I discussed yesterday how Oprah encourages us to “live our own truth.” This is the Oprah mantra. “Don’t hide your secrets,” she exhorts us. “Live your own truth!”
Cue the applause.
Soccer moms begin their nodding.
The ratings rise.
This is one facet of the gospel of self.
On Tuesday’s show Oprah was interviewing married women that discovered after their wedding vows that they were actually gay. So, as I discussed yesterday, the thrust of the program was the bravery of these women and the difficulty of their struggle. Oprah and the audience had a lot of congratulatory applause for these brave women.
For Oprah, biology is destiny. These women found themselves attracted to people of the same gender. So, that must be their natural inclination. And, if that’s what their loins crave, it must be right. They must be born that way. After all, that’s “their truth.” They need to live it with courage and boldness. Supporters of same sex lifestyles always point out that no one would choose to be gay. It’s too tough a road to choose on your own. It’s a road fraught with persecution and social stigma. Therefore, it must be our natural inclination.
However, what do we do with other biological desires? The man who burns in his loins for children or for animals? What if he feels equally strong about his desires? Can he act on them? Should he? After all, talk about a tough road to choose. Who would choose to be a pedophile? I would guess that that’s a road fraught with stigmatization. Would anyone choose it?
Does Oprah encourage him to live his truth? If not. Why not?
Suddenly her doctrine of the infallibility of biological desires breaks down. She’s not prepared to say that he should act on that desire. And, she’s right. He shouldn’t. The problem is Oprah has to come up with an explanation for why he feels that way. Remember, her default answer is “live your own truth.” So, she’s got to come up with a way to explain why this guy has a “bad truth.” After all, aren’t our loins the guide? What if he feels like he’s listening to his heart?
Herein lies the problem with the Oprah worldview: She (and we) can’t hold it consistently. She’s got to come up with a way to approve of what she likes and explain away what she doesn’t. How does she do it?
Here’s how she explains the pedophile’s reprehensible behavior. He was wounded that way. Someone or something busted his internal compass. That’s what knocked his compass askew. In the world of Oprahvity people are born with pure desires and if they go bad it’s because some external force pushed them off course.
The Christian worldview is that we’re all born depraved. Like a car that is out of alignment, our tendency is to desire things that are wrong. A desire that comes from within is not always right. Because our internal compass is busted, we must navigate from something other than our “heart.”
Look at what the bible says in Jeremiah 17:9. “The heart is deceitfully wicked, who can know it.”
Living our own truth is actually a very dangerous thing.
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