Easy Religion

So this morning I got an email from my friend about this new book craze that Oprah is promoting. And let me start by saying I've always been an oprah fan, when I get the chance I love to take a break around 4 o'clock and watch a little oprah! The email was a link to a Utube video that a church made about Oprah's "church", which is not actually a church but playing to the notion that she really has a lot of followers, ones who eat up anything she says about religion and otherwise.
I watched the video which included a clip from one of her shows where she is quoted saying that there is more than one path to God, that Jesus can't be the only way. It includes other quotes that disagree with the idea of there being one God, one path to Salvation and a true need for the Cross. Then there is a clip from the Online series where she is talking with the author of this new book "A New Earth". Now, I am not a totally educated skeptic because I have not read his book, however I've thought a lot about some of the concepts and I think they are both attractive and deceptive for some of the same reasons that lots of other religions are and have been.
This video I watched talked about there being no Sin, no need for the cross, that our holiness comes from within ourselves and it goes on and on. First let me note, that I may sound really uneducated here, but it is confusing. Someone in the email noted that it is harder to believe than Christian doctorine! Second, I've found that it is really attractive to us, as proud human beings to buy into a religion where we can fix our problems with sin, pain and death by our selves. One time at a campaigners group (like a bible study for highschoolers) I asked my girls what they would do in this situation;
You are in court because you robbed a bank, and you are sentenced to 35 years in prison. Some guy stands up and say that he is willing to go to jail for you, to pay your debt, to suffer the consequences of what you did, even though he is innocent of the crime. The judge accepts his offer, and it is up to you, would you let him do the time for your crime? EVERY ONE OF MY GIRLS SAID NO!
Why is that? Why would you want to go to jail if you didn't have to? Because, it is really hard to let someone else take care of our problems. It is more difficult for us as humans to accept that Jesus would die for us, take care of our need to pay for our sins, would hand us salvation on a silver platter, than to do it ourselves. This new book is so popular, I think, because it gives people a way to solve their problems themselves, they don't need Jesus, and they don't have to surrender to anyone. Surrender is hard. Asking for forgiveness is hard. And for the same reason I think a lot of religions and even denominations of Christianity are popular. They offer people a way to work their own way out of Hell. A set of rules to make them feel Holy because they can obey them. But as hard as surrender is and accepting the cross is, isn't this such a beautiful picture of love? These religions that allow us to do it all ourselves, lack Grace. We can only recieve Grace and real Love if we don't deserve it! It's like marriage. What good is your marriage if you can't serve each other, and allow each other to pick up where you lack? We lack the solution to our sin, the alternative to death, and Jesus has it and offers it to us. We just have to surrender and accept!