Eckhart Tolle - What’s All the Fuss About?

Eckhart Tolle: What’s All This Fuss About?

On March 3, 2008, Oprah Winfrey hosted a unique online class in cyberspace that reached 500,000 people in more than 139 countries. The interactive webcast, which featured spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle and his mega-bestseller A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, ended up making headlines as “one of the largest single online events in the history of the Internet.”

But this was only the beginning. The momentous event kicked off a ten-week, Oprah-hosted study of A New Earth and its importance to everyone’s spirituality—a quest for enlightenment in a virtual classroom where seekers worldwide could ask questions via email, telephone, and Skype connections. As Oprah commented with unbridled enthusiasm during her first evening’s class: “I don’t think there’s anything more important than awakening and also knowing what your purpose is.”

The seminar was a resounding success. By week five, the number of online students watching it had risen to one million, and more than ten million copies of the previous webcasts had been downloaded by fans of both Oprah and Eckhart. It was a remarkable achievement that once more demonstrated the talk show host’s giftedness in the areas of entertainment, public relations, and media resourcefulness.

Even prior to the event, A New Earth had already skyrocketed in sales. Oprah’s recommendation of the volume, coupled with her listing of it as a selection for Oprah’s Book Club, sent Tolle’s self-help guide to the #1 spot at amazon.com and made it the fastest selling pick in the history of Barnes & Noble. Retail sales of 3.5 million copies came through in just one month.4 And at Penguin—the publisher of A New Earth—Tolle’s spiritual tome set a “record shipment in a four-week span” for any previously released title.
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Eckhart Tolle & The Bible

The foundational text upon which Christianity is built is the Bible. It is God’s Word, complete and without error, and exists as the sole authority of our the Christian’s conduct/beliefs. Oddly, Eckhart Tolle, although he espouses numerous beliefs that contradict the Bible, uses scripture to support many of his views. In fact, in A New Earth, Tolle quotes the Bible more than any other source of spiritual teachings!

From a Christian perspective, what is perhaps most disturbing about Eckhart Tolle is his abuse of the Bible. It is one thing to disagree with scripture or to accept beliefs that are contrary to Christianity, but it is quite another thing to manipulate God’s Word to make it fit one’s own doctrines. And this is precisely what Tolle does by:

(1) reinterpreting verses in ways that directly contradict their obvious sense;

(2) quoting partial passages;(3) taking words/terms out of context;

(4) infusing certain texts with hidden (or esoteric) meanings; and

(5) ignoring the social, cultural, and religious backdrop of both
the Old and New Testaments.

How is this possible? Tolle relies on what is known as an esoteric system of interpretation, which is a highly subjective approach that “seeks hidden, secret, or inner spiritual meanings of Bible verses, especially the teachings of Jesus.” By using this technique, of course, anyone can make any verse in the Bible say anything! And that is exactly what often occurs, in fact, among New Agers. A verse’s meaning is determined by one’s own feelings, along with what is found to be “truth.” It is all obtained by a subjective resonance within.
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The Results

Such an approach has created considerable discussion among Tolle’s readers who, due to their unfamiliarity with scripture, have begun to misinterpret many Bible verses per Tolle’s assertions about what those passages really teach. Professing “Christians” have even fallen for his reinterpretations, proclaiming that A New Earth has not only awakened them to more “truth,” but has deepened their faith! Consider the following online message board comments that
appeared at oprah.com:

• “I have been a Christian for many years, and after much searching, prayer and meditation, I have found that the teachings and writings of Eckhart Tolle are in line with the teachings of Jesus Christ.”

• “I haven’t found anything in Tolle’s book that goes against my Christian faith. If anything, it is helping me understand better.”

• “I could not have said it better myself, this book does not threaten my Christian beliefs only enhances them.”

This is more than enough reason for Christians to begin taking a stand against such false teachings, and with sound biblical resources, be willing to “earnestly contend for the faith that was once and for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).

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{This ongoing series will be based on my new book, which is the first Christian response to the New Age teachings of Eckhart Tolle and is bestselling volume of spiritual teachings. For more info, see A New Earth, An Old Deception: Awakening to the Dangers of Eckhart Tolle’s #1 Bestseller.}