Recently, the suggestion to read a book entitled, “The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment“ by Eckhart Tolle was given to me by a young man in whom I love and admire. He was so enthusiastic about what Tolle had written about Jesus, that he thought that I might be enthusiastic about it as well. He also asked me, “have you ever heard of him and what do you think about Eckhart Tolle?”
I needed to do some research about Tolle, but when I found out that he was one of the “gurus” whose book was featured and endorsed by Oprah Winfrey, I immediately knew that Tolle’s writings most likely stray away from biblical truth.
*Sigh…*
This young man had contacted me via email and said he wanted to discuss what Tolle wrote regarding what Jesus said in Matthew 6:28. He didn’t write out the verse, so I looked it up.
Matthew 6:28 – And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.
When we finally had the opportunity to see each other, the version of Matthew 6:28 that he quoted was quite different from what the KJV or the NKJV says. I was expecting him to quote the verse in this familiar fashion: “And why are you worried about clothing?” That is what most “modern” versions say. Perhaps he was attempting to paraphrase?
Well, we didn’t have much time to get into detail. I did tell him that Tolle’s book was on Oprah Winfrey’s reading list years ago (2008 – I think). But we didn’t have the chance to get into a discussion. Thus, I decided to write a blog post about it.
The first thing I did was look at the individual Bible verse, and read the surrounding Bible verses. Next, I found biblically-based commentary on the individual verse and surrounding verses, and then read and applied the whole message of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6. The main point of this Sermon is this:
But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.
David Brown’s commentary is a great read. Scroll down to this section and read to the end:
28. And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider–observe well.
the lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil not–as men, planting and preparing the flax.
neither do they spin–as women.29. And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these–What incomparable teaching!–best left in its own transparent clearness and rich simplicity.
David Guzik’s is an easier read. The point of Matthew 6:28, as well as the entire Sermon on the Mount is this:
David Guzik wrote:
4. (33) Summary: Put God’s kingdom first – He will take care of these things!
“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.”
a. But seek first the kingdom of God: This must be the rule of our life when ordering our priorities. Yet it is wrong to think that this is just another priority to fit onto our list of priorities – and to put at the top. Instead, in everything we do, we seek first the kingdom of God.
Guzik continues:
i. For example, we rarely have to choose between honoring God and loving our wives or being good workers. We honor God and seek first the kingdom of God by being good husbands and good workers.
ii. We should also remember this statement in its immediate context. Jesus reminds us that our physical well-being is not a worthy object to devote our lives unto. If you think it is worthy then your god is mammon, your life is cursed with worry, and you live life too much like an animal, concerned mostly with physical needs.
iii. Jesus didn’t just tell them to stop worrying; He told them to replace worry with a concern for the kingdom of God. A habit or a passion can only be given up for a greater habit or passion.
iv. “What this verse demands is, therefore, a commitment to find and to do the will of God, to ally oneself totally with his purpose. And this commitment must come first.” (France)
b. And all these things shall be added to you: If you put God’s kingdom first, and do not think that your physical-well being is a worthy object to live your life for, you then may enjoy all these things. He promises heavenly treasure, rest in divine provision, and fulfillment of God’s highest purpose for man – fellowship with Him, and being part of His kingdom.
i. This choice – to seek first the kingdom of God – is the fundamental choice everyone makes when they first repent and are converted. Yet every day after that, our Christian life will either reinforce that decision or deny it.
5. (34) A conclusion with common sense.
Next, I did some research online and found a list of anti-Christian beliefs promoted by Eckhart Tolle.
- God and man are one (pantheism). Christianity teaches that God is distinct from man, that He created man.
- That human self is an illusion (Buddhism). Christianity affirms the existence of the human self, but laments it’s corruption by sin.
- Death and the human body are illusions (Buddhism). Christianity confirms that both are real.
- Jesus is not uniquely God, since everyone is God. Christianity claims that Jesus is the unique human manifestation of God.
Elsewhere I found:
Gnosticism is an ancient form of the philosophies aere perennius (Latin for “more lasting than bronze”) which Tolle embraces.
Definition of Gnosticism: A group of ancient heresies, stressing escape from this world through the acquisition of esoteric knowledge.
Gnosticism: (British dictionary).
A religious movement characterized by a belief in Gnosos through which the spiritual element and man could be released from its bondage and matter: recorded as a heresy by the Christian church.
It is also known that Gnosticism was a mixture of Hellenic, oriental, and Christian elements.
Hellenic: of, relating to, or characteristic of the ancient Greeks or their language, culture, thought, etc., Especially before the time of Alexander the Great.
Like the Gnostics, Tolle sees Jesus primarily as a teacher and interprets salvation as a transformation of consciousness, kind of waking up to a new awareness. Christianity certainly affirmed that Jesus is a teacher, but, it emphatically states that he is infinitely more than a spiritual cover. Jesus is God, and that makes all the difference. He is not simply one teacher among many who has found a way to God; he, in person, is the way; he is not simply one enlightened figure among many who has come upon the truth; he, in person, is the truth. What Jesus brings is not only teaching, (however moving Tolle’s opinions may be and how moving and transformative his writings may be) what Jesus brings is the divine life through the salvation offered by the forgiveness of sins at the foot of the cross. His resurrection to life is proof that the salvation Christians embrace is much more than the clearing up of a false consciousness as Eckhart Tolle professes in his opinions and books.
I do admit that I have not read Eckhart Tolle’s book. However, I don’t have to because I have found Pastor Greg Boyd’s review of Tolle’s earlier book, “A New Earth” which well describes the author’s spiritual views.
Greg Boyd is a former atheist who surrendered his life to Christ in 1974. graduate of Yale Divinity School and Princeton Theological Seminary. professor of theology for 16 years at Bethel University. founder and senior pastor of Woodland Hills Church, an evangelical megachurch in St. Paul, MN.
I suggest reading Boyd’s entire essay. Tolle may have had good intentions, but there is no denying that readers will see the deep divide and contrast between what Tolle attempts to teach, compared to what Scripture states as truth.
Excerpt:
This eastern worldview that Tolle espouses fundamentally contradicts the biblical worldview. It’s important we understand why this is so. For Tolle, the world of distinct things and distinct people is only quasi-real. Ultimate reality is one, “formless,” “pure potentiality,” “pure awareness,” etc. This means that relationships are only quasi-real, since relationships must take place between distinct persons. And this means that love is only quasi-real, since love is obviously a relationship.
This is why Tolle says that the biblical teaching that “God is love” is “not absolutely correct.” The truth, according to Tolle, is that…
God is the One Life and beyond the countless forms of life. Love implies duality: lover and beloved, subject and object. So love is the recognition of oneness in the world of duality (106).
In other words, since duality is not an ultimate reality, love is not an ultimate reality – which is why God can’t be said to be love. Love is rather a means to an end –the end being the recognition that you and all other people are not really distinct. Love thus helps us transcend the world of duality and enter “the light of consciousness itself.” “To love,” Tolle says, “is to recognize yourself in another” (105, emphasis added). For, ultimately, there is no “other” to love. There is only the self.
By contrast – sharp contrast – the biblical worldview affirms that the teaching that “God is love” is not only “absolutely correct” but is the most important and correct truth there is (1 Jn 4:8). In the biblical worldview, God is an eternal, perfect, loving relationship. As Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God is eternal, perfect love shared between a plurality of “persons.” Love and plurality are not pen-ultimate realities: they are ultimate reality!
Not only this, but out of perfect love, God created a world filled with ultimately real individuals with the hope that they’d share in and reflect the joy and ecstasy of his eternal, perfect, and ultimately real love. The goal of life, therefore, is not to dissolve all individuality into oneness but to eternally affirm individuality in loving relationship with all other individuals and with God. The goal is not to realize you are God, but to be eternally related to God with a love that participates in the perfect love that God eternally is.
This fundamental difference is clearly manifested in the way Tolle teaches people to “stay awake” and “live in the now,” in contrast to the way Christians such as Brother Lawrence (The Practice of the Presence of God) and Frank Laubach have helped people “stay awake.” Tolle encourages people to cultivate an on-going awareness of their essential oneness with life. The goal is to transcend the ego and lose any distinct awareness of yourself. By contrast, Brother Lawrence and Frank Laubach encourage people to cultivate an on-going awareness of the presence of God and to surrender to this presence on a moment-by-moment basis. Tolle aims at experiencing one’s own divine “I AM” on a moment-by-moment basis. Brother Lawrence and Frank Laubach aim at experiencing a loving relationship with the I AM on a moment-by-moment basis.
Clearly, Tolle’s eastern worldview fundamentally contradicts the most important aspect of the biblical worldview.
Scripture informs us that “the message of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.”
1Co 1:18
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
This is one of the main reasons why the Cross of Jesus Christ is often rejected, while the combination of different forms of spirituality (Gnosticism, Buddhism, Eastern religions etc.) can be appealing to those who dislike the need for repentance given by Christ in his earthly ministry.
Mat 4:17
From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
What is more appealing to the self, the ego, the flesh and the mind?
What is more accurate (Tolle’s opinions or the truth of the Bible?) regarding our souls and spirits?
Tolle’s view:
If we can remain consciously aware of our essential oneness with all things on a moment-by-moment basis, we will find that the perpetual striving and anxiety that attaches to our individual ego disappears. We will thus be free, fulfilled, peaceful, etc… The three words that are “the secret of all success and happiness” are “One With Life” (115). Instead of living with an ego-centered awareness of how we (as individuals) are distinct from all other things, we must cultivate an ego-free awareness of how we are one with all things on a moment-by-moment basis.
Where do we find Christ’s Truth?
I am reminded of Paul’s missionary journeys as recorded in Acts 17:16 – 17:34.
Note this portion:
Act 17:21
For all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing
Act 17:22
Then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious;
Act 17:23
“for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription:
TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.
Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you:
Act 17:24
“God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands.
Act 17:25
“Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things.
Act 17:26
“And He has made from one blood[fn] every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings,
Act 17:27
“so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us;
Act 17:28
“for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’
Act 17:29
“Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising.
Act 17:30
“Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent,
Act 17:31
“because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.”
Act 17:32
And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, while others said, “We will hear you again on this matter.”
Act 17:33
So Paul departed from among them.
Act 17:34
However, some men joined him and believed, among them Dionysius the Areopagite, a woman named Damaris, and others with them.
*******
VERY important note: The same decisions still occur to this day!
Some mock.
Some will hear again on this matter.
Some will believe.
Dear readers… what is your decision?
See: How To Know God Personally
Hat tips to all links, graphics, and quotes.
Tags: Christianity, Eckhart Tolle, Gnosticism, Jesus Christ, The Message of the Cross, where to find truth
Talk Wisdom 
September 10, 2016 at 3:45 pm |
Update:
I have spoken to this young man again and he claims that his life has changed for the better after reading Tolle’s book. He wanted me to read it and offered to give me his copy. He went out to his car, then remembered that he had already given the book to someone else. He has been telling everyone about this book.
Many people in my family have been praying for his salvation! The way I feel today is that perhaps it is not yet time for me to share what is written in this post. The book is helping him in his life right now and he said to me, “Tolle talks about Jesus a lot in this book. Chris, I think that you would like what he says about Jesus. It has helped me to understand Christianity better and what Christians believe.”
Now THAT is certainly a positive development!
I pray for him and his family all the time. However, I do not feel led to share this post with him yet.
There may come a time when he will need more than what Tolle has taught him via his book. It might be a trying time in his life, a desperate time, a loss of someone he loves…I don’t know. But maybe at a time when he realizes that he needs something more…much more than what Tolle has taught him…that is when I can step in and share the truth with him.
Any readers have any thoughts about this?
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September 11, 2016 at 1:54 pm |
“I do admit that I have not read Eckhart Tolle’s book. However, I don’t have to because I have found Pastor Greg Boyd’s review of Tolle’s earlier book, “A New Earth” which well describes the author’s spiritual views.”
Much like you cannot judge a book by it’s cover, you also cannot judge a book without reading it. Jesus would say you shouldn’t be judging this young man at all.
-Jennifer H.
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September 11, 2016 at 3:02 pm |
Hi Jennifer H., and welcome to Talk Wisdom!
I can certainly understand your concern because I have admitted that I have not read the book. However, a detailed review HERE explains how Tolle’s beliefs are in opposition to genuine, biblical Christianity.
This isn’t about “judging this young man.” It is about sharing the Gospel truth. The only way to do that is to be sure that what he is reading agrees with Scripture.
In our first encounter on this subject, he asked me, “What do you think about Eckhart Tolle?” I did the research and shared it in this blog post.
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September 11, 2016 at 2:06 pm |
Christine, I am concerned that you didn’t read the book, yet you are able to form a concrete opinion about it? What if someone dismissed the bible altogether because someone they respected reviewed it poorly?
It seems as if this blog post is to justify your own beliefs rather than trying to understand this young mans.
Luke 6:37
Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
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September 11, 2016 at 3:16 pm |
Anonymous (is this you, Jennifer H.?),
The link I shared in the previous comment reply explains where Tolle goes “off the rails” regarding his beliefs. The author at that link explains exactly why Tolle’s beliefs do not agree with the true Gospel of Jesus Christ. It wasn’t “poorly reviewed.” It was accurately reviewed and backed up with Scripture.
You wrote:
My goal at this blog is to share the truth of the Gospel and to use Scripture to back it up.
Here is a question for you: Doesn’t everyone try to justify their own beliefs? You did it here when you claimed that I was judging him. You did it again when you made the claim that I wasn’t “trying to understand this young man’s beliefs.”
I do know some of the history of his beliefs. He is someone from a different religious background. He is someone who delves into Buddhism. He is someone who wants to understand Christianity. He is someone who has latched onto skewed Christian beliefs via Tolle’s opinions that are, unfortunately, obviously not based upon sound Christian doctrine. My goal is to gently lead him to the truth about this subject. If he rejects it, so be it. If he eventually accepts it, then that would be to his eternal benefit.
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September 12, 2016 at 1:45 am |
Christine,
Thank you for your explanation, I very much appreciate it! Yes, this is still Jennifer, I just wasn’t sure if my post went through. I have been a long time reader here and have never commented before. I completely understand where you are coming from. I decided to comment because I have read the power of now and I love it! I think it is a beautiful ode to Jesus’ teachings. I did not get anything but messages of love from it and I too felt compelled to share it as I share bible verses. I guess your post made me feel bad about that, as if I was somehow not as good of a Christian when this book has brought me nothing but joy and strength in my Christianity.
With love,
Jennifer H.
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September 12, 2016 at 3:00 pm |
You’re welcome Jennifer! I appreciate your comments here because it added a lot to the discussion.
Thank you for being a long time reader. It’s nice to know that my posts are read out there and it is my constant prayer that they are helping people.
It is great to know that you (as well as the young man who recommended the book to me) have gotten a lot of positive messages regarding Jesus’ teachings. Perhaps Tolle has drifted away from what he had written earlier in his previous book, ” A New Earth?”
The warnings about Tolle’s extra-biblical beliefs that were shared by Pastor Greg Boyd in his blog post review on the former book were quite alarming to me. After all, we are told in Scripture to:
2Ti 2:15
Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
Jesus warned us about avoiding wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Mat 7:15
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.
People who are seeking to learn (as we used to say in the past) God’s Honest Truth can be on different paths in the beginning. As Christian believers, we begin with the “milk” of Scripture as babes. Then, as we study the Bible, over the years we learn and grow in our faith, taking in the wisdom and knowledge of Christ.
However, the Gospel of Jesus Christ does not change and it is our duty to teach Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Often, people who reject Jesus as God’s Son will find any way or means to “prove” they are correct and that born again believers in Christ are wrong. Therefore, we need to watch out for such heresy and apostasy. Such errors existed in biblical times and still exist today.
I take what I do at this blog very seriously. If I am in error, I appreciate individuals who come along and correct me. The Bible is the “plumb line” and when any apologist skews away from the truth therein, he/she needs to be confronted – and that includes me, of course!
May God bless your day! I look forward to more comments and conversations with you!
Love in the Lord Jesus,
Christine
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September 26, 2016 at 5:38 pm |
[…] faith is a beautiful religion.” This is the adult young man who encouraged me to read Eckhart Tolle’s book, “The Power of Now.” They had a great conversation, and although I didn’t hear all of it I was so proud of my son […]
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December 30, 2016 at 6:07 pm |
[…] Anyone interesting in reading about Eckhardt Tolle (so that you will know how he skews away from biblical Christianity), here is a post over at my blog Talk Wisdom: What do you think about Eckhart Tolle? […]
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September 24, 2018 at 9:45 am |
[…] to Spiritual Enlightenment” by Eckhart Tolle. In a previous post, I asked the question what do you think about Eckhart Tolle? One of Talk Wisdom’s long time readers wrote that the book helped her and in her opinion, […]
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