More on Oprah – and Truth

Yesterday I wrote about how America’s left and the Hollywood jet set are all agog with the prospect that Oprah Winfrey might make for a great Democratic presidential candidate. As I pointed out, she is everything liberals and Hollyweirdians would love to see in the White House.

You can see my thoughts on all this here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2018/01/09/oprah-potus-scary-thoughts/

I did however get some resistance to my piece on several fronts. For example, some claimed that it would never happen. Well, even more bizarre things have happened. And of course this is not the first time such talk has occurred. She has already toyed with the idea of running: https://www.dailywire.com/news/13995/oprah-maybe-ill-run-president-hank-berrien

And some other folks, claiming to be conservatives, asked what would be wrong with her as POTUS. Really? The simple truth is, Oprah is loved by the left because she is a doctrinaire liberal. Among other things, she is a pro-homosexual, pro-gun control, pro-Obama Democrat. She may not be as bad as Hillary, but she likely is as bad as Obama. She is not someone a conservative or Christian should consider supporting.

Then there is the appalling hypocrisy of her and her buddies at the Golden Globes ceremony with their black gowns on – pretending they are somehow worried about sexual harassment and the objectification of women. They may have worn black, but the amount of flesh on display makes you wonder just how concerned they are about being treated as sex objects.

As Matt Walsh pointed out:

While the media spends all week congratulating Hollywood for its moving performance at the Golden Globes, we should keep in mind that none of the people who took the stage or sat in that auditorium — not a single one of them — spoke out against Hollywood’s sex abuse problem prior to October of this past year. What changed in October? The problem became public knowledge, leaving every actor and actress in the business no choice but to finally “take a stand.” The common threads explaining both their silence and their conveniently timed, self-congratulatory protest are these: self-preservation and professional ambition.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/25502/walsh-matt-walsh

“Your truth” vs real truth

But the scariest thing about having someone like Oprah running for the White House – let alone actually getting in to it – is her worldview. As I have often documented, she is the world’s biggest promoter of the New Age mumbo jumbo. See these pieces for starters:

https://billmuehlenberg.com/2010/12/04/oprah-is-coming-to-town-be-very-afraid/

https://billmuehlenberg.com/2009/06/18/the-gospel-according-to-oprah/

Over the years she has promoted every New Age nutter there is. As I wrote in the first of those two articles:

As can be seen, every loopy sort of spirituality, occultism, and New Age foolishness is being promoted here. Of course there is only one thing missing from all this: the clear gospel message of Jesus Christ. Oprah is quite happy to flag every conceivable type of religion and spirituality except the one true message, which is Jesus Christ and him crucified for our sins.
But in Oprah’s worldview the work of Christ is totally unnecessary, because none of us are sinners. Instead, our problem is one of ignorance. We simply need to realise that we are already divine, and all our problems will be solved. In typical New Age fashion, Oprah presents us with a religion which is big on self, but small on truth.

And this demolition job on truth is perfectly reflected in the speech she just gave the other day. In it she said, apparently with a straight face: “speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have.” Oh really? YOUR truth? Whatever happened to THE truth?

But this of course is fully in line with New Age beliefs. Truth is relative. Truth is whatever you make it to be. Indeed, since you are god, or part of the divine, you create your own truth and you script your own reality. This is basic NAM teaching. And this is where Oprah is coming from.

So let’s just take her thoughts a bit further. If YOUR truth is all that matters, then of course there really is no such thing as truth. After all, unless there is transcendent, objective truth that we all can appeal to as we assess various truth claims, there is no way we can say one person’s truth is any better or any worse than another’s.

Then it simply comes down to who has more power. Those with more muscle can then silence those with less. If truth exists only in the mind of the beholder – like one’s personal preferences about flavours of ice cream – then real truth will not win out, but raw power.

Not only that, but we can never be in a place to say someone’s ideas are right or wrong – they just are. All we can do is just sit back and grin and bear it. After all, Hitler had HIS truth, so who am I to judge? Stalin had HIS truth, so I must simply acquiesce.

Getting closer to Hollywood and Oprah, Weinstein obviously had HIS truth, so why can he not do what he wants to do? If HIS truth is about using his power to sexually abuse and assault women, well, so what? At least he was running with HIS truth.

The idea that everyone has their own truth and that is the end of the matter is of course a recipe for disaster. And it is obviously self-refuting. As J. Warner Wallace put it, “Those who claim that truth is a matter of perception and opinion are proclaiming this as more than a matter of perspective and opinion. They would like us to believe that this definition is objectively true, even as they deny the existence of objective truth.”

New Agers like Oprah are absolutely sure that truth is not absolute. And they will insist on this absolutely! In which case we should just dismiss them as the fruit loops they are. As Roger Scruton rightly said, “A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative,’ is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.”

Truth is NOT what we happen to feel or prefer. Truth is what corresponds to reality. If something is true, it is true for all people, for all times, and for all places. It does not change. It is not a matter of personal taste and preference. We are welcome to have preferences on things like ice cream flavours, but not on facts.

As Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “You’re entitled to your own opinion but you’re not entitled to your own facts.” To confuse your own subjective tastes with what is objectively true is how we end up in the mess we are now in, with Weinstein doing his thing, and Hollywood actresses and talk show hosts totally oblivious to the blatant hypocrisy and double standards they are employing.

If all this is bad enough in Hollywood, it will be just as bad – if not worse – if found in the White House. Oprah can remain a talk show host and push all the relativism, subjectivism and personal opinion she wants to. But that is not the sort of person we want running the United States.

Sure, I know that we have had plenty of presidents who have played fast and loose with the truth. But at least most of them would not have denied that objective truth exists. But folks like Oprah do. That makes them very dangerous indeed.

Let me conclude with some thoughts on the great damage such relativism and truth decay does to politics and society. Social commentator Michael Novak said this in his Templeton Prize Address, “Awakening from Nihilism”:

Totalitarianism, as Mussolini defined it, is . . . the will to power, unchecked by any regard for truth. To surrender the claims of truth upon humans is to surrender Earth to thugs. It is to make a mockery of those who endured agonies for truth and the hands of torturers.
Vulgar relativism is an invisible gas, odorless, deadly, that is now polluting every free society on earth. It is a gas that attacks the central nervous system of moral striving. The most perilous threat to the free society today is, therefore, neither political nor economic. It is the poisonous, corrupting culture of relativism….
During the next hundred years, the question for those who love liberty is whether we can survive the most insidious and duplicitous attacks from within, from those who undermine the virtues of our people, doing in advance the work of the Father of Lies. “There is no such thing as truth,” they teach even the little ones. “Truth is bondage. Believe what seems right to you. There are as many truths as there are individuals. Follow your feelings. Do as you please. Get in touch with your self. Do what feels comfortable.” Those who speak in this way prepare the jails of the twenty-first century. They do the work of tyrants.

[1486 words]

17 Replies to “More on Oprah – and Truth”

  1. Hi Bill, I’m completely with you on this article. As we recently saw with the lgbtqr community’s push for ssm in Australia. Everything on their side of the debate was driven by emotion and baseless personal character attacks. “Their Truth” was governed by which side “they” happened to fall out of bed on any particular morning,! It will be the same with Oprah and her left wing Hollywood mates if she makes it to the Oval Office. In this brave new western world, the once all powerful United States will be progressively destroyed from within by national policies that are shaped by emotion and hysteria. It will be the totalitarian regimes like Russia & China who will become the new world powers. Bill, I applaud your recent series of articles encouraging all of us to make daily disciplined reading of The Word a priority. It is only in God’s Word that Truth will be found. Jesus made two statements in The Gospels that are pertinent to this debate; (1) “Scripture cannot be broken”. (2) ” You shall know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free”. The first casualty of war is truth, we’re in a war right now, and it’s only going to get worse. Bill, ALL CREDIT, for a well researched and well thought out article, blessings, Kel.

  2. Bill, I am having a great deal of trouble disagreeing with anything you say.
    Spot on as always.
    Let us hope that Americans have learned their lesson about electing a person because of the colour of their skin, or whether they are male or female for that matter.

  3. Well written last two posts Bill, and with accompanying great quotes. God forbid we are to have hoisted upon us a mad woman as POTUS in 2020, but of course He will not. We, as a world community, get the leaders we deserve, from the idiotic Justin Trudeau in Canada to the Islamic henchmen of the Middle East. The time appears to be getting rapidly closer for the Christos to return and claim back all that was tempted of Him in the desert and, apparently, stripped from Him, in His Agony and Death on the Cross. He, THE Truth, simply stated, when Judas has gone out and darkness fell: “Now is the Son of Man glorified”.
    No amount of evil, of the works of the Father of Lies and his sycophantic lemming-like, ‘hell-bent’, followers can change the Eternal Equation – NOR can, as Cardinal Ratzinger preached in the 7th Funeral mass for Pope St John Paul II in St Peter’s, just prior to his election as Benedict XVI, can Relativism, our greatest moral enemy, so ingrained into our culture from little children’s education upwards, match the Holiness of the Theotokos and the certainty and Glory of He Who cannot be Named.
    Worry? No! But ‘ vigilate itaque, quia nescitis neque horam neque diem’ (Be watchful at all times, for you know not the day nor the hour) of His Glorious Return.
    Oh, and Bill, for what it is worth, when you have written recently, about following and Understanding, ALL of the Gospel passages and the writings of St Paul, please don’t leave out the Infancy Narratives, or John 6 and the accounts of the Last Supper, when the Blessed Virgin is mentioned, AS WELL AS EATING HIS FLESH (sarx), HIS BODY (soma) and DRINKING HIS BLOOD. This does your scholarship an injustice and is not in accord with your own injunction to follow the Whole TRUTH, Jesus Christ Our Lord. No offence, but you would make a great Catholic!
    Kind regards for your mission in 2018.
    Kim Watson

  4. All of what you say is right on, Bill and should be alarming for everyone who hears her comments but unfortunately Oprah is the absolute darling of the masses. There are few others with her charisma and likeability in the public sphere. To criticize her is to kick the sacred cow. My mother, who has real spiritual discernment, used to love Oprah. She watched every episode and she’s not a TV nut. It seems in this world we now inhabit that nothing is more important than image and that a person may be believed or disbelieved based purely on whether the masses like them or not. This, more than ever, is the time when we need to get back to the Word of God and make it the anchor of our soul. There is a great delusion already upon us and those who don’t count the cost and prepare themselves are going to be asleep in the night.

  5. Sir Bill for president!!!!!
    Seriously.
    Unfortunately the world will get leaders that we deserve.
    If the people will humble themselves and turn……
    But the culture has turned away from their creator and Saviour and will possibly end up with the likes of an Oprah ?

  6. Rev Kim, may I say that Oprah would make a great Catholic:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfN2QfXAvE4&list=PLyE6swFDbOavorbZYEdL4DXHTcPYIYuCd&index=1

    Premier Christianity reports:
    “Worldwide super stars Oprah Winfrey and Matt Damon are on a list of celebrities who have been invited to Rome to meet Pope Francis.

    The pair join Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel in being asked to attending a discussion on ways to improve the Catholic Church’s image in the media.

    They’ll sit down with the pontiff in the Autumn, The Hollywood Reporter said.

    Chat show host and TV personality Oprah Winfrey is a Christian whilst Matt Damon is also said to be of the faith.

    It won’t be the first time the Holy Father has met celebrities, in January he met Angelina Jolie after a screening of her film Unbroken.

    Pope Francis has been working hard to change the image of the Catholic Church in recent years following the child abuse scandal and issues with divorced and gay people.”

    Have you not heard of sola scriptura ; sola fide; sola gratia; solus Christus and soli Deo gloria ? The word sola means alone. Nothing added and nothing taken away.

    It appears that the Vatican is prepared to work towards a one world religion that embraces all kinds of beliefs in order that we might become “one” . This sounds like syncretism and mysticism to me :
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW2QgUSIKuI

    David Skinner UK

  7. “But this of course is fully in line with New Age beliefs. Truth is relative. Truth is whatever you make it to be. Indeed, since you are god, or part of the divine, you create your own truth and you script your own reality.”

    This is precisely why I say 2 Thes 2 is not speaking of a single “Man of Sin.”

    2Th 2:3 Let not anyone deceive you by any means. For that Day shall not come unless there first comes a falling away, and the man of sin shall be revealed, the son of perdition,
    2Th 2:4 who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, setting himself forth, that he is God.
    (MKJV)

    This is exactly what Oprah and her ilk are doing. In this prophecy Paul is using a turn of phrase to describe exactly this, i.e. people who claim to be Christian but have, through pride, put themselves in God’s place, just as Satan did. We are the temple of God. This is not speaking of a single person because the beginning and the end of this text are both clearly speaking of people falling away from the church and becoming apostate plus nowhere in scripture do we see the idea that there is just one man of sin or one child of perdition. Paul is just trying to make the point by making it personal. The scriptures are very clear that the majority of people are destined to destruction. This pride is exactly what our current creation was designed to root out. People who do this can never be acceptable to God because they inevitably oppose God’s plans, just as Satan did and does.

    When John describes the antichrist he says:-

    1Jn 2:18 Little children, it is the last time. And just as you have heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have risen up, from which we know that it is the last hour.
    1Jn 2:19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they were of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out so that it might be revealed that they were not all of us.
    (MKJV)

    To those who love the truth this is exactly what we see happening. The Beast of Revelation is a composite thing with seven heads that pertain to seven kings (Rev 17:8-11). This and its representation as a conglomerate animal in Rev 13 demonstrate how the Beast relates to the New Age/New Secularist ideas that somehow everything is equal. Being totally inclusive means being inclusive of evil, which is, what should be, an obvious lie but delusion stops people from seeing this. This is why the prophecy speaks of the Harlot riding on all the heads of the Beast. Truth is very obviously not totally inclusive which should prove this doctrine is a lie but to some people it does not. How can this possibly happen except through the illogical delusion we currently see happening all around us? Secularism was meant originally to provide a path to the truth by allowing all views so that all could be considered by all and the truth eventually arrived at, to the best of our ability, but now the New Secularism says the opposite – that discussion should be shut down and that not being inclusive of evil is “hate speech”. This is the exactly the dogma the likes of the ABC and SBS promulgate. Originally Secularism was part of what Christian culture allowed and helped provide us with property rights, free speech rights, parental rights, children’s rights and religious freedom rights but now we see these things being shut down deliberately, especially by government funded media. Secularism was obviously not ideal but at least it originally allowed a path to truth. Now that path is being shut down through the deceit we see here by the likes of Oprah and the multitudes who are with her but she is only a symptom of the problem. The fact that this comes through the power of the media is just more evidence of people worshiping the “Image of the Beast.” The only reason Donald Trump became POTUS was because people worship the image of the Beast. Fortunately God, through His grace, has been able to use him and some good has come from it but this cannot continue while this constant deception is allowed to continue.

  8. Thank you Bill for this. Today I noted that SEAL came out against Oprah and he has been lampooned by the usual suspects for not making any comments about his ex wife’s association with Weinstein from 11 years ago. I was reminded when reading here about Oprah about an ex British Communist who wrote a book entitled THE GOD WHO FAILED which was about his time in the Party and how it left him disillusioned and I think this title is as apt for Oprah as it is for Obama.
    Having FR Kim write on her shows that we CHRISTIANS have more in common than what divides us.

  9. We all know from Biblical prophecy the world is heading for a disaster of Biblical proportions (pun intended) but with a good result in the end for believers. So there’s no point getting too carried away with who next will be Presidents from now on. Whoever it is it won’t be good for any of us.

  10. Thanks Joe, although it may not be “getting too carried away” to seek godly leadership as Scripture exhorts us. There is a big difference between an Obama and a Reagan. So we should seek righteousness in government and pray for godly leaders, as the Bible exhorts us.

  11. Couple the burgeoning interest and acceptance of the Emerging Christian Church with Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil and Oprah’s legion of secular minions and 2020 may be a nail biter.

  12. Michael Weeks, would you agree, however, that “secularism”, the separation of State from Religion, does not exist in a value free environment. Whatever so -called Western, democratic nation that have ever existed , they have always had governments whose laws were framed under the laws of God . Not any old God but the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This is why Queen Elizabeth II at her coronation in 1953 vowed to uphold the Protestant Faith. Whatever laws that were to be passed by her government, they must not contradict Biblical morality and truth. Tragically it has been her hand that has given royal assent to nearly three and half thousand bits of legislation framed under the laws of the Gods of humanism, secularism, multiculturalism, pluralism, syncretism, homosexualism , Mohammedanism and all the other god hating “isms”. In place of Biblical laws our governments have gone into overdrive pumping out legislation designed to limit and constrain our every move, breath, thought and word. Peter Jones of TruthXchange describes this in his talks on Oneism versus Twoism:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjquqVEJ–Y

    David Skinner UK

  13. ‘This is my truth, now tell me yours.’ – Aneurin Bevan

    ‘What is truth?’ – Pontius Pilate (John 18.38)

    On a happier note, I have stopped believing in the objective reality of gravity, and have formed the purely subjective opinion that I am therefore losing weight.

    Well done Bill, keep up the good work.

  14. David Skinner,

    What you said seems about right to me – values do need to be based on facts. Problems occur when, for whatever reason, we do not have access to the facts. We will always inevitably be somewhat limited in our understanding. The scriptures are clear – it is impossible for us to understand everything – this is why we allowed secularism in the first place. This is much of the point of scriptures like the “line upon line” scripture (Isa 28:9-13). Everything is in reality built on logical “line upon line” truth but humanity simply does not have the ability to understand it all and if we believe we can then we inevitably fail (v13). Sooner or later you have to have faith in something and it ends up being either in the true God (of Israel) or a false representation of God, as in Islam, or in the “god of forces” whereby atheists say the reason why our universe is so finely tuned is because there must be, or have been, a near infinite number of universes or dimensions or whatever and we just got lucky. God allows this belief, for the time being and for good reason, and we have to cope with this. There is very good secular evidence, however, that modern secularism does not work yet we are force fed this nonsense endlessly through the media plus the immorality that depends on this view. The redefinition of marriage was the extreme example that demonstrates the point of what happens when you shut down discussion – you end up with laws based on lies. Freedom of speech and the controls that were originally put in place that media organizations like the ABC have illegally flouted, are there for very good reasons. We have the ability to demonstrate that Christianity is fruitful in a secular environment if we are not shut down, despite the very obvious attacks the immorality that we have allowed within has allowed against us. We are not told to put on the “whole armor” for no reason. If we are missing bits like the breastplate of righteousness, then we allow the enemy to gain ground and that is what has happened here.

    Bill,

    You said “we should seek righteousness in government and pray for godly leaders, as the Bible exhorts us.” Amen and AMEN!

    We are given these prophecies and other Biblical texts to warn us and teach us. The scriptures seem clear to me that how bad things get will depend largely on how bad we allow them to get. When Jesus spoke of the sign of Jonah (Mat 12:39, 16:4, Luk 11:29-30) he was telling us exactly how prophecies work. We have the knowledge – we need to use it.

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