Imagine this scenario:
You’ve hit a tough season in your life. Maybe you feel spiritually dry because of it, and you’re tired of going through the motions each day only to go to bed wondering how you’re going to get through tomorrow.
You tell your friend at church about how difficult it’s been, and they have the perfect solution. You just need more clarity in your life, they say. You need to make a vision board. Put all of the things you want the Lord to do in your life up on the wall so you can see the life you want. You just need to focus on the positives. Focus on the good. Your thoughts and words have power! Pray more confidently about these things and see what happens!
They begin to explain that if all you think about are negative things, your life is inevitably going to be more negative. Of course you won’t get the promotion at work if you don’t believe you can get it! But if you focus on the positives, then positive things will come to you.
And here’s the crazy thing: as you begin to take their advice, their advice begins to work. The more positive you are, the better your life seems to get. The better your life seems to get, the more you begin to believe in the power of positive thinking. And since it’s been tied to your prayer life, you begin to believe that the Lord is behind this. How could something that has brought good to your life, something that is working, possibly be bad?
And this, my friends, is how easy it is to be caught by the enemy.
“How could something that has brought good to your life, something that is working, possibly be bad?”
Many of us have been trapped in the lie that something that works must be good for us. And that the Law of Attraction works. This is because any good lie has to be believable, and the enemy has done his best work in making this particular lie as believable as possible. This is because when it’s full grown, it strips us of the conviction that we need God and replaces it with the idea that we can become our own god. This has been Satan’s lie from the very beginning, and this is how he is using it in our modern-day world.
Maybe this seems new to you. Maybe you’ve not heard of the Law of Attraction before. But I’ll bet you’ve been told that your words have power to make your own reality. I’ll bet you have friends that believe that prosperity and health is theirs if they just ask, believe, and receive it. Maybe you’ve heard of the idea that your thoughts create reality, and you can manifest the power of God through those thoughts. Maybe you’ve seen one of our country’s most famous pastors share prosperity “I Am” affirmations (I am healthy, I am wealthy, I am prosperous!) with the guarantee that these things can be true for you if you just believe it in your heart.
Sounding more familiar now? This is the Law of Attraction, which is a core feature of New Thought, sometimes known as the “positive thinking movement.” And it’s everywhere, even in churches.
“This is the Law of Attraction, which is a core feature of New Thought, sometimes known as the ‘positive thinking movement.'”
So where did it come from, and why does it work? The short version is that it began in the mid-nineteenth century, when legalism was at its peak and Americans were tired of staunch, dry religion. For too long, they had been told that you could only worship God a certain way. If we look at the history of humanity, we absolutely hate being told what we can and cannot do, especially when it comes to our beliefs. The Transcendentalism movement was rising quickly, and with it, the belief that truth was relative and the Bible should be interpreted through intuition and feeling rather than truth and logic. Over time, it morphed into the belief that one’s thoughts and emotions have more power than the Bible itself, and what you think in your mind creates your external reality.
Then, in 2006, the book The Secret was published. The author, Rhonda Byrne, took this hundred-year-old idea and rebranded it. Within a few years, it was picked up and promoted by Oprah, where it absolutely exploded in popularity and became mainstream even within some circles of modern American Christianity.
All of that to say, the Law of Attraction has deep roots, and if you aren’t willing to dig, you might be deceived by the false fruit it bears. Which begs the question: why does it seem to work?
“It morphed into the belief that one’s thoughts and emotions have more power than the Bible itself, and what you think in your mind creates your external reality.”
The main idea of the Law of Attraction is that “like attracts like.” The belief is that you are responsible for the outcomes of your life based on the positivity or negativity of your thinking. So yes, this means if you get a terrible disease, it means you have had too many negative thoughts. But it also means if you get the huge promotion at work, your thoughts are what got you there. This is where we begin to see why it “works,” as it’s easy to retrofit what happens in our lives to hopes and fears we experienced beforehand.
And it’s common sense that if you think positively, let’s say, about your job, you’re likely going to work harder. If you think negatively about your job, you’re likely not going to do your best. So naturally, those that get the promotions are probably the positive thinkers. This is what some would say is the Law of Attraction at work. Of course, it usually doesn’t work when it counts most—such as when you hype yourself up to believe that the doctor will have good news when he doesn’t.
Yet even when something does “work,” that certainly does not mean it comes from God. If I need a break from my children, I can stick a screen in front of their face for the entire day. They will watch Bluey for as many hours as I allow them, and I can get the break I so desperately want. It works. But this does not mean it’s what’s best for them, or what God has called me to do as their parent. Just because it works does not mean it’s good and right.
“The belief is that you are responsible for the outcomes of your life based on the positivity or negativity of your thinking.”
Now, when it comes to the basic ideas of the Law of Attraction, we can all agree that we should try to think positively. We should take every thought captive and try not to dwell on negative thoughts. But nowhere in the Bible does it say that our thoughts create our reality. In fact, the Bible says, “[Our Father] causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:45, CSB, emphasis mine).
What the Law of Attraction is teaching flies right in the face of what the Bible tells us about who is in charge of the outcomes of our lives. The Law of Attraction gives us a false sense of hope because it teaches that we can control the details and the outcomes if we just believe in ourselves enough.
The Bible shows us that Jesus alone gives us true hope because he takes the burden of outcomes off of our shoulders. He is in charge, and no amount of manifesting positive thoughts or clarity through vision boards is going to change that, and that should bring a ridiculous amount of peace. This is what Jesus is talking about when he says,
“Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Don’t let your heart be troubled or fearful.” (John 14:27, CSB)
“The Bible shows us that Jesus alone gives us true hope because he takes the burden of outcomes off of our shoulders.”
The Law of Attraction is trying to tell you that your peace comes from within your own mind—and that when tragedy strikes, that’s on you, too. But this is just an old lie tied in a new bow. This is a works-based faith, telling you that if you just do the right things, if you just do enough, then you will have peace and fulfillment. But Jesus already did the work. You don’t have to manufacture the right thoughts from within to have the kind of peace that wipes away the overwhelm of this life.
Don’t let this threat from the enemy creep into your own life or your own churches. Don’t believe the lie that it’s up to you to create your reality. You don’t need to trust your ability to think positive thoughts or manifest your best reality. You need to trust the One with the power to use both triumph and tragedy to write a far richer story of redemption.
