ANE: Awakening Jesus!

Chapter 1, The Flowering of Human Consciouness. Part 2, The Purpose of this Book

Maybe I ought to give a more definitive purpose for my blog entries on this book, considering Tolle is kindly expressing his purpose to us.
People believe this book. Christians believe this book! I went on to the Oprah website and looked around on the forum boards for this book, and out of every 10 posts, one is about a Christian reconciling their "faith" to this book. That is not right! This book is not giving an accurate representation of Jesus, God or the Bible and it's making claims about them. Christians are falling for this pantheistic dribble and I cannot sit by and watch that happen. There ought to be a resource with evidence taken from the book and Bible about how they don't mesh and where it's gone wrong. This book sounds good and lovely, it wants people to be united and aware of everything around them and so live life to the full in this "awakened" point of view. That is certainly not Biblical. And so that is why I write this. To refute this book so that other's don't have to read such nonsense. But you can read it for yourself anyway and line it up with scripture. It just isn't true.

I really ripped into the first part, but I don't have quite so much for this bit, which is probably a good thing as I'm procrastinating from very important study here :D.

Tolle talks a bit about what it means to be awakened, but I cannot define it for you as "only by awakening can you know the true meaning of that word." So I wont tackle it until it comes up later (if it does). In the meantime, there are 2 things that I want to bring out here. The first is in the second paragraph,

The possibility of such a tranformation has been the central message of the great wisdom teachings of humankind. The messengers - Buddha, Jesus and others... were humanity's early flowers.

What? Did he just compare Buddha and Jesus? I think he did! I cannot grasp how people manage to get it into their heads that all religions are the same. They aren't. Buddhism teaches that enlightenment can come by careful meditation over many years, even lifetimes. Nirvana isn't heaven, it's a state of being, and then discontinuation of that being. There is no judgement in Buddhism, there is karma though.
The Bible on the other hand, teaches that bad things will always happen, even to good people (not karma), it teaches that God is most certainly alive and powerful and will come to judge humanity for their sins, and that salvation is achieved by trusting in Jesus - not by meditating, or doing anything really. These two religions are about as different as can be! Yet Tolle is comparing them and even saying that they share the same central message!

The central message of the Bible is reconciliation to God, which God achieved in Jesus. How many times must I repeat myself? On one hand it is good, because it's so easy to refute. Tolle misses the point of the Gospel again and again. On the other hand, I cannot believe that Christians are falling for this! I have Bible passages coming out of my ears, but here are three nice, succinct ones for you,

Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. 1 Timothy 1:15

For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus 1 Timothy 2:5

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 2 Corinthians 5:18-19

Tolle would then claim that "their message became so largely misunderstood and often greatly distorted" by us humans to refute me, but I am appalled at his arrogance! Blessed is he who knows which bits of the Bible to pick and choose from and he has now been able to graciously communicate the real and true message of the Gospel that was somehow missing all this time and not even in the Bible(!) If you're not going to believe all of it, why believe even some? Some of it may be true for some of you, but don't use it to back up your argument unless you're prepared to answer to all of it.

The second point that I want to draw out is when he says

This book's main purpose is not to add new information or beliefs to your mind or to try to convince you of anything, but to bring about a shift in consciousness, that is to say, to awaken.

Who's he kidding? He is totally adding new information in order to reconcile the religions of his choosing. He is adding new beliefs to your mind, the belief that everything is somehow connected by the spiritual realm, read: pantheism. He is trying to convince us of that in order to bring about an awakening and sell books. I do grant that he does say these are not his main reasons, but is that an acknowledgement that they are still secondary reasons? He is trying to get people to see that there is no reason to be critical of this book, because you don't need new beliefs to experience this shift (except for pantheism) and it's ok to be awakened and Christian(!) *cough*