Everybody's Looking for Answers

In her book Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert seeks healing from a divorce by going on a yearlong journey with three main stops: Rome, for pleasure; Mumbai, for spiritual searching; and Bali, for “balancing.” Now Gilbert’s story is being portrayed on the big screen, with Julia Roberts in the lead role. So monumental is this new release that TIME magazine chose to review it in this week’s issue. In the same issue is a story on how the book’s popularity has helped turn Bali into a holiday destination for “a new kind of tourist.”

TIME’s Hillary Brenhouse writes: “Newly launched packages by luxury resorts and spas promise to re-create, in a few days, Gilbert’s four transformative months in Bali, with yoga classes, drawn-out beach dinners, massage therapy and cleansing temple rituals. Other excursions built around the book peddle therapeutic gatherings and self-discovery of the kind Gilbert sought.”

Halley Eavelyn, co-founder of a Las Vegas-based tour group that runs an “Eat, Pray, Love Bali” trip, is quoted saying, “It really did feel like Liz was helping us experience some of the same spiritual growth she did.” And one member of an Eavelyn-led tour said the Balinese people helped her find balance and tranquillity “ingrained in their tradition.”

All this – the best-selling book, the blockbuster movie, the “spiritual tourism” trend – just illustrates the search for meaning and purpose that’s common to everyone. As George Clooney’s character Ulysses Everett McGill said in O Brother Where Are Thou?, “Everybody’s looking for answers.” But they aren’t going to find them from a Balinese healer or in an Indian ashram. Or anywhere else outside the cross of Jesus Christ.

The Bible is very clear: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other Name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Jesus Himself said it: “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

But a lot of people would rather seek counsel from someone who’s not going to call them to account to a holy God. They’d rather hear that they only need to “look within” so they can feel warm and fuzzy and good about themselves. They don’t want to submit to the Lord of all creation because they know that way is not easy – it requires dying to self rather than worshipping self.

That’s the way of the human heart apart from Christ. And so books like Gilbert’s sell millions, and shows like Oprah’s draw devoted viewers who hang on her every word. And I suspect the devil watches and laughs.