Law of Attraction Deception Creeping Into Christian Churches

Editor’s note – The Law of Attraction has crept into more pulpits and small groups than most believers realize, often dressed up as goal-setting, vision boards, or vision-casting sermons. The author walks through how a popular leadership book led her straight back to a New Age teaching she had already learned to recognize and how even a familiar verse like Habakkuk 2:2-3 gets repurposed to support it. We’re running this piece because discernment about what sounds Biblical but isn’t matters just as much as discernment about what’s obviously false, especially when the packaging shows up inside our own congregations.

A Quote That Sounded Familiar

There is an energy to thought and when you identify what you desire and write down your vision, you begin the process of mobilizing the energy to create the life you want.

Jon Gordon, “The Energy Bus”

As I was researching leadership books for work, I found myself reading The Energy Bus by Jon Gordon. It’s a highly energetic and motivating read, and Jon is a wonderful storyteller. It was recommended to me by a coworker, so I grabbed a copy and read it for myself.

However, as my eyes traveled across the quote above, I froze.

Where had I heard this before?

Inspiring Deception

Melissa Dougherty, an insightful Christian apologist, has done a lot of work in the realm of New Age/New Thought and how to recognize the teachings. She came from the overlapping world of New Age and New Thought, and she produces wonderful content on YouTube if you want to learn more about these beliefs.

However, New Thought isn’t really new. Rather, it’s just a repackaging of Satan’s age-old MO: “I can be as powerful as God.”

From the beginning, he has caused mankind to question God’s motives and authority, convincing us that we are sufficient on our own.

But friends, beware. These lies sound so good to our flesh because they cause all kinds of warm, fuzzy feelings to well up inside us. They stroke our ego and feed our pride.

One of them is the Law of Attraction. If you’re not familiar with it, this is the belief that positive or negative thoughts attract positive or negative things into our lives. It’s not Biblical.

This messaging has wormed its way into churches for centuries, and as Christians, we need to be on alert. Satan prowls around like a lion, ready and waiting to pounce at the next available opportunity (1 Peter 5:8).

In her book, Happy Lies, Melissa talks about her journey to discover the truth about the lies she’d believed were Christian teachings, but were really deceptions dressed as the gospel. In her book, she says:

Love and truth go hand in hand. To love Jesus is to love truth.

Melissa Dougherty, “Happy Lies”

It’s hard to seek the truth when lies feel good. But as Christians, we should want to know the truth about Jesus and His teachings if we claim to love Him.

So, let’s seek some truth.

Editor’s note – It’s worth noting how old this deception really is. The serpent’s pitch in Eden was never ‘reject God’ outright – it was ‘you can be like God,’ and that same offer keeps resurfacing in new packaging, from New Thought to modern self-help shelves.

Exposing the Lie

As I sat on my bed reading about how the energy of my thoughts could create the life I desired, it dawned on me that this is exactly what Melissa had been talking about.

In my early Christian walk, before the Lord led me to find her teachings, I think I would have believed every bit of the bright yellow book with a cheerful school bus on the cover. As a matter of fact, I was led astray by similar teachings many times in my spiritual infancy. Thankfully, though, the Lord nurtures and disciplines His children, and He places people in our lives to teach and grow us.

Another quote from The Energy Bus specifically spells out the Law of Attraction when it says:

Thoughts are magnetic. What we think about, we attract…the energy we project through our thoughts is the energy we receive… Positive energy and positive people create positive results.

Jon Gordon, “The Energy Bus”

At this point, alarm bells were sounding in my head.

I’ve seen this belief, dressed as Biblical practice, crop up in churches too. It usually shows up by way of vision boards and vision planning, but it can creep into small groups and sermons just the same.

One very popular “vision” passage, is Habakkuk 2:2-3. It says:

And the LORD answered me: "Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end — it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay." [Habakkuk 2:2-3]

Now, read by itself, I understand the inclination to use it as scriptural evidence that our wishes and dreams will come true if we write them down (sound like “name it, claim it” to anyone?).

However, that’s not what this passage is referencing. It’s not a blank check to write down whatever goal we have so that we can manifest it into existence.

It doesn’t work that way.

Editor’s note – This is a good reminder that context isn’t optional when we quote Scripture. A verse lifted from its place in redemptive history can be made to say almost anything, which is exactly why the author’s return to the surrounding passage matters so much here.

When we read the surrounding passages, we can see that the vision in this passage is referring to the coming Messiah. The Lord was telling Habakkuk to write his vision down so that future generations would know about the promise of Jesus.

It’s not about writing down our career goals so we can “create energy” to bring them to fruition.

But what’s the harm?

This practice may seem innocent enough, and it’s true that focusing on good and beautiful things, rather than the ugliness of this life, will affect the way we see the world. So truly, what’s the harm in writing down our ambitions and desires?

The danger lies in the meaning behind it.

Planning is a good thing. Writing out our goals is a good thing. There’s nothing wrong with being good stewards of the time the Lord has given us.

However, if we believe that there’s something mystical or spiritual or magical about writing something down in order to increase the chances of it happening, or thinking God is obligated to do something for us because we wrote it down, we’re essentially saying we can speak things into existence.

Who, according to the Bible, has the power and authority to speak things into existence?

Yahweh.

In the beginning … God said … and there was (Genesis 1).

Editor’s note – The line between good stewardship and functional idolatry can be thinner than we’d like to admit. Planning a life well is wisdom; expecting the universe (or God) to owe us an outcome because we wrote it on a whiteboard is something else entirely.

Humans are created in the image of God, and our words are powerful to affect change in the world around us, but we don’t hold the power or authority to create by our words only. God alone does that.

Our thoughts don’t create energy, and they don’t radiate into the universe. Our thoughts can be misleading, which is why Scripture tells us to take them captive.

Be alert, brothers and sisters. There’s nothing new under the sun, but our enemy is really good at repackaging old lies to make them look like shiny new truths.

A Word from the Editor
Scripture never promises that our thoughts or words carry independent creative power – only God’s do. In the beginning, God spoke, and it was so (Genesis 1). That’s a statement about Who alone speaks worlds into being, not a template we can borrow for our own five-year plans. Test what you hear, even in a Sunday sermon or a business bestseller, against that truth, and hold your ambitions loosely before the One who actually holds tomorrow.

Editor Comment: The way you trace the Law of Attraction back through Habakkuk 2:2-3 and into its true context is a sharp piece of biblical reasoning that many readers will find genuinely clarifying. Your honesty about your own early susceptibility to this teaching gives the whole piece credibility through personal application.

This article appeared on Medium and is reprinted with modifications and by permission.