Seminar Outline

 

The Now Age Seminar Outline

My Story

What is the New Age?

A mix of THE OCCULT, HINDUISM, HUMANISM and PAGANISM.
Horoscopes, TM, Human Potential Movement, Witchcraft/Wicca
Psychics, Chakra Readings, Scientific Naturalism, Goddess Worship, Quija boards, Reincarnation, Creative Visualization, Worship of Mother Earth
Channeling, Guided Imagery, Crystals, Auras, Self Help Books, Shamanism

Beliefs of the New Age

God – Impersonal

God lies within, and therefore, we are each part of God. Since there is no separateness, we are each Godlike, and God is in each of us. We are literally made up of God energy, therefore, we can create whatever we want in life because we are each co-creating with the energy of God- the energy that makes the universe itself.
Shirley Maclaine, Going Within

Evil - Non-Existent

Satan is the creation of late Orthodox Judaism and early orthodox Christianity in order to ‘demonize’ their opponents. Satan has no theological or metaphysical existence.
Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan

Morality - Self-Determined

When your actions are motivated by love… the surplus energy you gather and enjoy can be channeled to create anything you want, including unlimited wealth.
Ask your heart for guidance, when you have a good feeling, do it. When you have a bad feeling, don’t do it.
Deepak Chopra, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success

Bible - Unreliable

It will be necessary to go beyond the limits of the New Testament canon since it is the product of the patristic church, that is, a theological document of the “historical winners.”
Elizabeth Fiorenza, Prof. of New Testament Studies at Notre Dame.

Feminists were free to use the ancient Gnostic texts,… because the Christian canon was created by men, and therefore, women are not obliged to accept a book they had no part in framing.
Chung Hyun Kyung

Truth – Relative
Since 1521 the British monarch has borne the title “Defender of the Faith.” When Charles becomes king he intends to drop the definite article and be known as, “Defender of Faith” since, as he explains… all religions contain common elements of truth.
Time Magazine; July ’94

Goals and Aspirations:

Tolerance
Non-judgementalism

Gurus of the Now Age

Oprah Winfrey
“As I study the New Age Movement, it all seems to say exactly what the Bible has said for years, but many of us were brought up with a restricted, limited understanding of what the Bible said.”

Gary Zukav
“Just as external power is no longer appropriate to our evolution. The archetype of marriage is no longer appropriate. Spiritual Partnership is a much freer and more spiritually accurate dynamic than marriage because spiritual partners come together from a position of spirit and consciousness.”
“The duration of their partnership is determined by how long it is appropriate for their evolution to be together.” “The Seat of the Soul” p. 27.

Anthony Robbins
Two or three times a month I would attend a totally different type of worship: Lutheran, Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist, and so on. As a result of this, I truly began to live at a more spiritual level where I began to appreciate all peoples’ spiritual beliefs. Even if I didn’t subscribe to their particular rules or perceptions, I had a much broader base of understanding and compassion as a result.
“Awaken the Giant Within” p.424

Marianne Williamson
Jesus was one who perfectly embodied the Christ (love) essence and hence is a perfect model for the rest of us. The special thing about Jesus is that he was a perfect vehicle for the “Christ.” But we can do just as he did. Jesus fully “accepted” Christ and so can we!

Helen Schucman
Jesus says, “Do not make the pathetic error of ‘clinging to the old rugged cross.’ The only message of the crucifixion is that you can overcome the cross. Until then you are free to crucify yourself as often as you choose. This is not the Gospel I intended to offer you.”

Neale Donald Walsh
god: I tell you, I despise nothing. None of it is repulsive to Me… Evil is that which you call evil. Yet even that I love, for it is only through that which you call evil that you can know good… It is all relative. I do not love “good” more than I love “bad.” Hitler went to heaven. When you understand this, you will understand God. (p.61)

Hitler’s actions were what you call mistakes - the actions of an unevolved being- and mistakes are not punishable by condemnation, but dealt with by providing the chance for correction, for evolution. The mistakes Hitler made did no harm or damage to those whose deaths he caused. Those souls were released from their earthly bondage, like butterflies emerging from a cocoon. (p.42)

How did we get here?

Relics of the 19th Century

Sigmund Freud
People are not so much rational agents as they are pawns in the grip of unconscious forces they do not understand and cannot control. Freud proposed an evolutionary scheme in which our primitive impulses (the id) belong to the oldest, most animal part of the human brain, while the rational mind (the ego) is a later development from the more highly evolved cerebral cortex. Thus, the things that society labels “bad” are not really evil; they simply reflect the more ancient, animal part of the brain.

Karl Marx
“A being only considers himself independent when he stands on his own feet; and he only stands on his own feet when he owes his existence to himself.” But a person cannot be independent if he is the creation of a personal God, for then he lives by the grace of another.”

Charles Darwin’s theory of Creation
Life evolved from simpler to more and more complex forms through chance mutation and natural selection over a long period of time.

“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have only data at the tips; the rest is inference, not the evidence of fossils.”
Stephen Jay Gould, Harvard Paleontologist

The Religion of Naturalism

Moral Relativism
If nature is all there is, then there is no transcendent source of moral truth, and we are left to construct morality on our own. Every principle is reduced a personal preference. By contrast, the Christian believes in a God who has spoken, who has revealed an absolute and unchanging standard of right and wrong, based ultimately on his own holy character.

Multiculturalism
The naturalist treats all cultures as morally equivalent, each merely reflecting its own history and experience. Contemporary trends like postmodernism and multiculturalism are rooted firmly in naturalism, for if there is no transcendent source of truth or morality, then we find our identity only in our race, gender, or ethnic group. But Christians can never equate truth with the limited perspective of any group. Truth is God’s perspective, as revealed in Scripture. Hence, while we appreciate the cultural diversity, we insist on the propriety of judging particular cultural practices as morally right or wrong.

Utopianism
Naturalists generally embrace the Enlightenment notion that human nature is essentially good, which leads to utopianism. Utopianism says: If only we create the right social and economic structures, we can usher in an age of harmony and prosperity. But Christians can never give their allegiance to utopian projects. We know that sin is real, that it has a deeply twisted human nature, and that none of our efforts can create a heaven on earth.
"How Now Shall We Live", Chuck Colson

Why the Rejection of Christianity?

“Christianity is an eco-unfriendly religion.”
Ted Turner, E Magazine January/February 1999.

Rosemary Radford Reuther, theologian and writer, blames Christianity for our environmental and social woes. “Traditional Christianity makes elite male humans think
they have the right to dominate women, the earth, and other creatures.”

Avant garde theologians such as Ms. Ruether and avant-garde ethicists such as Peter Singer are becoming more and more pro-death. Abortion, euthanasia, eugenics, and other “compassionate weeding out of people” are held up as the highest moral principles, as tenets of what is actually an emerging religious faith. The deified Man is replaced by a deified Nature.

Humanism begins to crumble

When God is left out of the equation, there is no longer a basis for saying that human beings have any particular value in themselves. Man as the measure of all things turns out to be a pretty miserable yardstick.

Humanism has failed, it started by rejecting the notion that Man was made in God’s image and affirming the dogmas of evolution. It could not escape the conclusion that Man is therefore just another animal, having no rights that could not be ascribed to other species.

The Biblical worldview, puts both human beings and nature in their place, as a creations of a transcendent God. Far from providing a framework for oppression, Christianity has offered a framework for freedom. The nature worshipping pagans were the ones who enslaved women in orgiastic fertility cults, practiced eugenic infanticide, and sacrificed children and unwanted adults to the nature gods.
Dr. Gene Edward Veith, Dean of Concordia University. SCP Journal 1998.

Today

· Nearly 80% of Americans expressed a desire to “experience spiritual growth.”
· Spirituality is what half of Americans say they would definitely engage in each day if their lives weren’t so hectic.
· 1 in 3 Americans define spirituality without reference to God or a higher authority.

The tragic thing is that biblical illiteracy among Christians is at an all-time high (35 percent of born again Christians don’t read their Bibles at all).
George Barna, What Americans Believe (Regal Books, 1991), p. 289

What is at risk?

Our Schools

Deborah Rozeman’s "Meditating with Children" made it into the California school district.
One visualization Rozeman recommends is this: “Meditate and go into the Source within, and in that One Source feel that you are One with everyone else’s Light, Intelligence, Love and Power…Chant “Om” softly to fill the whole circle and the whole room with
your experience of the Source within.”

Paul Vitz in 1985 conducted a federally funded systematic study of the content of public school textbooks through the National Institute of Education. His conclusion was simply that textbooks have been censored. “Religion, traditional family values and conservative political and economic positions have been reliably excluded from the children’s textbooks.” America’s substantial Christian heritage is overwhelmingly edited out. And
if the Pilgrims happen to make a rare guest appearance, their Christian orientation is edited out.

Our Workplace

Some of the more open-minded CEO’s we know are consulting with spiritual guides to help them understand their businesses. They hire people like Charles Nunn, who discovered over the course of his business career that he had “intuitive gifts” and that he could “read” people and situations in remarkably accurate ways. Now he’s hired to go to board meetings, introduced simply as a “consultant,” and then, afterward, fills in the chairman on what he “senses” is really going on. He is witch doctor and a business strategist rolled into one.
“Clicking, 17 Trends That Drive Your Business - and Your Life”, Faith Popcorn. Pg. 125.

How do we bring them our way?

Apologetics-Defense of the Faith

A central task of evangelism is to make Christianity credible in the modern world. The area of Christian thought that has dealt with this matter is apologetics- the “defense of the faith,” a rough translation of the Greek word “apologia” used in 1 Peter 3:15. A good working definition of apologetics would be “to create an intellectual climate favorable to Christian faith.” The biblical worldview is not only attractive but it rests securely in the knowledge of its truth.
Alister McGrath, … the Future of Christianity


· Be a friend and be patient
· Pray
· Walk your Christian Talk
· Share the evidence/apologetics
· Share the Word
. Plant the seed of truth
· Let go and let God

Copyright Brian Flynn 2002