Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - June/92

Contributor - Daniel Meeter

Title - The New Age Movement: Modern Version of Old Fashioned Paganism

Topic - Cults

New Age is a counter-culture name for a revived interest in old and new religions. The age it refers to is the Age of Aquarius, an astrological notion about a certain constellation of heavenly bodies, which is supposed to begin in the year 23 75. It Rill replace the 2000-year age of Pisces that is "characterized by religious faith in and scientific explanations of the forces of nature and life" and by the supremacy of technology. We are now living in the waning years of this Pisces period, the vestibule to millennia of higher attainment.

Many people are afraid of the New Age Movement. The fear is caused not so much by what they know than by what they don't know. A few years ago I picked up a book about New Age in a Christian book store. The lady who served me commented that that was a good book on the subject and then said: "Did you know that Gorbachev is New Age?" I didn't know that Gorbachev is New Age, and I don't believe he is. I think the lady's remark revealed her ignorance, more than her knowledge, about the New Age Movement. The purpose of this article then is to answer some basic questions about the movement.

New Age Fills a Spiritual Vacuum

The New Age Movement is not a single organized movement. There are within it many leaders and many different groups. There are also strong disagreements between members and groups within the movement and many are in it to make a profit by selling you a book.

What attracts people about the New Age Movement is its interest in religion. "If it is religious," they reason, "it must be good. How can you object to those who claim to believe in God?" But there is a catch! The god of the new Age Movement can be any god, just as paganism has a god or gods. However, their god is not the God of the Scriptures!

The reason why New Age emphasizes spirituality is because the modern world is so empty of spirituality. New Age gives full recognition to man as a spiritual being. "Man has a soul," New Age advocates insist. However, their understanding of the soul is different from that spoken of in the Bible. Whereas the Christian Church confesses the resurrection of the body, New Age teaching will use terms such as immortality of the soul or reincarnation (reappearance of the soul after death in a different body).

The New Age Movement is interested in the spiritual harmony of the entire created world. They reject the distinction between a natural and a supernatural realm in the world. To them it is all one realm. The natural world is itself supernatural. This means, for example, that there is not only a science of biology, but also a science (a systematized knowledge) of the soul and of spirituality. Everything is connected and can be explained by a New Age science; namely, that you cannot understand the natural world unless you understand the spiritual world.

New Age and Salvation

The whole world exists as a spiritual harmony. Trees, rocks, stars, everything is spiritual, and if we are spiritual people then we can relate to the spiritual universe. We can channel through ourselves the same spiritual energy that upholds the rest of the world. This is what is called channelling. It is a way of being open to the spiritual power of the elements of the universe. We can relate to them, we can have communion with the rest of nature; not only with God or the gods, but with all other reality, natural and supernatural.

What kind of salvation does New Age offer? It is salvation in the sense that you are at peace and in harmony with yourself and with the world. How is that salvation obtained? The answer is through increased spirituality which may be attained, for example, through increased meditation or any other spiritual techniques. It is a salvation which is directed from earth to heaven, from self to God. It is contrary to the Biblical understanding of salvation which comes from heaven to earth, from God to sinners. "By grace alone," and "through faith alone," are the core of the Christian Gospel.

The New Age Movement uses many bits and pieces of Christianity. New Age will say yes " to Jesus Christ, but their Christ is not Christ according to the Scriptures. New Age will say, Christ may be (a) god, but he is not the Way, the Truth and the Life - the only Name under heaven by which we must be saved. New Age does not seriously question the virgin birth, or the resurrection of Christ from the dead, but its adherents will not subscribe to the entire Apostle's Creed as the summary of the promises of God. While the New Age confirms Christians' faith in God, it does not confess Him as "the One God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Why does New Age appeal to people? It's because it is an attractive alternative to secular humanism, the belief that man is the measure of all things, and that human progress and human fulfilment can be obtained through man's own achievement. New Age is seen as a welcome reaction against scientism and materialism, both of which have failed to provide answers to the deeper questions of life. There is a spiritual side to life, New Age people maintain. The secular man rejects this. Even Christians show little evidence of what it means to live spiritually. They are often as materialistic and unspiritual as worldly people are.

New Age's emphasis on man's harmony with nature brings with it a concern for the environment. They note the destruction to the environment and the damage suffered because the ecology has been disturbed. The only way to stop exploitation of the environment, according to New Age, is to be in spiritual harmony with the world. If you are in spiritual harmony with the trees or the land, you will treat nature with respect.

Testing the New Age Philosophy Well, what are we to think of this? What is the Biblical understanding of man and the world and the relationship between the two?

Like New Age, the Bible does not distinguish between nature and supernature, or the natural and the supernatural. In fact, the Bible does not even recognize something called nature. The Bible speaks of creation and it recognizes a wholeness or harmony in it. The fact that in the beginning "the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters," (Genesis 1:2) is indication of that wholeness that God intended for creation. It is also true that man was created in fellowship with creation. That is why the world opens in a Garden! There is truth, then, in the notion that there is a spiritual side to the world; that the world as we know it is more than pure physics, or pure chemistry, or pure biology! The elements of the universe (however they may be understood by today's science), and the laws of creation, and the powers that keep the universe going have a spiritual side to them; they are related to God.

However, God has placed limits around human beings in terms of their relationship to the world. To be spiritually related to the world, God said, is to be related to my Covenant, to My Word. It is to live in conformity "4th my Word and in obedience to my Word. Thus, in accordance with God's Word, Adam and Eve were given dominion over the world. They were not to be slaves to the elemental spirits (Galatians 4:8), but they were to subdue the earth (Genesis 1:28) as God willed. That meant that Adam and Eve were to work in the Garden. They were to give governing love and care to God's creation on God's behalf They were to exercise power in the world through obedience to God's Word.

The Elemental Spirits

Sin destroyed all relationships. It destroyed the relationship with God (Adam and Eve hid themselves from God); it destroyed the relationship between people (Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel); and it destroyed the harmony with creation. Man no longer exercised dominion over creation as he did before the fall. He no longer exercised power over the fertility of the world (Genesis 3:17)

In an attempt to reclaim such power, man fashioned his own fertility gods, ascribing to them powers which belong to God alone. Thus he subjected himself to the elemental spirits, spiritualizing (i.e. attributing divine character to) things created. In the history of Israel the names of Baal (literally master, lord) and Ashtareth (goddess of fertility) are familiar to us. In Judges 2:13 we read that God's people "forsook the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth." This is what paganism is. Paganism makes a substitute religion out of the powers of the world: sun, stars, wind, heat, energy. It does that in order to win back the dominion man had lost in his disobedience.

Instead of reclaiming his former status as steward over creation, however, man enters into a self-enslavement to these elemental powers of the universe. The subject of demons is related to this discussion. Demons arise out of the so-called spiritual nature of the world because of the fall of mankind. Demons are spirit powers who put man under their subjection (demonic possession). The god and goddesses in the Old Testament, in a sense, become what we know as demons in the New Testament.

The Freedom Christ Brings

Christ came to set us free from the powers under which the human race had enslaved itself. If you read the Gospel of Mark in one sitting you get a powerful picture of Jesus walking up and down the land of Palestine casting out demons. It is like Joshua when he led the children of Israel up and down Palestine casting out the Canaanites and their heathen gods. Thus the people were freed from their spiritual enslavement. Once "the land" was cleared, God's Word could restore harmony, healing and shalom.

What Jesus did in Palestine, the disciples were to do throughout the rest of the world. Accordingly, that is what Christian missionaries did wherever they went during the next two thousand years. They set free the pagans living in the land of darkness of the shadow of death. A person in New Guinea who had become a Christian testified that ever since Christianity had come, the people had been free. "There was a time when we could not leave our village or go down the mountain," he related, "because the black-eyed bird would watch wherever we went." The black-eyed bird was an elemental part of creation. People of the area ascribed spiritual power to the creature; as a result they were held in bondage. The coming of the Gospel means freedom from enslavement to all spiritual powers and a return to the kind of relationships which God intended.

Freedom Abused

However, the plot thickens. Free from enslavement, man turns around and makes the world his slave. Freed from spiritualism he wanders in the opposite direction and embraces secularism, a view which denounces any kind of spiritual relatedness. Freed from his enslavement to the natural world, man proceeds to abuse it. Indeed, we may say that Western Christianity is largely responsible for the destruction of planet earth. Following is a description of steps in a process leading to an attitude that the world was created only to serve men's ends.

1. The Gospel comes. By way of speaking "you need no longer be afraid of witches and goblins." The Gospel frees man from spiritual enslavement.

2. The next generation claims that witches and goblins never existed. Everything can be understood in terms of science - everything can be explained.

3. The following generation will insist that the world is purely mechanical and always was. There are no such things as "spirits." There is no such thing as a soul.

4. The next generation will go even further and maintain that there is no God. There never was. It is all made up! Now note how that affects man's thinking about the world and creation. Western man, approaching a tree, is likely to think: "Ah, this is just a collection of chemicals. What do I care. The tree's value is purely economic." Thus everything is judged: purely from a profit motive. The result is wide scale destruction of nature, total disregard of the relational structures of nature and ecology.

Modern Version of Old Fashioned Paganism

However, in our generation the pendulum is beginning to swing the other way. Our generation is prepared to come to the defense of nature and creation. "We are destroying the world," is the urgent warning. "We need to get back in harmony with the world! The world is spiritual. Therefore, we need to approach it spiritually." The spiritual approach applies to everything, from ecology and environment to health. For many decades the way to health was through drugs and chemicals. The New Age movement now insists that we must take the holistic approach. We have souls and spirits and so in order to get your health back you must awaken to your spirituality!

The New Age philosophy (understanding of life) is a reaction to the general emptiness of modern life. It is a call to return to spiritual fellowship with the world. Inevitably, however, this return is a return to paganism, the kind against which the apostle Paul warns in Galatians 4:9 "How can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits, whose slaves you want to be once more?" Yes, the New Age Movement is simply a modern version of the old fashioned paganism. It is modern in that it employs modern science instead of primitive science, and it's modern because many people profit financially from it.

The real problem facing Christianity is not that some people think "there is no God" (atheism) but the real problem is that posed by the New Age Movement. It is the problem of false gods. New Age denies that God is the "the one God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." "Their main assumption seems to be that God is cosmic energy. Energy is behind all the manifestations of the visible world. If we desire the deep life, the real life, we must get beyond the illusion or appearance, and grasp the full force of God as Energy and we must direct that power to our advantage. Anyone who has discovered a way to unleash 'the powerful healer inside oneself can teach a course or start a 'church'." The problem with the New Age Movement is new bondages and new enslavements. However, "God is transcendent creator, never separated, but always distinct from His creation. We must worship our Father above and not our mother (nature) below".*

A Strategy for Christians

How does the Christian respond to the New Age Movement, yes, how does he arm himself against a modern form of paganism?

1. We must understand the motivation which draws people into the movement and be sympathetic to what people are looking for. Many people feel the spiritual bankruptcy of modem life and so-called Christianity and don't know where to turn.

2. We must reclaim the Biblical vision of "spiritual harmony with the world," a Biblical ecology, an understanding of our relationship to creation.

We are to live in harmony with the world that God gave us, in harmony and not in communion. Notice the distinction. We are to live in communion with God and with fellow believers. We are not to live in communion with trees. If you try that you open yourself up to demonic influences. Plants are plants. They are not gods or goddesses.

The Biblical vision of man's relationship to creation is gathered up in the function of priest. As priests we are responsible to God for the whole world. As priests we are to make sure that the whole creation and all that we do with it every piece of pavement, every sidewalk, every landfill and oil well - is part of a sweet smelling sacrifice of praise to God. We are responsible for offering the planet as a sacrifice of praise to God! We are priests of creation, not its worshippers.

3. We must combat the ignorance which often leads people into the movement. The cure for ignorance is learning and knowledge. Learn to understand the Scriptures and the doctrines. Learn the Christian view of the world, and of science, and of history. The better grounded we are in the Word of God and in the doctrines, the stronger our position against movements that seem to offer what Christianity seems to be missing. There are greater powers in the world than we may be aware of. We must understand that this is true and that it is possible to be enslaved to them if we are not obedient to God's Word.

4. Finally, we must not fear. We are not our own but we belong, body and soul, in life and in death, to our faithful Saviour Jesus Christ who fully paid for all our sins with his precious blood and who set us free from the tyranny of the devil, the power of any demon, the power of any spirit of the universe. We are free! We must not fear because God also watches over us in such a way that not a hair can fall from our head without the will of our Heavenly Father. In fact, all things in the whole universe work together for our salvation.

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