Pagan

In a 2024 interview the actress Julia Fox was asked, “Do you meditate or journal or otherwise practice mindfulness?” She replied:

I don’t, but I do pray. When I was little, I [prayed to] Jesus Christ. Now I pray to the universe, the collective consciousness, the karmic force behind everything. I used to pray for things that I really wanted. Now I pray to be guided, stay on the right path, for strength, for positivity. But then I also definitely do pray for things I want, too.

As recently as five years ago, author and speaker Doreen Virtue was the world’s top-selling New Age author. She enjoyed a phenomenally lucrative lifestyle, living on a 50-acre ranch in Hawaii. Her publisher treated her like a rock star, flying her and her husband first class to give sold-out workshops across the globe. She rubbed elbows with celebrities.

Virtue described her life and teaching this way:

New Agers often view Christianity as having dogmatic rules, but they have their own rigid standards about what an “enlightened person” must and mustn’t do. During my 20 years as a New Age teacher, I promoted techniques like “positive affirmations,” believing and teaching that “your words create your reality.” We held up our wealth and fame as evidence that our principles were true and effective. Yet despite this worldly success, we were unrepentant sinners with lives marred by divorces and addictions. Having sold-out workshops, standing ovations, adoring fans, and celebrity friends gave us swollen egos. I remember believing my every thought was a message or a sign from God or his angels.

In January 2015, she was driving along a Hawaiian road while listening to the Scottish-born pastor Alistair Begg. It was a sermon called “Itching Ears” taken from 2 Timothy 4, where the Apostle Paul writes that in the end times, people will want their itching ears tickled by false teachers who offer false hope (v. 3).

I could tell he was describing people just like me. God used Begg’s sermon to convict me for the first time in my life. His words pierced my stony heart, and I felt ashamed of my false teachings. Then when I read Deuteronomy 18:10–12, I encountered a list of sinful activities that included several I was practicing, such as divination, interpreting signs and omens, and mediumship. I was broken, deeply shamed, and humbled. I dropped to my knees in shame and sorrow. “I’m so sorry, God!” I kept wailing in repentance. “I didn’t know!” On that very day I gave my life to Jesus as Lord and Savior.

The decision had far-reaching consequences. Doreen and her husband left their fancy Hawaii home. Her New Age publisher ended their professional partnership. New Agers treated her as an object of scorn.

Having to admit that I was wrong to the entire world—my books were published in 38 languages—has been deeply humbling. Even so, I needed that humility to better learn how to lean upon God. After seeking but never finding peace in New Age, I have finally found it in Christ.

A new worship center in the former East Berlin represents the ultimate secular view of religion. It also reflects the kind of cultural future the American left envisions for the US.

The House of One, to be built on the foundation of a demolished church, will enable Christians, Jews, and Muslims to worship under one roof. Each faith will have its own sanctuary surrounding a central hall that will serve as a place of public encounter. Contractors will lay the foundation stone in May, 2021, and construction is expected to take four years.

Roland Stolte, a theologian involved in the project said, “East Berlin is a very secular place. Religious institutions have to find new language and ways to be relevant, and to make connections.” In other words, religion must conform to, not challenge, the secular ethos.

The House of One embodies the secular view of religion as secondary, if not destructive, to human identity and progress. The divinities being worshiped are not Yahweh, Jesus, or Allah but diversity, multiculturalism, and inclusion.

Maureen Mullarkey, writing from a Catholic perspective, believes the Holy See has fallen into that trap. “This is politics. It is not testimony to those matters of personal sin and redemption at the core of the Church’s reason for being. … The Church’s pope (Francis) would put a spiritual face on the aims of secular politics.”

Replacing transcendent values with political ones often brings despotism. Americans see that now in the left’s hypersensitive tyranny, embodied by cancel culture, and hostility toward conservative religious ethics. East Berliners saw it for 45 years under communist domination.

In Berlin today, the House of One also reflects capitulation to the postmodern zeitgeist (spirit of the time). As one theologian said, “This is not a club for monotheistic religions—we want others to join us.”

Reiki is a relaxation practice that claims it promotes physical and emotional healing. The International Center for Reiki Training reports that more than four million people have completed their courses. Several major hospitals in the US and Canada offer Reiki to suffering patients. Practitioner uses their hands to either lightly touch or hover over the patient’s body to manipulate its natural flow of energy.

Anne Bokma, in her book My Year of Living Spiritually, investigated a wide variety of alternative spiritual practices, one of which was Reiki. Most “Reiki Masters” invoke spirit guides. At the start of one session Bokma was told: “The room is filling up with beautiful divine beings.” Through the Master the divine being said: “What a delicious feeling it is that you can sense me with your physical form.” And “You can communicate with us and ask us for guidance and clarity any time.” Another Master invoked the Archangel Michael, who is wielding the “sword of truth” to break Bokma’s chains.

A Reiki Master Teacher Training director writes:

If I need guidance, I find it works best for me to stop whatever I am doing, take a deep breath, say a prayer, invoke the distant healing symbol, and ask that the Reiki energy help connect me with my guides. When I feel the energy flowing, I will ask a specific question, stay very quiet and pay attention to what I hear. Now I don't usually audibly hear voices, but I FEEL them. For example, I knew I was to move to a new home in Colorado, however I wasn't sure where. To discern this, I asked my guides to tell me where my next home was to be. Then I just felt a warm glowing sensation in my heart and had an idea of a place that I had never been, but was feeling very curious about. I immediately went to this area, and within two hours had found my new home.

The American poet, Christian Wiman, wrote a poem about how all of his friends are finding new beliefs. One turns to Catholicism while another turns to pantheism. A Jewish friend now worships the pantheon of “Paleo, Keto, Zone, South Beach,” and “Bourbon.” Meanwhile, her “Exercise regimens [are] so extreme [that] she merges with machine.” A male friend turns to the god of sex by marrying someone twenty years younger. All of these friends use these gods to cope with the age-old challenges that we all must face: dementia, doubt, despair, and death.

Wiman writes that, “All my friends are finding new beliefs, and I am finding it harder and harder to keep track, of the new gods and the new loves, and the old gods and the old loves.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Wiman describes our changing religious world. While our culture may be less religious in the traditional sense of Christianity and Judaism, we are no less religious when it comes to the gods of dieting, fitness, and sex. Look beneath the advertising and you’ll see that all of these gods promise immortality in their own way. Age-old needs are being met by new-age beliefs.

On February 26, 2019, a lake became human. For years, Lake Erie has been in ecological crisis. Invasive species are rampant. Biodiversity is crashing. Each summer, blue-green algae blooms in volumes visible from space, creating toxic “dead zones.” In August 2014, Lake Erie was so fouled that the city of Toledo lost drinking water for three days in the hottest part of the year.

Toledo residents were so appalled by the lake’s degradation and exhausted by government failures to improve Erie’s health that they acted. In December 2018 citizens wrote an emergency “bill of rights” for Lake Erie. It had a radical proposition: That the “Lake Erie ecosystem” should be granted legal personhood and accorded the consequent rights in law – including the right “to exist, flourish, and naturally evolve.”

There have been cities in the United States that have passed ordinances making polluting illegal. But no American city or state has changed the legality of nature effectively giving personhood to a gigantic lake. Citizens could sue a polluter on behalf of the lake, and if the court finds the polluter guilty, the judge could impose penalties

The bill illustrates a movement around the world--all seeking to recognize interdependence and animacy in the living world. These are known as the”‘rights of nature” movement. Animists believe that everything that exists is alive in some way:

“Nature’s capacity … to encounter us … is the ground tone of its spiritual, vibrant power. Indigenous peoples celebrated relations with other-than-human beings that are alive with spirit, emotion, and personhood. This personhood includes ‘bear persons’ and ‘rock persons’ along with ‘human persons.’ In other words, all things are persons, only some of whom are human.”

In his book, author Mark Clark wrote:

If you want to understand the dogma of religious pluralism, consider a scene from the comedy movie Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. If you haven't seen it, Ricky is a professional race car driver whose car crashes during a race. Thinking he's on fire, he runs around the track crying out, "Help me, Jesus! Help me, Jewish God! Help me, Allah! Help me, Tom Cruise! Use your witchcraft on me to get the fire off of me! Help me, Oprah Winfrey!"

In other words, when it comes to god, you'd best hedge your bets. One god doesn't necessarily exclude the other gods, so don't limit yourself to just one when you can believe in all of them at once! This concept has its roots in Hindu and eastern philosophy, and has largely been adopted in Western culture. It can be found in several popular versions:

I am absolutely against any religion that says one faith is Superior to another. I don't see how that is anything different than spiritual racism -Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

My position is that all great religions are fundamentally equal. -Mahatma Gandhi

One of the biggest mistakes humans make is to believe there's only one way. Actually, there are many diverse paths leading to God. -Oprah Winfrey

Pluralism’s basic premise is that all religions are true, or at least partially true; and have value. And in our culture, it is considered narrow-minded and judgmental to believe anything else. So how do we respond to the theology of Ricky Bobby?

Paul read pagan poets. In his writings, he quotes Epimenides of Crete (Titus 1:12), Aratus of Cilicia (Acts 17:28) and Menander, author of the Greek comedy Thais (1 Corinthians 15:33).

People are asking questions that traditional churches can no longer answer for them. ... There are a lot of self-help, pseudo-therapy groups whose basic tenet is that Christian mythology has failed and consequently other mythologies are needed to reinvent ways of being religious. Unfortunately what these groups often do under the name of neopaganism, neo-Hinduism and so forth is take a very tiny part of mythology and turn it into a fifth-rate form of psychotherapy.

While religious pluralism may be a novel experience for us, it is putting us in touch with the world that surrounded the biblical authors. The pluralism and the paganism of Our Time were the common experience of the prophets and apostles. In Mesopotamia, there were thousands of gods and goddesses, many of which were known to the Israelites--indeed, sometimes known too well. ... Nothing, therefore, could be more remarkable than to hear the contention, even from those within the Church, that the existence of religious pluralism today makes belief in the uniqueness of Christianity quite impossible. Had this been the necessary consequence of encountering a multitude of other religions, Moses, Isaiah, Jesus, and Paul would have given up biblical faith long before it became fashionable ... to do so.