Dr. Henry Cloud
“The Secret Things of God”
Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment
DVD/1:28 running time
Grade = C-

In all too typical fashion, when something explodes in popularity in mainstream media Christian media has to parrot it. I wonder when, for example, we’re going to see the TV show “Dancing With the Christian Stars?”

I am not all that familiar with the book The Secret other than you can’t miss it in bookstores and no less a celebrity endorser than Oprah thinks it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. I remember seeing the cover blurb and thinking “snake-oil.”

. I’ll give the producers of this DVD some credit for saying that purpose in life is found through a relationship with God, a relationship that is not a “dial-up” relationship and bad things can and will happen to people.

Just like any good motivational speaker, Henry Cloud has his set of bullet-points; Search, Trust, Happiness, Relationships, Purpose, God. Many of these are described as “universal principles, it doesn’t matter what faith you’re talking about.”

Much of the presentation is full of psycho-babble and mentions Christ just twice. There is indeed a difference amongst many religions and you find extremely little of that here. Given that this disk touts being about “authentic solutions,” there was no irony lost on me that the program takes place on a soundstage in front of a faux mountain backdrop. In this age of lies (steroids, WMDs, etc), people do indeed yearn for authenticity.

Instead of watching the last fifteen minutes of this disk, I’d recommend finding a book such as The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne, a tome which has inspired Delirious?

- Rob S.

www.foxhome.com