Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”  Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. (John 14:6-9).

Through several years in the mid-eighties I was director of communication for Bibles for India (now Mission India).  One of our projects was to develop a seminar on the “New Age Movement” (NAM) that was sweeping through the West at that time.  We called the seminar “The New Age of Paganism.”  We were especially concerned about the friendly but false face the NAM was giving to Eastern religions and philosophy and the faulty judgments New Age adherents were making about Christianity.  We concluded that the “new age” was simply the “old lie” that people could be gods.

Here’s a good overview of the NAM from Wikipedia:

The New Age Movement is a spiritual and quasi-religious Western movement that developed in the latter half of the twentieth century. Its central precepts revolve around “drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational psychology, holistic health, parapsychology, consciousness research and quantum physics“ in order to create “a spirituality without borders or confining dogmas” that is inclusive and pluralistic. Another of its primary traits is holding to “a holistic worldview,” thereby emphasizing that the Mind, Body and Spirit are interrelated and that there is a form of Oneness and unity throughout the universe. It further attempts to create “a worldview that includes both science and spirituality” and thereby embraces a number of forms of science and pseudo-science.

That’s an excellent summary of what we were dealing with then—and the entire global community continues to deal with today.  Our judgment was that the NAM was creating a popular alternative to Christianity based on both a misunderstanding of Christianity and of Eastern religion/philosophy.  We saw that people were rejecting the gospel of Jesus Christ by denying human sinfulness and the need of Jesus’ atoning sacrifice for sin and by actually claiming that each person was God in the flesh (via Oneness or Monism).  And the NAM was also making inroads with the big nature agencies like the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society because of its earth-friendly nature and earth-deifying modes of worship—one of the reasons, of course, that conservative Christians rejected both the NAM and active caring for the creation.  And that turned out to be another of our acts of “throwing out of the baby with the bathwater.” (New Age images sources A and B)

In my research for the seminar I discovered a troubling thing about the church.  Much of the appeal of the NAM was directly related to characteristics which were missing in the church and should have been there: understanding the holistic union of mind, body, and spirit; recognizing the need to care for the earth; staying aware of new scientific discoveries and conclusions; valuing personal relationships; and grasping the need for community—community that included the natural world that surrounds us.  It was these lapses in Christianity that Francis Schaeffer said would make pantheism the religion of the Environmental Movement (saying it a good ten years before the NAM burst on the scene).  He was right.

There’s a lot of truth in the New Age Movement—which reminds us that the most important ingredient in deception is the truth it contains.  Satan’s favorite color is not black; it’s off-white.  His Infernal Majesty delights in seeing people come close to Christ but still miss Him.  I’m of the opinion that cults and false religions often have their appeal because they offer something that’s missing in the Christian faith.  The NAM draws in some of its adherents by respecting the Mind of the universe (the one we call God), offering warm and caring personal relationships, centering on the spiritual side of human nature, seeing the importance of caring for creation, “reducing, recycling, and reusing,” celebrating the wonder and mystery of creation while keeping up with scientific findings, praising the virtues of simple living, rejecting the idea that material wealth is what creates happiness, and supporting community sponsored agriculture (CSAs).

Those are all good practices—even Christian practices, and the more we ignore them, the more we may drive people away from Jesus and from the church.  Give some thought this week to incorporating some of these into your own life—while centering on our Creator-Savior: Jesus Christ, the One, sadly, that New Age adherents reject—to their eternal peril.

[Read what Dr. Paul Brand believed about God's good earth in the RBC Ministries booklet of that title.  You can read it online or order a couple copies without cost.  Link: "God's Good Earth" ]

[Go to the ECHO website to see a model Christian agriculture research center, and read about a church that is doing a lot to care for creation and for people here. Read "A Call To a Simpler Life" by its pastor, Tri Robinson.]