Book Review

The Cedar Mill library is a great place to pick up quality books. I have enjoyed the system. There are many authors of spiritual self-help books on the shelf. One such author is Dr. Wayne Dyer. He has appeared on P.B.S. on several occasions and seems to be a pretty nice guy. I recently borrowed The Power of Intention: Learning to Co-create Your World around You. I read this book for two reasons:

• It is a bestseller, which means that it has been read by many, many people.

• Dr. Dyer is a traveling lecturer which tells me that he is, at least, moderately influential.
  
  

I have studied world religions and it is very clear to me that Dr. Dyer has too. And I will state my bias upfront:

It seems to me that all eastern religions / faith systems do not see what is known as THE CREATOR - CREATURE DISTINCTION. This is a basic tenant of Biblical Christianity, and Judaism for what it’s worth. It simply states that God is not, in any way, shape, or form, part of His creation.

I think it is fair to consolidate Dr. Dyer’s book with the following quote:

Be love. Ponder these words thoughtfully: God is love, “and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in me, and I in him.” That is God talking, so to speak. Keeping in mind the central theme of this chapter, and in fact, this entire book, that you must learn to be like the energy that allowed you to be in the first place, then being in a state of love is absolutely necessary for you to reconnect to intention. You were intended out of love, you must be love in order to intend. [pg 50]

Theologically, I have several problems with this book.

1. It is built on the faulty premise that one can “reconnect to intention” (intention is synonymous with God in this book) on his or her own terms. This is in clear opposition to the words of Jesus in John 14:6 where He unashamedly declares: I (Jesus) am the way the truth and the life and no man can come unto the Father but by (through) me.
   
   
2. Dr. Dyer handpicks several teachings from a variety of “spiritual teachers” with a heavy emphasis on the metaphysical.
   
   
3. There is not a single mention of sin and the eternal consequences of “not connecting to intention.”

Readers, I have no choice but to give this book two thumbs way down.

There is a great danger in studying the works of men and not the Word of God. I will close with an example from Dr. Dyer’s book:

Within you is an infinite passionate soul that wishes to express itself. It’s God within you, urging you to fulfill a deep sense of what you were meant to be. All of our acts are measured by the inspiration from which they originate. When your acts display the faces of intention, they spring from a God residing within you. [pg 125]