Winding ways and trailing thoughts

Ok, so I here the Secret has made it's debut on national TV. Having been endoursed by Oprah aught to send it skyrocketing into the best seller listings across the nation. Now would be a great time for a refutation book to also come out and hit the stands. (While hindsight is 20/20 I wish I had compiled a greater mass of information and material. I wish I had put out strong refutation of it as I know I can do, but didn't.) I also here it is now in the libraries around town. I'm tempted to check it out and keep checking it out so it cannot be read by those looking for what it claims it offers. How many people are out there looking for ways to connect themselves to the "spiritual" things? How many of those people realize that truth and good are absolutes or that without such absolutes all falls apart? Are these people really looking for help and purpose or are they looking for self satisfaction and validation?

In posts written previously I went over, in brief summary, the problems of the Secret. How it is a pantheistic belief rooted in both the false science of evolution and the pseudo-science of quantum physics. How it serves each person by promising personal desires at no apparent cost and how it utterly falls apart under scrutiny, but even having watched it and studied it the truth is that people just search for the wrong things when they search for God.

Now it might be a temptation to say, "Well, not all people search for the wrong things, right?" In all the world I'd like to think someone does, yet scripture tells us that no man is good, save Christ, and that the heart of man is sinful and wicked so why do we try to argue scripture? I think we argue that we came to God by choice because we want to feel that 'we found God' on some level. That even without meaning to say so we are pointing out that we have a say in whether we find God or not. That it only requires looking in the right place, a certain amount of brokenness, or the right mind set to find God, but all this is wrong. Evangelists know that it is not the evangelist whom converts a soul, but the conviction and work of the Holy Spirit in a converts heart and mind. Scripture tells us that we can not test for God and cannot hope to command Him or reveal Him on our own. That we have no means or power by which to 'find God' and should not take credit for what God does.

This raises all manner of questions however. Such as, do we have any power/choice/control what-so-ever? A very good question and not a simple one given the above mentioned things. Most of the time this question and those like it send Christians and seekers reeling and backsliding. No need as the answer is staring us in the face, but we look too hard and so miss it. Can we be converted without the Holy Spirit? No, and as such we cannot gain a true saving faith without Gods assistance. However, when seeking God we can and must look to God and submit to Him for the Holy Spirit to come into us. The submition and acceptance is our part in this, perhaps only real role I think. We can learn the Bible want to do "good" things and perhaps even truly seek God in our hearts, but without the Spirit all we have is death.

I'm not saying that God only comes to those who submit and accept, although we may at times be chosen by God, we have do not saving faith without Him first saving us. We have only a lifestyle or a belief until that day and (good as it may be) it will not necessarily save a person.

*This post changed topic three times in the course of writing it and that might be pretty obvious. Nothing really got accomplished in its production that I can see, but maybe it's still worth posting. Either way I don't feel like re-writing it...