bible is incomplete. The Bible's incomplete. There's more out there. Don't you know that there's been books missing from the
55:16
Bible, and the fundamentalists took out the books, and all those old arguments, 100%, all of them believe.
55:23
So there's more knowledge to know, more information to know, and I would have been a little bit more
55:28
Christian than them on many levels, because I would have believed a little bit differently, but the way that I saw it was that God is correcting what was missing in the
55:39
Bible, right? There's some truth there, yeah, you know, and there's lots of things there. I don't quite understand a lot of it, but, you know,
55:45
God is fixing it. He is fixing it by these other books that I'm not going to subjectively define, and, you know, narcigeete myself into it.
55:55
I'm gonna read that literally, but the Bible, no, we can't take that literally. Yeah, but there's not much difference with,
56:02
I wouldn't say there's much difference at all, because the roots are the same. Okay, let me throw a big one out here, and we're getting close to wrapping up.
56:12
One of the things I'm absolutely convinced of is that anybody, you know, Christian or not, who's been influenced and bought into New Thought concepts, there's something they can't make any sense of, and that's
56:25
Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane praying to the Father, if it be your will, let this cup pass from me, but not my will, but your will be done, and then
56:35
Jesus, the next day, goes to the cross, lays down his life, suffers a horrible death on the cross, so that you and I can be reconciled to God.
56:45
I don't think the cross makes any sense in this theology. Am I wrong in saying that?
56:52
No, you're spot on. They have to dance around it. In fact, one of the women that I talked to in an interview,
57:01
I asked her this very question, different from, you know, in my own words, but the way that she put it was that, yeah, they killed him because he was trying to teach us about our inner divinity, right?
57:13
He was trying to tell us the truth about who we were, and they killed him. Yeah, Chris, I can see you.
57:19
I see you down here. Yeah, you're like, no. Yeah, he's right, yeah. He's trying to tell us the truth about who we were, and they were trying to stifle that truth.
57:28
That's why they talk about truth with a capital T, the truth about who you are.
57:34
But I'm over here, and there's an interview that I saved until the very end to share, and here's the other thing, okay?
57:43
Even if they see that, even if they understood everything you just said, and they get it intellectually, they suppress it purposely because they know what it will cost them.
58:00
And another guy I was talking to, he was a progressive reverend, and I asked him, again,
58:06
I asked everybody the same kind of questions, and I was like, well, basically, if Christianity were true, would you become a
58:12
Christian, like a fundamentalist? And he's like, no, never. And he's like, they're the bad guys. And the irony was that Jesus looked like a bad guy, right?
58:23
This guy didn't wanna look like us. He didn't wanna seem like he was one of them, right?
58:28
They're the Trump supporters. They're anti -abortion. They're this, they're that. They're the ones saying that there's a hell, blah, blah, blah, blah.
58:35
They look like the bad guys. And what's interesting is that Jesus died as a criminal, died looking like a bad guy.
58:44
Like, are you willing to look like a bad guy? Are you willing to pick up your cross for truth to know?
58:50
And that sometimes, a lot of times, the answer is flat out, no, I don't want to do that. I know what it is, but I don't wanna do it.
58:59
And so sometimes that's just the, they were very honest with me, by the way. These interviews were, they did not beat around the bush, and it was so refreshing, if I'm honest.
59:10
It's so refreshing to have those conversations, but they, she's like, no, I don't wanna believe that.
59:16
I can't believe that, is what she said, because she knows what it'll cost her. And Jesus does say, count the cost.
59:22
So I think it's both of it, is that either they will take a redefinition or they'll just outright know what it is and deny it.
59:31
So at its core, aside from the belief that you are God, at its core, this theology denies the actual gospel, that Christ died for our sins, that God laid on Jesus the iniquity of us all, and by his stripes, we're spiritually healed, that we are forgiven, pardoned of our sins, and reconciled to God because there was a breach of the relationship because of our rebellion in listening to Satan and buying into the lies of the serpent.
01:00:08
Yeah. They reject all of that. They would say something fundamentally different about what it means, but they would deny that.
01:00:19
Yeah. Different spirit, different Jesus, different gospel. It's another gospel, yeah.
01:00:24
Yeah, it's something completely different. And Melissa, I gotta tell you, I appreciate the work that you put into this.
01:00:32
And one of the things I love about your book is that in many of the chapters, you have a whole section, when you talk about a particular portion of it, you have sections called, let me see if I can get that, unlearning the lies.
01:00:49
Yeah, and so you give really good encouragement and advice on how to unwind these things because I imagine that there's gonna be people who are reading this book and they're gonna sit there and go, oof,
01:01:03
I believe that. Yeah, I'm prepared for that. I think that there's a level of, and that's why
01:01:09
I start the book the way that I did is that I'm like, hey, this happened to me. I've been there. Yeah.
01:01:14
And my hope, and I start and end the book like a bookend, if you will, but the idea is is that I'm like,
01:01:22
I hope you lean into it. Like, I hope that there's a level of just like, oh, nope, that makes me uncomfortable. I don't wanna go there.
01:01:28
I'm gonna put this book down. I'm not gonna read anymore. I'm done or whatever it is. Like, maybe get triggered. I don't know, but my hope is like, no, no, no.
01:01:36
Lean into that. Why do you feel that way? What is it that's making you uncomfortable? Because I try to be as, the tone of this book,
01:01:45
I've been told it's conversation. Like, I'm right here with it, right? You know, like you don't know exactly how it looks until time goes on or how it's gonna land, but I've been told it's conversational.
01:01:57
You know, that there's, I'm not like coming down hard with a gauntlet. I can't help where this comes from. I'm not here.
01:02:03
I'm not changing the information. I'm not coming at anybody with a pitchfork. I'm saying, these are hard conversations that we need to have about a movement that you know, but you don't know at the same time that is affecting your spiritual walk with Christ.
01:02:18
And where we're at right now in human history, in the spiritual world that we're in and living with the gospel message, this needs to be flushed out.
01:02:28
And I'm shocked that like, I'm like, why is nobody talking about New Thought? I'm like, but I didn't see it either.
01:02:33
And that's the thing is that I, my background's in New Thought. 80 -20, 20 % New Age, 80 %
01:02:39
New Thought, maybe more. And I think that it's more deceptive in that way because it is made to look
01:02:45
Christian. I didn't even understand there was a difference between the two to this degree until a few years ago, which is why
01:02:50
I wrote this book. And also, by the way, to circle back, you mentioned Robert Shuler before. We never got to get into him.
01:02:56
Yeah. Yeah, we could, but I mean, it's also, if anybody wants to know, that's also chapter 10.
01:03:03
Robert Shuler's a big game, a big name to talk about. And I'm sure, I'm hoping that that chapter lands well because it's about the seeker -sensitive model.
01:03:11
Yeah, he had a huge influence on Rick Warren, Bill Heibels, Bob Buford, and others.
01:03:16
And he wasn't the only influence. Peter Drecker was also involved in that. So there's, but absolutely
01:03:24
Robert Shuler and his idea, he wrote a book, The Be Happy Attitudes.
01:03:30
And if you want to Google it, Google Mike Horton interview with Robert Shuler.
01:03:37
Robert Shuler was confronted by Mike Horton years ago. And I basically asked, can we tell somebody that they're a sinner in need of a savior?
01:03:47
And Robert Shuler lost his mind. He ended up walking out of that interview. He was so upset. No, you can't tell somebody they're a sinner.
01:03:53
How open -minded of him, you know? Yeah, he's the positive -thinking reverend. He's a new thought reverend.
01:03:59
You know, like putting a name to him is very important for his spirituality because again, Chris, they look at people like Norman Vincent Peale and Robert Shuler, like, well, they're just positive -thinking pastors,
01:04:09
Joel Osteen. No, there's another, again, here we are with the cookbook. Like you're taking these positive things and you're watching
01:04:16
Robert Shuler or Joel Osteen or whatever. You don't realize there's a whole other set of spiritual beliefs that's being sold along with that.
01:04:24
And it's a new thought. Yeah, he's a new thought pastor. And he's the foundation of the seeker model.
01:04:34
And you have him, the guy who's known for this, who's mentoring all these other really popular pastors.
01:04:41
And the questions I'm asking are, okay, well, how much of new thought has informed this very pragmatic model that's worked, but you know what
01:04:51
I'm saying? The whole it worked argument. Why is it working? Yeah, at what cost, though? Yes.
01:04:58
I know from personal experience that not all growth is good and sometimes you have to go on diets. So, you know.
01:05:04
Just because you're growing doesn't mean God is blessing you. Jesus made crowdfunding statements all the time. Yes, he did.
01:05:10
You know, I mean, yeah. And so, yeah. So that's a whole other thing. I forgot, it actually just came up in my brain as I was talking.
01:05:16
I'm like, oh, we never circled that. I'm glad we dotted that I and crossed that T. So, all right.
01:05:23
Melissa, I feel like we're gonna have to have some future conversations about these topics. But I wanna let everybody know, get a copy of this book,
01:05:32
Happy Lies. It's how a movement you probably never heard of shaped our self -obsessed world. And Melissa does just a bang -up job.
01:05:41
And she's got all of her bibliography and footnotes all in order. And it's just a good read.
01:05:48
And I think it will be a good benefit to the body of Christ. So, thank you for the work that you've done.
01:05:55
And I pray that many people purchase your book and learn from it and run away from these new thought doctrines to the real gospel of Jesus Christ, which requires you to think some negative thoughts about yourself.
01:06:08
Namely, that you're a sinner in need of a savior and that Christ has suffered on the cross to reconcile you to God.
01:06:17
I'm gonna have to remember that. I think I have. I really liked the way you just said that.
01:06:22
And yeah, thank you for having me on. This book took so long and so much out of me to write.
01:06:30
And I always joke around that I lost my mind writing this book a little bit. It's true. My heart, soul, sweat, tears went into this book.
01:06:37
And so I really, and it could have been twice as long. Everything that everybody's saying that was part of the problem is that it could have been twice as long.
01:06:44
But yeah, thank you so much for having me on. And thanks for always being somebody that I can call on if I need help with Gnostic stuff or anything in general.
01:06:54
I'm here to serve, so that's what we do. Thank you. All right, let me sign off real quick and we'll chat for just a minute afterwards.
01:07:01
Hang on a second here. So if you found this to be helpful, then first of all, get a copy of the book.
01:07:09
It's really good. I fully recommend it. And it's super helpful and it'll open your eyes to see what's really going on and where this stuff came from and how it deviates from the scripture.
01:07:21
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01:07:35
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01:07:41
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01:07:56
So again, thank you. So until next time, may God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ and his vicarious death on the cross for all of your sins.
01:08:05
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