Friday, September 08, 2006

Emergent/Contemplative Spirituality Coming to Mainstream T.V.

Sue Monk Kidd, author and Contemplative Mystic, has her book "The Mermaid Chair" coming to the small screen Saturday, September 9, 2006 on Lifetime channel.

The movie/book is about (what else?) a married women who must deal with various issues in her life (lonliness, questioning where she is now in her life, etc. etc.--same old complaints) and ends up falling in love with (surprise, surprise) a Bendict monk.

Full synopsis from Lifetime's website:

"I think a woman wants love and freedom at the same time. When I was writing the book, I was exploring that concept. I think a lot of women can relate to it."— Author Sue Monk Kidd

"Take a journey of mystery, passion and self-discovery with Academy Award® winning actress Kim Basinger in a powerful story based on the best-seller "The Mermaid Chair." The movie follows married mom Jessie, who just sent her daughter off to school and now feels alone and listless in her 20-year marriage. When this restless wife gets a disturbing phone call, she must return to her childhood home on a beautiful Southern island to deal with the shocking behavior of her mentally unstable mother. During this visit, she finds herself undeniably attracted to a Benedictine monk. While struggling with this temptation and delving into her family's secretive past, Jessie undergoes a spiritual, artistic and erotic awakening. Her experiences on the island lead Jessie to discover her true self and what she really wants from her life. "

Yes folks, its all about Self. This is the rebellion and sin of Satan and then of Adam and Eve. Feminism. Sadly being a mother , wife, and daughter isn't enough, even though for godly women it is.

Feminism is not only worldly, its pagan. Its founding is in Gnosticism.

John MacArthur says:

If you read ancient Gnostic literature you will see that they attack the Creator God, they mock Him, they disdain Him with a disdain that even has components of hatred in it. They hate the Creator God who made matter because to them matter was evil, and it becomes the prison of the free floating spirit.

According to one recently discovered Gnostic text, God the Creator is presented as, "Blind, ignorant, arrogant, the source of envy, and they call him the 'Father of Death.'" Gnostics believe that this fake god somehow (and they have to believe this or their whole thing would fall apart)--this fake god somehow, when he created the universe, accidentally infused into humanity some spark of divine life. They would have to say that or they would have no way to fan the spark of divine life that they want to believe that is in them. So that man is divine: there is a little component of divinity in him which he needs to fan until it just consumes him and he becomes fully divine. But here is this man with the divine spark, or this woman with a divine spark imprisoned in evil matter, and he has to find, or she has to find, a way to escape.

Gnostics taught that there is no such thing as sin, because there is no such thing as right and wrong in the human realm; therefore, there is no need for a Savior, there is no need for a death on the cross, there is no need for an atonement. What they needed to do to be saved was (listen to this) "Throw off the God of the Old Testament--this evil God." Throw off the God of the New Testament with all of His laws and all of His threats, and all of His so-called punishment. Throw off the whole Old and the whole New Testament and free yourself from the encumbering of this subgod, this bungling creator who did what he never should have done and created a prison for us in doing it.

So you can see that the first tenet of their system was a blasphemy against God--calling God evil, bungling, ignorant. The system also included (listen to this) lies that elevated women.

Ancient Gnosticism focused on women, this is what it said, for example, "Eve was a spirit endowed woman who saved Adam." They said, "Final salvation for the whole world from the imprisonment of matter will come through female power, and the key is female self-actualization, self-realization, self-knowledge, in which a woman becomes so fully in tune with herself and so well knows herself, and actualizes, and realizes and fulfills herself that she becomes fully divine, and as she becomes divine she will rescue the rest of these lame men just like Eve, fully divine, rescued poor Adam."

In fact, convoluting the creation account, Gnostic texts tell us that Dame Wisdom was the heavenly Eve. There was a mystical heavenly woman named "The Heavenly Eve" who is the same as Dame Wisdom (she is the source of all wisdom). She entered the snake in the garden, and she taught both Adam and Eve the true way of salvation. The snake then is not called the "Tempter," the snake in Gnostic literature is the "Instructor." The snake is ultimate wisdom, the snake was wiser than anybody else. The snake, it says in Gnostic literature, is the redeemer because the snake is the incarnated woman who comes to heavenly Eve and teaches the truth about self-realization, which is self-fulfillment, which is making yourself divine, which delivers you from being encumbered by matter.

"Though caught in matter," they say, the Gnostics, "humanity once again can become part of the universal whole by a process of self-realization." They say in the Book of Genesis, "The lack of self-realization is really the problem that man has." The Bible says that man's problem is sin--sin! And the root of his sin is his self-preoccupation, so they flip that completely around.

So the heart and core of Gnostic religion then is the "consubstantiality of self with God;" you make yourself into God. You are the only God that exists: you get in tune with yourself, you elevate yourself--self-esteem, self-knowledge, self-actualization, self-realization, self-fulfillment; whatever your self wants that's how you become God--you just give complete sway to your own self-desire.

End quote.

MacArthur shares a few quotes with us from the Feminist leaders which are right in line with the gnostic lies:

The "Declaration of Feminism" goes back to November of 1971 when they laid out their agenda and this is what it says, "The end of the institution of marriage is necessary for the liberation of women; therefore, it is important for us to encourage women to leave their husbands and not live individually with men. All of history must be rewritten in terms of oppression of women. We must go back to ancient female religions like witchcraft!" Mark that, "We must go back to ancient female religions like witchcraft!"

Anne Lori Gaylor writing an article called "Feminist Salvation" in the "Humanist" in 1988 says, "Let's forget about the mythical Jesus and look for encouragement, solace, and inspiration from real women. 2,000 years of patriarchal rule under the shadow of the cross ought to be enough to turn women towards the feminist salvation of the world."

End quote.

Back to Sue Monk Kidd:

Lighthousetrailsresearch says:

"[Sue] Monk Kidd's spirituality is spelled out clearly in her book, When the Heart Waits. She explains: There's a bulb of truth buried in the human soul [everyone] that's only God ... the soul is more than something to win or save. It's the seat and repository of the inner Divine, the God-image, the truest part of us"—Ray Yungen, A Time of Departing, 2nd ed., p. 134

"Her most powerful awakening, however, still lay ahead of her ... Sue's explorations and study took an unexpected turn into feminist theology. The result was The Dance of the Dissident Daughter."

The Dance of the Dissident Daughter"Sue Monk was a "conventionally religious, churchgoing woman, a traditional wife and mother" with a thriving career as a Christian writer until she began to question her role as a woman in her culture, her family, and her church. From a jarring encounter with sexism in a suburban drugstore to monastery retreats and rituals in the caves of Crete, Kidd takes readers through the fear, anger, healing, and transformation of her awakening."—From the Back Cover

This feminist is hailed by David Jeremiah (thought by many to be a mainstream, "solid" Bible teacher, and now Kidd's book is coming to t.v. to hook more women into her pagan religion.

Scripture clearly states that all mankind is born in hostility toward God, dead in sins and transgressions (Rom. 3:10-18; Eph. 2:1-4; Rom. 8:7). No one has any "good" in them. All are in desperate need of the Savior. Without trusting in Christ Jesus as the only way, truth and life, no one will go to heaven and to the Father, and God's wrath will continue to abide on him. The way to eternal life, Jesus said, is narrow and few that find it. Destruction's way is broad and many will go there.

In addition to that, God's high calling for women is to be wives and mothers; to learn to love their husbands and submit to them, and to learn to love their children, to be busy at home, to minister to their familes first and foremost, then to other women and children within the local church. Titus 2 isn't an option.

Don't be fooled, folks. Kidd is a false teacher and is NOT teaching biblical truths whatsoever.

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