“I’m a spiritual person”

This is the popular mantra today for people who opt for the “create-it-yourself spirituality” that treats philosophy, religion, and science fiction as a buffet that we can pick and choose what works for us.  Many call this the “new age”.  Others note that it is just paganism.  For most of my life, this is what I believed.

When I was in high school, I remember being very convinced of the existence of Atlantis, the existence of a God but not of Jesus, and the existence of aliens.  I thought that most of our spiritual energy was in our “auras” that could be juiced up by enlightened experiences among trees or looking at the stars.  Did it all make sense?  No.  But I was sure willing to debate people and point out how they didn’t make sense!

This week we were praying for a new friend outside a place that serves hot meals to the homeless.  An African-American guy comes up and starts yelling at us saying:  ”Brother, you can’t go to heaven if you praying with white dudes.  You don’t want their white Jesus”.  He then proceeded to tell me about how white people had changed all the Bible and how white people were not going to heaven.  He said some true things, like how the book of Enoch and some others are not in the Bible (they are considered “Apocrypha”, or additional writing not directly inspired by God).  He then went on to say how white people had removed the UFOs from Ezekiel and Isaiah.  As he is yelling all this at the top of his longs, two other people were standing there saying “it’s true!  it’s true!”.  He then called us blue-eyed devils and shouted various profanities.  He then said it’s all about being a “spiritual person”.  Oh, and he was SURE to mention that he doesn’t eat pork.

Then he said something interest.  He said, “I’ll tell you what is the true religion”.  Oh great, here it comes.  He said, “The Egyptian Coptic church.  That’s the true religion.  That’s the original church”.  Okay!?!?  I was taken aback.  His comments earlier would have seemed in complete contradiction to that.

But really, this guy wasn’t much different than many of my friends or most people I meet.  They have no cohesive world view.  It’s all just confusion.  It’s confusion justified by conspiracy theories about “uncovering the truth”.

A great example of this confusion is a movie that came out called “Zeitgeist” a couple years back, which was an online conspiracy theory documentary about 9-11 and Christianity.  It’s been a major part of the paranoia-infused confusion that many call “Spirituality”.  The movie directly attacks Christianity, saying that the resurrection is just something copied from Ancient Egyptians.  They even quote a bunch of “books”.  Using the wonder of Google Books, I looked up the books.  They do exist.  They quote other books.  Those books then quote other books.  All these various “sources” quote one book written in the late 1800′s by some crackpot who hated Christianity and the idea of God and claimed to have found the “secret” that broke down Christianity.  He apparently found it in some king of Egyptian artifacts.  No surprise, he had no evidence and he quotes no sources.  He just made up a confused crackpot conspiracy theory.  And yet, dozens of people bought that lie and quoted it in books.  And now they made a movie that hundreds of thousands have seen.  Does it make sense?  No.  But for some reason, by saying they are “uncovering the real truth” people are willing to buy into totally baseless confusion.

So this “confused spirituality” is all about seeking those “hidden truths”.  The “lost books” of the Bible.  Our hidden auras.  The secrets of Atlantis.  The cover-up about Aliens.  The suppression of drugs as a spiritual path.  The secret techniques of some ancient pagan religion.  Then you jam them all together and out pops something confusing, yet something people (my past self included) get very attached to.

What can we do?  Pray for them and point them to the Word of God.  Here’s what Jesus says:

If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free (John 8:31-32)

Why would someone challenge Einstein’s theory of relativity without any proof?  Why would someone spend time creating a new set of equations when Einstein’s equations have held up for over a century and seem to perfectly describe how we see gravity, light, and space interacting in the universe?

Why?  Religion…

The Atheist, Secular-Humanist religion.  Secular-Humanism seeks to give answers to the main questions a religion answers:  Why are we here, where are we going, where did we come from, and who is God.  The answers:  we’re here only to survive, we go to the dirt when we die, we came from sludge or crystals or alien biological material, and God does not exist.  Sounds enticing huh!  It is a religion that offers no hope.  Secular humanism came out of people recognizing the amazing work of Christians over the last two millennium.  They then declared that the Christian morals must be the source, not God.   This was because belief in God would thwart our personal understandings that we are gods of our own lives, which would be terribly humbling.  So they dropped God and kept the basic ethics.  They then crammed “all men are created equal” and “love thy neighbor” with the completely incompatible ”survival of the fittest” mantra.  Out came that came the confused and largely inconsistent world view that now permeates our culture, especially our universities.

A few decades ago, scientists realized that Einstein’s theory, data from the Hubble, and new research on the big bang appeared to validate what Christians had said all along:  everything was created out of nothing (ex nihilo):

By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. (Heb. 11:3)

Without a cause to the effect, it begs the question:  what started all this?  The only natural answer is God.

So Atheists came up with a new theory.  The universe came from another universe.  That previous universe collapsed onto itself so small that it was almost nothing, then it expanded into a big bang.  They theorize that this has been happening again and again.  Interesting theory!  Absolutely no proof.  Plus, Einstein’s equations poke huge holes in the theory, as gravity is not strong enough to hold in all the matter of the universe.  So it would seem that any rational scientists would not pursue such a flamboyant theory!  It would especially seem that Secular Humanists, who state the pursuit of “objective truth” as a core value.    Oh contraire mon frere!

As reported in the September 2010 of Popular Science, some scientists have decided to change Einstein’s theory to fit their Atheist dogma.  In the article they say something astounding:

“Einstein’s theory is simpler,” he admits. “But sometimes the simplest idea isn’t the best one.”

Simplest is not the best?  Really?  I’ve heard otherwise.  Occam’s Razor is the term used to describe the logic that the simplest solution is normally the best.  It’s actually been mathematically proven that simpler equations are statistically more accurate.  It seems pretty extreme to go up against Einstein’s simple equations with no proof except theories developed out of hatred for God.

This is not new to God.  People have been denying Him as creator for thousands of years.  Why?  Because that fact holds them accountable.  It tears down the foundation of their self-centered, self-exalting lives.  As the Apostle Paul says in Romans:

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (Romans 1:18-20)