Oprah has influence over millions of viewers, but when she gets an important point wrong, some are quick to correct her. Listen to the applause from the audience directed toward the guests attempting to explain the Gospel. Not surprisingly, Oprah chose to disengage from the conversation.
Note that she mentions “generosity” as a virtue. I suppose that’s why she gives her audience members so many gifts.
My name is Richard Smolenski and I am a theologian in training. I have an M.A. in Christian Apologetics from Biola University and an M.A. in Religion (Biblical Studies), and an M.Div. in Theology and Apologetics from Liberty Seminary.
Prudent Musings Copyright © 2007-2010 Richard Smolenski. All Rights Reserved.
that audience member is an ignorant dip[tick]. jesus is the only way??? sounds like she is the fool buying into the lie. religious extremists are so painfully stupid. thank god for oprah.
Why is someone a dip[stick] for believing jesus is the only way? Maybe to that person jesus is the only way, and that is their right to believe that. A person is a dip[stick] for attacking other peoples beliefs and thinking their was is better, religious extremists are people who try to make others believe what they do only because they don’t really believe it themselves and try to convince others to make themselves think that it will make jesus happy. There is nothing wrong with a person believing in christ but what is wrong is when someone pushes their beliefs onto others and when people attack others beliefs because they themselves believe otherwise.
Why can we not just accept that people have their own ideas and not criticize them be cause we believe something else?
Oprah is right. It is possible she is the messiah. I would say that 90% of those people
quoting the bible, have no knowledge of any other religion and are too lazy to find out,
and would rather listen to their fat bloated preacher, who’s either embezzling the church
funds or molesting some church members.
If you believe the bible is literal, then go down to Walmart on sunday and shoot everybody
who is working, for toiling on the sabbath. God will be very happy with you. Thats in Leviticus, you know the book you use
to prove God hate ****. You cant have both ways.
Oh, Jon #2 is a narrow minded fool.
Everybody has the right to believe what they want to believe in. If it’s jesus or a can of tomato juice. But they’ll both think they’re right and everybody else is wrong. Then they’ll preach and convert. Jesus Christ! or should I just say Tomato Juice!?
I am CONVINCED that one day we will all be suprised.
I embraced Christianity for close to 35 years. I was a minister of the Gospel, and a sincere follower of Christ.
Without going into a long story, I discovered that there is so much more to the story of Spirituality than what modern day Christianity represents.
Christ said He was ‘the Way, Truth, and the Life”. Original translation: the Door. The doorway to what? Possibly greater understanding and effective living that today’s Christians seem to stumble on? Very possible.
As the video suggests, most Christians will argue with a rock. Looking at their history and current place in society, they even argue and war among themselves (thus explaining the various church denominations). No wonder they are so ineffective. And so often they feel they are persecuted. Certainly it isn’t for “righteousness’ sake”. No, they are persecuted because society knows the difference. Profession doesn’t get it. Actions do. And today’s Christian is left standing in the balance.
Jesus was a man who stood for love and self-less-ness. The religious leaders of His day eventually crucified Him. Those who followed Him were the regular ‘Gentiles’: people the Jews detested. Nothing’s changed today.
Today’s Christian wouldn’t know Jesus Christ if He stood right in front of them. They certainly don’t consider the things He said.
I challenge both Christian and agnostic alike to look it up for yourself! Find out what Christ said, what He did, and what He stood for. Then compare His life and words to today’s professing Christian.
I think that alone will put an end to this particular discussion.
If you are a Christian reading this, consider your Master, and do as He says. Then let’s see you do the “greater works” He suggested. Better yet, go and make yourself useful by giving of yourself for the benefit of the poor, the fatherless, the homeless, and the widow: because those are the things you were commisioned to do. Or maybe you’re just too busy trying to be prosperous, going to your Sunday gathering, and leave as empty as you came.
You make yourselves look absolutely retarded with your TBNs and your Benny Hinns. Think about it.
And you wonder why there is such a great “falling away”?
Some (many but not all) christians are not very bright. Good for Oprah.
Or, many brainwashed celebrity-worshippers would rather listen only to their bloated blowhard of a guru Oprah. There’s no difference if people put too much faith in mere person like a celebrity; it’s as bad as believing a preacher is infallible, Hugh.
People should listen to their own common sense above everything else.
Hugh Junit said: “If you believe the bible is literal, then go down to Walmart on sunday and shoot everybody who is working, for toiling on the sabbath.”
Oh yes, there are some PROFESSING Christians who DO express their beliefs that way, we read about them in the news. But TRUE Christians do NOT react in such an ungodly manner. Believing something does not make it a truth just as refusing to believe something does not mean it isn’t true. Truth is found in the experiences that follow, and those who truly have that personal relationship found only in Jesus as Savior and Lord will not trade it for anything else. I know who I was and how I lived, and by the grace of God I am no longer that man today — NOT because I changed my own life but how He changed my life. Philosophy and intellect ridicule that because they cannot understand or explain it.
Hugh Junit also said: “Oh, Jon #2 is a narrow minded fool.”
Isn’t anyone a narrow-minded fool who must bash those who have an opinion or belief contrary to their own?
Kevin said: “I am CONVINCED that one day we will all be suprised.”
I am too, Kevin. I believe it was John Bunyan who stated over 300 years ago: “Many Christians will be surprised when they stand at the gates of heaven to find a portal to hell.”
Kevin also said: ” You make yourselves look absolutely retarded with your TBNs and your Benny Hinns.”
I agree again, Kevin. TBN and Benny Hinn are prime examples of how Christian TV is highly entertaining and, in my own opinion, all too often a mockery and embarrassment to the true Gospel. And so are Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
But where do you stand now, Kevin? “Cowardly” — not a soldier afraid to fight, but those who are afraid to stand for what they believe — is first on the list of those going to hell. “Unbelieving” is second on the list in Revelation 21:8.
Man has superb wisdom, evidenced by what man has accomplished. But it is also that very wisdom that has caused man to say “We don’t need God”, refusing to believe that it was He who gave man this wisdom AND the free will to choose. But man’s need to believe and worship something has created the vast assortment of religions with something for everyone.
Christianity rubs against intellectualism. Oprah is an intellectualist who dabbles in all sorts of philosophies that generate interest among her followers, Christian and non-Christian alike. A Christian will never win an intellectual / philosophical argument or debate with a non-Christian over a claim of truth.
We can argue religion and get nowhere because people will believe what they want to believe. Those who lump Jesus with all other religious leaders miss the “main” thing: No other prophet or leader ever claimed to be GOD as Jesus did, which is the real reason He was crucified – for claiming to be equal with God — believed to be heresy.
Christianity isn’t about just another religion. Christianity is all about knowing God for who He is and believing that only God could come as a sinless man in the bodily form of Jesus to offer Himself as a sacrifice for any and all who believe, and through His resurrection bring eternal life to His FOLLOWERS.
Yet God does not force Himself upon anyone’s free will. We hear, we choose. So, why would anyone expect to go to heaven if he or she refuses to accept Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, and acknowledge God as Creator of all things?
Do you know where you are going when you die? If you aren’t sure, you can be. There are only two choices — each with consequences.
The first poster, John, writes:
“that audience member is an ignorant dip[tick]. jesus is the only way??? sounds like she is the fool buying into the lie. religious extremists are so painfully stupid. thank god for oprah.”
Leftists, like angry and arrogant John, pretend that theirs is the one and only way – the way of intellectualism and enlightenment, as they forge ahead holding up the cross of science.
This is the same science that has been wrong time and time and time again.
Science held that phlogiston was the source of all heat and fire.
Science held that cutting open people’s skulls and bleeding them would heal their illnesses.
Science gave us the atomic bomb, and partial birth abortions, and internet pornography.
Brilliance is not an absolute good. The Unabomber was a professor at UC Berkeley, and yet he murdered people using package bombs as he lived life in a filthy rathole, alone and hateful.
Such is the mentality of many on the godless left.
Faith is not something primarily based on fact and proof. That is why we call it faith.
If there were conclusive proof satisfactory to everyone, belief in God would not be faith.
Brandon Carter first presented the Anthropic Principle, showing the insuperable statistics of physical constants, laid out by the Supreme Designer of all things.
Matter is one part in 10 to the 17th power “stuff” and the balance is absolutely empty space.
Those who believe the earth made itself, and matter created itself, and organization and cycles and the wonders of sunsets and our nearby nuclear power plant, with no gauges and no technicians all made themselves out of nothing are believers in the grandest hoax of all.
Two things are incomprehensible:
1. That everything just made itself
2. That God made everything.
The former is anti-scientific, absurd, and incomprehensible.
The latter is elegant, plausible, and equally incomprehensible.
Chose only one. There will be a test. It will not be graded by Richard Dawkins.
There are way too many religous beliefs to argue the rights and wrongs of each. If Christian resonates in your heart as the right way to go, then so be it…..but even if you do not agree with the beleifs of others, your religions beliefs should at least teach to you respect others.
Thanks for posting this snippet from Oprah; obviously it’s sparked a lot in all of us!
I have 4 points I would like to make:
1. You can be totally respectful of someone’s beliefs without embracing them. I think the gal who was trying to promote Christianity on this episode of Oprah totally meant well but came across as argumentative. I think as many state here, that everyone can believe whatever they choose. I seek whole heartedly in my life to live respectfully toward others and to teach my children the same.
2. I believe that you can believe whatever you choose but Jesus did claim that He was the only way to God and that He was indeed God in the flesh. Jesus claimed that He is willing to pay the price for each person’s sin that separates us from God and to come into our souls if we ask Him to and cause us to be re born of His spirit so that we can remain with Him forever. You can choose not to believe that but I have trouble with people who try to say that isn’t what He said. So, by it’s very nature, Christianity believes itself to be the only way to God. Why criticize people for believing what their scripture so clearly teaches? It seems somehow that it is OK to criticize Christians for being intolerant but at that same time, the criticizers are being intolerant of Christianity.
3. Regardless of what jerks Christians (and may I note here that there are people in all walks of life who are jerks. In fact, if I’m going to be really candid – sometimes I am a jerk) may be we all have to deal with this issue of Jesus. I think CS Lewis did a great job when he said that you have to say that Jesus was either a lunatic – crazy man claiming to be God, a liar – a man claiming to be God when he knew he was not for some kind of gain (though Jesus never got gain on this earth) or that Jesus was indeed the Lord God. So you may say that you think Jesus Christ was a lunatic and you don’t want to follow that lunatic led Christianity – that is a fair statement. But you may not really say that Jesus was one of the really great teachers who taught one set of good choices among many – that is not really an option if you study Jesus.
4. Since issues of Life, Death, Spirituality are the great issues of life I challenge you to look at Jesus and decide for yourself. Read Matthew, Mark, Luke and John of the Judeo-Christian bible. Suspend your prejudices and all the bad things you’ve seen in religion (specifically all the bad things you’ve seen in Christianity) and research about Jesus. Then decide for yourself. I did just that and fell in love – with Jesus.
[quote comment="136"]Oh, Jon #2 is a narrow minded fool.[/quote]
I’m Narrow minded? I was just saying that I believe we should all stop criticizing other peoples beliefs ad realize that everyone has the right to have their own beliefs. How in the hell does that make me narrow minded? I guess I wasn’t clear, I never see the Oprah video anyways, I was just making a statement, guess I was misunderstood.