The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism by D. A. Carson

Author:D. A. Carson [Carson, D. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Christian Books & Bibles, Bible Study & Reference, Bible Study, Old Testament, Theology, Religion & Spirituality, Religious Studies, Comparative Religion, Christianity, Philosophy, Religion, Reference, Non-Fiction
ISBN: 031024286X
Amazon: B003B5M0P4
Goodreads: 842770
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2009-09-02T04:00:00+00:00

5. The Shamanized Jesus

This heading I have taken over from the title of an article by Douglas Groothuis in Christianity Today.57 Groothuis points out that the New Age claims Jesus as one of their own: he is variously esteemed as Master, Guru, Yogi, Adept, Avatar, Shaman. He belongs to “the spiritual hall of fame along with Buddha, Krishna, Lao Tse, and others.”58 In a lengthy and well-researched article in Canada’s Maclean’s magazine, we are introduced to some of the more important “New Age” movements and leaders in North America, including Hanne Strong’s center in Colorado.59 The range of options is formidable—crystals, meditation, home-grown Hinduism, psychic counselors, and on and on. “We of the federation of the intergalactic work together,” coos trance-channeler Anne Morse to a packed center in Toronto where each person has paid $16 to get in. “And we are willing to work with you.”60 Within this ill-defined, utterly unverifiable, frequently manipulative theosophical smorgasbord, Jesus gets rewritten as one of the spiritual agents for change.

The more I read the New Age literature, the more I am struck by several facts. Almost none of it seriously wrestles with the historical and textual arguments put forward by serious Christians. New Age thought is insufferably fuzzy and inconsistent. Anything it likes or can use, it rips out of its historic context and redeploys with new content, often made out of whole cloth. It almost never deals with evil, because it is most commonly pantheistic—and religions that do not wrestle with the problems of human evil are blind beyond words. Worse, almost all of this multiplying thought is irremediably selfish. The aim of the exercise is self-fulfilment, self-actualization, serenity, productivity, power. God, if he/she/it exists, exists for me. And from a biblical perspective, it is this profound selfishness that lies at the heart of all human sin.

This is not to deny that some good is sometimes achieved by New Age religion. A person may go through an emotional experience that proves wonderfully cathartic where there has been, say, the suppression of many angry resentments that have proved emotionally crippling. But if the matrix of thought within which that emotional catharsis has been worked out is fundamentally wrong and untrue, then for all the good of the emotional release, the long-term damage that emerges from committing oneself to what is foundationally false far exceeds the gains. The emotional release could have come, for instance, from the joy of being forgiven and forgiving, from delighting in the experienced pleasure of the love of the personal/transcendent God (Eph. 3:14-21)—and in that case the advantages of the emotional release have been linked to thought that reflects the truth of the God who is there, the God who revealed himself in history, the God who sent his Son to reconcile broken and rebellious sinners to himself. If the pleasure of emotional release is the sufficient criterion, little thought will be given to the broader ramifications. And that, of course, opens us up to deception from the devil himself, who loves to parade himself as an angel of light.

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