Winfrey’s Windows and Itching Ears

For a quarter century Oprah opines, giving us a window into her values. She says things like* …

• “Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.”
• “The big secret in life is that there is no big secret. Whatever your goal, you can get there if you’re willing to work.”

The Vancouver Sun calls her program an “alchemy of self-improvement, tough love, pop culture spirituality and homespun common sense.”

So we might sum up her philosophy in this: Self effort. It’s another form of works righteousness, which is what all belief systems other than Christianity boil down to. Human nature itches to hear that it can earn its own salvation.

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.—2 Timothy 4:1–4

* From O, The Oprah Magazine