There Is More to the Secret.
Ed Gungor
Thomas Nelson, 2007.
One of
the most popular recent
nonfiction books in the United States is Rhonda Byrne’s The
Secret, which argues that a natural law, the Law of Attraction,
is the secret to a happy and prosperous life. The latest work by Ed
Gungor, There Is More to the Secret, examines
The Secret and the Law of Attraction from a Christian perspective.
Gungor
defines the Law of Attraction as “everything coming into your life is
the
result of what you have been attracting to your life”–not just in
positive
things, but negative ones as well. It is at minimum a rejection of the
idea
that one’s destiny is predestined or is in the hands of fate. The
Secret seeks
to take this law and apply it to everyday life.
The
Secret is certainly an idea
that can take some things on a secular sort of faith, and one might
well expect
Gungor, a Christian minister in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to have some issues
with the
idea of “The Secret”, and he makes very clear from the beginning that
he is
skeptical of some aspects of The Secret theory and particularly in how
people
apply it. Among his strongest arguments is that even assuming that the
Law of
Attraction works, if different people are all using it on their own
behalf at
the same time, some of the things people wish for may be cancelled out
(suppose, for example, that two different people imagine getting the
same rare
item at an auction, or are competing for the same job).
Some recent books analyzing
books or movies from a Christian perspective make an all-out attack on
their
subjects, as is the case with several Christian books that are fiercely
critical of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.
But while Gungor is skeptical of some elements of the Law of
Attraction, he
undoubtedly surprises some of his readers by arguing not only that
there is
something to the Law of Attraction and therefore the Secret, but that
it is compatible with Christian belief.
Indeed, Gungor–whose command of both the Bible and of popular culture
is very
strong–makes the argument that the Law of Attraction is reflected in
multiple
cases in the Bible. Gungor exhorts his Christian audience to use The
Secret for
good to produce positive change and to free oneself from fatalistic
inertia. he
ends the book with a call to readers to use The Secret but to see the
benefits
of a conscience about one’s actions, bring oneself closer to an
acceptance of
the will of God and to follow Jesus.
It is
precisely because Gungor
believes there is something to the Secret that his key line of attack
on the
idea as articulated by Byrne isn’t that there is no such thing, but
that it
does not go far enough and leaved out the hand of God in these matters
(this is
much of why the book is titled There is
More to the Secret). Gungor rightly fears that people will use The
Secret
for selfish purposes without considering how to use it in line with
God’s will
for His people. As in his previous book Religiously
Transmitted Diseases, however, Gungor is able to make his critiques
with
both humor and command of popular culture in a way that saves his
arguments
from coming off as shrill or tiresome. He is an entertaining writer,
and the
book, at 124 pages, is long enough to make its point without becoming
overly
polemical.
While I
agree with the Reverend
Gungor that what one believes and does affects how things turn out in
one’s
life and in the world, I am not completely convinced by Gungor’s
argument on
behalf of the existence of the Law of Attraction–even as I agree with
how he uses
his understanding of it to fine tune the arguments of The
Secret. However, his
work has moved me to consider its possible applications on my own
Christian
journey. With the widespread popularity
of The Secret, Gungor’s work deserves
a wide audience, and readers of There Is
More to the Secret are likely to find Gungor’s arguments, well,
attractive.
—Jim
Melcher, July, 2007