Is your church teaching New Age Ideas? With Melissa Dougherty

i think a lot of christians a lot of christians churches are sacrificing their good theology on the altar of unity [Music] well i'm here with melissa doherty we're going to have a great conversation today about new age and how new age ideas are making their way into the church you can be looking for some of these ideas in your church or a church you might visit or maybe you're seeing it on social media or you're hearing about it from christian friends that might be attending another church so melissa thanks for being here today tell us a little bit about your story of you actually came out of the new age into christian faith how how did that happen and did you grow up in a christian home give us a little bit of your background yeah sure thanks thanks you thank you alisa by the way for having me on it's an honor um my story is twofold because i became a christian when i was 16. and it was unexpected i was in a really deep dark place um i wasn't really searching but it's that that's a long story in and of itself but i basically had a friend i was at a very low point and i had a friend it was at a party of all places uh tell me about jesus just real briefly he didn't even say that much but man the holy spirit got me it was everything that i needed to hear i didn't know that jesus could be like that my whole understanding of jesus was more or less like a non-personal source he was like our example and it was almost like if i saw jesus back then in my mindset it was just this untouchable being that i was trying to be like but almost like he was too good for me i didn't realize that jesus could be so personal i didn't know the gospel i didn't know anything like that and that he wanted to forgive me you know for the things that i had done and um i kind of uh wake of destruction in in my teenage years because i i told a lot of lies i did a lot of things i shouldn't have done and i i literally went home that night and i know this sounds cliche i don't know how this sounds but to this day even after all these years in hindsight i woke up the next day and everything was different i re i literally remember still physically sitting up in my bed putting my hand on my knees just looking around my room like wow you know the birds were chirping colors were brighter it just and i had this insatiable hunger to know more i wanted more more more and more and more i wanted to know more about jesus and that is kind of oddly ironically where my new age story starts um i think it was actually your yes it was your book i was reading it the other day actually yesterday and you were talking about how back in i think it was the early 90s or late 80s just the internet wasn't what it was today so you didn't have all this information you couldn't you wanted to know something you went to the encyclopedia on your shelf and if it wasn't in there or you asked your fans hey the local church was your next resource and um i didn't know anything about the differences between religions nothing like that i started going to a independent baptist church which if anybody knows anything about independent baptist churches they're usually just very strict very king james only you better wear a skirt if you're a girl and no tattoos um it wasn't really the house that i needed to be in the place that i needed to be in to have my questions answered and i had a lot of them that was really the problem is i was uh very ins like insatiably hungry to know more i had a lot of questions and these were the christianity 101 questions what about hell um i was taught i grew up with this view about how what about this where did the bible come from explain this about jesus's identity all these questions and nobody could answer them and i was very hungry very on fire all my friends knew what had happened to me i was like this shouted from the rooftop christian i love jesus and he loves you and i was so innocent i had no idea but um i had lots of holes in my faith and nobody came alongside me i had no discipleship and so what happened was is that i fell back to what i had known i grew up with a new age type household and when i mean new age i mean more of new thought new age which let me define this real quick because this is important new age and new thought have the same core beliefs um but new thought is very specific it's actually kind of came out of the 1800s with a man named phineas quimby and it's supposed to look christian so everything that the new thoughts believes in says that it's christian but it's really not so for example the law of attraction is is a is supposed to be the law of the universe but it has very christianized christianese type of terms and a lot of new thought teachers will use scripture they will use scripture to back up their beliefs and say yes jesus actually taught this here it's in this scripture it's supposed to look christian whereas new age looks more cult-like um i didn't know that there was this side to new age when i came out of it i've heard the differences uh in terms of new age and new thought but i don't think i was fully aware of the main difference so just for clarification so that i understand so you would say anything that's basically new age ideas but couched in christian language is going to be more like a new thought and then new age is more maybe its own thing that doesn't use as much christian language is that accurate or yes and no at certain points it's like pinning down a cloud right okay yeah yeah um for example our mutual friend dorian virtue um she was in a whole realm of new age i had no idea even existed oh okay because i was more into the metaphysical side i was more my mind is my reality i can create with my mind i have power i'm divine which in essence is a new age idea you are divine that's the core that links the two the methodologies are different uh tarot cards for example would be considered more new age okay uh psychic mediums would be considered more new age new thought would be considered more law of attraction in that sense but new agers absolutely still use it this is why it's used interchangeably and we're going to talk about the law of attraction and some of these terms you're throwing out in a in a bit but let's let's finish up with your story here so you're in this independent baptist church you're asking questions you can't get answers how were your questions received where did you feel there was an open space for you to ask those questions or was it sort of like we don't ask those things here it was more or less that and to be frank i think it was because um i was looked at differently because i was a young woman asking these questions okay and i i really struggled with that because it's just i didn't feel like it was my place i felt like oh the men do that gotcha um and i didn't know there was a word for apologetics i didn't know what that was but i was an apologist from the get-go i knew i had so many questions i was it was almost annoying but nobody could answer them and so fast forward all these years go by my mom had those answers on the shelf of our house in the form of new age new thought teachers and it was fascinating to me how these people claimed to have this divine power to create their right reality and manifest things and you're really divine and yes jesus did teach that um here it's in the bible and i was completely biblically illiterate absolutely biblically illiterate and that was my basis of truth and i never knew there was a word for new age new thought nothing i had no basis to ground what those beliefs were i was just told they were christian and that the bible taught it and it was a higher form of christianity this was higher spirituality all you other people that just believe in the bible you're missing out you have no idea god is filling in the gaps with all these spiritual teachers that are coming out now and he's fixing what was lost basically and it all came together many past the god very open-minded very coexist tolerant now fast forward to when i had my first child that was 2010. that was when i still had questions that again the new age and i always say it's not sustainable the answers that they give don't really give you because the goal is to really not think about it is to become inner you know you have this inner peace uh which was a problem for me because i think a lot and um yeah very philosophical even if i i don't get all the answers but i i was thinking i still don't have answers to certain questions and i remember i remember laying on my floor meditating about it and the very next day two jehovah's witnesses knock on my door and i thought i had manifested them to my door uh and i had again no idea the differences between these religions mormonism jehovah's witnesses protestants catholics didn't matter what your beliefs were we all believed in the same god in different ways i had no idea that they had such radical different ideas about the the bible even the 101 stuff that i thought i knew like jesus being michael the archangel where do you get that from you know um just things that were unique to their religion i thought were rumors and again long story short come to find out they were not rumors and the internet was not what it was in 2003 so i went ahead and did some research and it was a snowball effect of research and that was really what undid it for me because not only did i learn what the jehovah's witnesses believed i learned what the bible said in the process and i thought okay this doesn't make sense either what the bible says is true and these spiritual beliefs that i have are wrong or this is right and that's wrong and so it kind of sent me down this crisis of faith where i i learned a there's a word for what i believed in and it's called new age and what really ended it for me was i had no idea that it literally was the first lie told to mankind that you could be like god and that i remember just sitting down heavy on my couch shutting my computer leaning back thinking oh my word i fell for this wow i fell for this and that was just what undid it and um i went down this journey of researching cults jehovah's witnesses and i ended up witnessing to them and learned a lot about my bible because you have to learn the bible to witness to them i learned people skills it was a weird sort of training period and that was back in 2011 sorry my cat is oh are you okay do you want some attention just wants to join wants to join the conversation it's all about her it is but yeah so that's basically my story so wow in a nutshell and and and then fast forward to um this my new age passed it took me a while to kind of talk about what had happened to to me i didn't think any nobody understood me i didn't feel like anybody understood the new age nobody understood that a lot of what they believed was new age and i knew that i had to talk about this more and at some point i started a group on facebook um and that's when dorian and i became friends and we got ministry together and that's basically how i came to even started ministry and beca be in ministry of my own in in new age yeah and you have a youtube channel where you have all kinds of videos that deal with the specifics of new age and new thought you have videos where you'll take a new age thought and refute it biblically you have other videos where you'll explain what some of these beliefs are and where you're seeing them come into the church and so i'm really grateful for your ministry because i i've learned a lot from you as well so so you're you're at this point and i'm just i so relate with having something so deep inside you that you think is true but then you're reading the scripture and the scripture is saying look either you got to decide this other thing is true and this is false or the bible is true and this other thing is false and you're coming off of just basically believing that your thoughts manifested these people at your door you know and that's that's a lot to give up you know when you think you have that kind of power i can imagine that was probably a pretty stressful thing so when you came out of this uh i suppose you found a good church a good solid church and began to be discipled and and grow in your in your walk and in truth and like you mentioned just learning everything you could and becoming biblically literate which is good advice for all of us and you know my interactions with new age uh so i'll fact i'll go back so several years ago before i was even aware of any of this language really um there is this this is going to sound silly but there is this product that i really liked and so you know you follow on instagram to see if they're going to come out with some kind of deal or sale or something like that so i followed them on instagram and the founder the creator of the product would post these sort of neutral uplifting statements that had to do with strength and joy and hope and nothing too out there but you know i just thought oh he's just being positive or something and then one day i saw that he posted the lord's prayer and i thought oh well maybe he's a christian maybe he's you know christian and he's just putting in that bible verse and so as i continued to follow though i saw all of this what i could recognize at the time in a broad sense as new age ideas but then he would post a bible verse or he would say something about jesus something really positive about jesus and i could not reconcile what i was seeing it just didn't make sense to me and it wasn't until a few years ago when i was doing research for the chapter i wrote for the mama bear apologetics book which was on new church i called it new spirituality just as a broad way to encompass all of these ideas and when i was doing research for that i was absolutely stunned to learn that this is really a thing like it's just a mixed bag there's christian ideas there's a there's a idea of jesus but i was also really stunned to see how similar these ideas were with progressive christianity which of course i had been doing a deep dive on and i'm like i feel like i'm reading the same things just from different authors and different movements essentially it's got a lot of the same messaging and and so i want to talk through with you just in case people don't know this in new age a new thought you're going to read about jesus you're going to read about concepts like sin you're going to read about concepts like atonement and so melissa help us understand the difference between the real jesus and then the jesus that you're going to encounter in new age and new thought yeah so the jesus of the bible i always used to i i always like to kind of point to the gospels of course to kind of define who jesus is but he was not a teddy bear all the time and the jesus of the new thought wants you to be powerful he wants you to discover your inner divinity and the basis is that he it's an imbalance of love and and justice and wrath there is no wrath that's a bad word to anybody in the new thought new age wrath is you see this domineering angry authoritarian type figure when you think of wrath and i think people have a lot of misunderstanding of the definition of of wrath yes it's like pent up he has to he has to somehow it's like it's it goes into his attribute of justice which again has no place in the new age jesus right he's all love all love so it doesn't matter really what you do and all loving god would never have anything to do with something like hell that's a very unloving thing jesus doesn't judge right the judge of the universe doesn't judge yes and then there's this uh what what's called christ consciousness now this can kind of be depending on oprah talks a lot about christ consciousness um i believe it's uh christian science talks a lot about christ consciousness but it's basically like a spiritual awakening of sort where you discover your inner divinity it's jesus christ is called the christ the christ is something opposite and different than that it's it's basically your understanding of your inner divinity of who you are and that's basically the core of it the jesus of the new thought all are saved and if you're not saved there can be like saved salvation depends on again where you're at with your awakening but say you're not you get this second chance kind of thing there's all paths lead to god tolerate all beliefs it's like a utopian type jesus and it's so not sustainable there's no way there's no way you can do that to have a jesus that says do not judge and then not go anywhere after that that's impossible i mean we make judgment calls all the time yeah of especially right on right and wrong i mean there's subjective there's moral relativism all this stuff so but the jesus of the bible is very exclusive and he draws within the lines i mean there's there's rules in that sense um that we are to have if we are to follow the jesus of scripture so i'd say that those are the main divisions between the two and i see that christ consciousness idea that's a huge theme in the progressive christian church of course they're getting this largely from richard rohr who i'm sure we'll talk about a bit today uh franciscan friar i've talked about him on the podcast before he even though he's catholic he's considered to be a spiritual father a mentor to many of the leaders in the progressive christian church and so you'll hear sermons about christ consciousness all the time and that's what richard does as well he separates the person of jesus from the concept of christ and this all ties in with his panentheism and his perennialism where he talks about the first incarnation being creation when god essentially put on the body of the universe the universe is the body of god according to richard rohr and so you can attain this christ consciousness the more you uh pursue your true self and your your most authentic self and so these are themes that that he teaches that come into the progressive church so so much and so you mentioned wrath which again that's not a popular concept in the progressive church they don't like the idea of god having wrath they like the idea of justice when it's applied in the way that they want it to be applied but they don't want god to be just they want justice on earth for certain things but they don't want god to be that way and so wrath gets put aside and i was curious to ask you too because you mentioned they they in new age and new thought they put aside the ideas of wrath because jesus is love it's all about love how did they define love in the new age that's a good question love is looked at as more of a think of like a utopian type peaceful you're you're not going around there's no anger there's no bitterness so think of all the negativity that you can think of to them it's very loving to never be negative to anybody or anything um in that sense that would be like the only a sin in that sense yeah thou shalt not judge thou shalt not be negative that's a big one so love is actually a very toxic type of love because if you're if you're going to talk to somebody and say they're doing something wrong and i'm trying to think i'm purposely trying to put myself back into my little you know skin of how i would have seen this because you understand i was i was mixing the two so i thought that this was true christianity and a lot of people do i would look at somebody who's living a life of sin all right say they're destructive the loving thing to do is to support them is to show them love to show them some sort of emotional fulfillment in the moment and it really is like watching somebody drown and you're just kind of you can do it you're doing great you're doing wonderful but you're not really giving them what they need to get out of that situation it sounds like enabling like how you would enable a drug addict or or something along those lines yes that's actually a very good way of putting it um what's looked at as loving is to never be in confrontation to never fight it's it's to show it's to allow that person to be and authentically who they are in that moment or however you want to spiritualize that however you want to put a label on that but really it's it's if you were and the reason why they think that is because a how you're treating somebody else you believe is going to come back on you so if you're treating them with disdain or if you're judging them by telling them hey man maybe this isn't good for you this isn't i see you falling down and and and you're making really bad choices i mean that those are judgments that you're putting on somebody else so you don't want that so you don't do that to them number two a lot of people don't like confrontation in these circles so if you are going to invoke some sort of anger from them you stay quiet so you consider this to be loving but really it's it's a misunderstanding of what real love is love is really a choice more than a feeling and it's an action sometimes it's a verb and depending on how you look at it um you know jesus died for us because he loved us so if we're gonna look at the biblical view of love a lot of times it's a sacrificial love right so i don't i don't think new ages on have any concept of that to them it's a fluffy feel-good you know cotton candy and daisies and unicorns type of thing when in reality it's just oh so much more than that it's so much stronger than that last week frank turek posted a meme on instagram that i think was such a powerful visual you know what you know which one i'm talking about it has this picture of a hand where the body is completely submerged under water and you've got this hand sticking up above the water asking for help and then in the next scene another hand is coming and it looks like it's going to help then essentially the hand that's supposed to help gives the drowning hand a high five and then the drowning hand goes under the water i think that is just i mean i don't think there could be a better visual for what you're talking about this this sort of cotton candy feel good love which we see also again in the progressive church as well this is why i've been so intrigued with the similarities uh that between new age new thought and progressive christianity and so i want to i want to zero in on a video you made recently that went viral congratulations by the way it was a wonderful video so so good um where you're talking about five uh teachings five new age teachings that are making their way into the church and i think this is what's gonna be so practical for particularly for my viewers and listeners as we talk through some of these points when i was watching your video i was thinking yep that's in the progressive church yep that's and i know it's in other other streams as well uh but just with my research being so focused on that i'm just seeing this all over the progressive church so i'd love it if we could talk through these five teachings that and i'm sure there's more you even mentioned that in the video there are a lot of teachings but these are kind of the main ones and they sort of build on each other like legos don't they they're they're sorry you start with the first one and then you see oh yeah well that's going to lead you to that one and that's going to lead you to that one so let's talk through some of these um this first one was the one i was least familiar with and maybe my listeners will be the least familiar with because you wouldn't you wouldn't hear it called this in the church necessarily but maybe you can help us unpack what it is and then where we're seeing it and that's called the law of attraction so talk about the law of attraction and where you're seeing that come into the church yeah the law of attraction is something i was oh man married to in when i was in the new thought it was i remember hiring a law of attraction coach i mean basically the law of attraction and is taught to be a spiritual law and the word law is used very purposely to say that like basically attracts like so they take quantum physics all right they'll take they make a pseudo science out of this and people believe it because it sounds scientific and a good book to read on this by the way um oh i have it right here uh steven bancarza's book second coming of the new age really breaks down a lot of this stuff but um that's a good resource to read on the pseudoscience right on how and why people think oh this is legit because oh it can be tested but anyway so the law of attraction is basically what you think can become a reality because of vibrations and energies that come from your thoughts and the core idea and the reason why you can do this is because you are divine you are actually divine you are part of the universe we're all one which we'll get into oneness in a little bit but you do see this a lot in hyper charismatic movements yeah and the same scriptures that you see the new thought teachers and new age teachers using to say oh this is what jesus taught are the same exact scriptures that they'll use um to say oh we can do these things like uh i believe there's one in mark 16 is it mark yes where we'll do greater things than jesus did that everything that jesus did we can do um and some so if you want healing guess what it's up here yeah it's not physical it's mental and because it's mental you can manifest that in your reality if you think positive things you're going to bring positive things to yourself because the universe is mirroring the energy and the vibrational level that you're on and there's names for these so you have these the the greatest vibration you can be on is love which is why a lot of new agers look like they're in a loving days all the time because if you're on the highest vibration according to this law you will always get what you want you will get love you will get everything manifested in your reality because you are acting and reacting on that vibrational um atmosphere if you will and then you have everything it's not lower but it's not as high you have joy you have kindness you have all these other things that kind of go down now then you have the negative spectrum which you would have bitterness negativity all this other stuff the lowest that you can get is fear fear and that's why you will always hear people stop living in fear yeah your your fear is preventing you from getting your healing so this this this is rampant in hyper charismatic circles and i know for me uh another word for this by the way is positive confession yes and this is where the word of faith movement is oh what you say becomes your reality yeah so i have a lot to say about this because and i probably don't have enough time to but what you say and what you think will will it will manifest and this is why you are told in these circles that you shouldn't say certain things because you will make that happen if you want your healing then you have to talk like you're healed now that's right if you want that job you need to talk like you have that job now if you want your marriage to get better you need to talk and speak that into existence is what they'll say yeah and i remember stumbling upon a few scriptures coming out of the new age and the one that really challenged me was james 4 verses 2 through 3 it says this he says if you you want something but you don't get it when you ask you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives that you may spend what you get on your pleasures and that kind of derails everything about the law of attraction because the whole point is to get what you want the god of the law of attraction is seen as a genie um there's a lot more i can say on that because there's there's a lot more to it but almost every new thought new age teacher teaches the law of attraction and it's getting into the churches through this whole kyber charismatic movement that we're seeing and the word of faith movement yeah i was going to say i've done a couple of podcasts on the what you might call the mystical miracle movement the nar the new apostolic reformation um and certainly i want to be clear that you know i don't think that all charismatics are you know teaching a false gospel but there is this stream within the charismatic church that um is very dangerous in that they really do they're probably you know maybe some would but most of the people that i know wouldn't say oh there's this spectrum with vibrations like they're probably not going to use that language but what you will hear them say is like you said positive confession i've heard holly pivik put it like your words in prayer essentially have creative power so if you speak it if you make that declaration then it's going to happen it's going to come true and uh so that's just a a good warning for christians to remember that when we're praying don't adopt these new age ideas of thinking that if you think something hard enough or you speak it with your mouth that the universe or god or whoever will will make it manifest because you know of course bible talks about answered prayers but essentially god's in charge of how those prayers are answered and and we we don't just get to go around you know like the prosperity gospel would say and name it and claim it that's not the christian gospel and so um you know i have such a heart for the charismatic church because i grew up in the charismatic church and and so i i just want to encourage all of us as christians just be watchful no matter where what stream of christianity you're in these ideas can come in and they can look a little different in each stream so just pointing out this law of attraction we're gonna see that in the progressive church manifest like positive thinking and uh you know positive energy and that kind of stuff and it might manifest in the more mystical miracle movement as this type of prayer that you're speaking things into existence but just a good warning for all of us as christians to make sure that we keep going back to scripture and not just one scripture that seems to prove the point you want it to prove you have to take all of them together and and make sense of what the scripture as a whole is saying on something especially something as important as prayer and i just always go back to the lord's prayer how did jesus tell us to pray read through that and then compare that to some of the prayer books that you're reading and see if it's if the tone of it is lining up if the the the mentality and the sort of the uh what's the word i'm looking for the approach to god lines up with what you're reading in prayer books and uh that's a that's probably a great place to start was when jesus said pray like this and so melissa let's move on to the next one this one i'm super interested in because i see this all over the progressive church and that's the idea of oneness so what is oneness and where are you seeing that come into the church well so for and by the way that was that was really good the whole way that you laid that out with the lord's prayer and everything that's that's good stuff um oneness so with oneness this is kind of like pinning down a cloud depending on who you ask um because it's new age you can kind of uh have some fluidity with this but basically what a lot of people would consider oneness is like wholeness and what i like to think of it as is like a tolerance sticker or like a spiritual utopia that you're the whole universe you live in total joy and bliss and there's no past present or future only now and a lot of the new age new thought teachers call living in the now as like the ultimate spiritual awakening there's no space time no eternity endless peace harmony unconditional love no fear and all equality in all things that's oneness to them and i use the analogy of baking a cake because what happens with oneness is that you want everybody to kind of be together and be together as one in the church but what happens is is that when we left we let everything in the door without realizing that the actual core doctrines of christianity are being pushed aside all for the concept of this unity of this oneness and i like using a baking a cake analogy where if you're baking a cake and you're putting in the right ingredients to bake a cake and sometimes you can get a little crazy all right i mean we can have some we have we can have some charismatic in there that's cool you can throw some lavender carrots in a cake and it's still all right but you're not gonna go and take something like i don't know motor oil you know pickle juice toothpaste and what's that toothpaste toothpaste yeah mints i mean there's just some things you don't put in a cake i don't care what kind of cake it is and if you you push that aside and think no that's bad this is this is this is the deal breaker i can't do this and if somebody comes up to you and says you need to put that pickle juice in your cake or you are intolerant unloving how judgmental of you and you're like but my cake will taste bad it won't taste good well you're still a horrible person if you don't put that in your cake and that's really what we're faced with anymore is that okay well this is christianity i'm gonna put pickle juice all over my christianity just to fit in with the world like you're making something completely different and you're totally redefining what christianity is when you add these things to it just for the sake of unity so i think a lot of christians a lot of christians uh churches are sacrificing their good theology on the altar of unity and yeah and it's all in that name of oneness you want that spiritual utopia you don't care if it's bad theology nobody's fighting so nobody really fights for what's right anymore it's uh what do they call it um it's subjective but there's more of a it's more relative for them but yeah that's that's how i would say that which kind of topples over into the next thing which is religious pluralism yeah because that's what you come out with yeah is uh out of oneness you get religious pluralism which is basically a co-exist sticker so if if if oneness is the tolerance sticker the the religious pluralism is the coexisting where all paths lead to god jesus is aoa not the way and i like to use the example of syncretism versus contextualization which is a very fancy word unpack that for us yes i they're fancy seminary words but basically uh syncretism is uh think of where you take two separate ideas that are separate but you sync them together and you do this for the purpose of bringing two ideas together so think of like a christian becoming a muslim to win the muslim it's that's basically syncretism you're you're adopting those ideas to win the muslim but really what you're doing is you're creating this hybrid type belief that syncretism and that is what we do contextualization is what paul did he went to the he went to the city and he's like oh i see your tomb or i see your um your idols here let me tell you about this one of the unknown god let's talk about that contextualization is you keep it separate but you kind of meet them on a level that they can understand and you you you tell them truth in a language that they can understand i have such respect for that when people do that yeah and i had i i there is one story speaking of seminary there is one story that somebody was telling to tell the difference between these two and i hope i don't mess this up too much because it was a while before i read this a while ago but there in africa there was missionaries in africa and if you went up to somebody's door maybe i yeah i did just tell the story you go up to somebody's door and you knock on their door so these people in this particular village to them that is that translates to i'm about to break into your house and rob you you'd better run this is your chance to run away so what people do is they have a gate and they would yell from outside the gate if they wanted to come into your home hey brother i'm here you know and that's how they would communicate that you don't knock on doors in this culture in this context that's bad so what these missionaries did is and jesus knocking on your door to them doesn't necessarily translate as good as well think of it this way he's outside your gate and he's calling your name yeah that's contextualization you're not you're not messing that up at any level but you're giving the point to them in a way that they can understand so that's really the difference yeah that's good yeah that's really good i i i was so fascinated when i was watching your video especially the oneness and then the religious pluralism building on the oneness because that's i think what people really need to understand is these are not isolated ideas that they're just picked out of random places this is a system that is interlocking and built upon building blocks that all depend on each other and so i i just want to take oneness and religious pluralism and just give the viewers and listeners some examples from the progressive literature that i read of where these ideas are coming in and again they're coming in other places too but uh i want to read this quote from richard rohr again such a spiritual mentor to so many progressive christian thought leaders uh i was just looking on his blog i always try to check out what people are blogging about as well as reading their books and so he he wrote this in one of his blog posts he said and you can tell me melissa if this i think this nails oneness on the head but he says the divisions dichotomies and dualisms of the world can only be overcome by a unitive consciousness at every level personal relational social political cultural inter-religious dialogue and spirituality in particular this is the unique and central job of a healthy religion and in another post he says the work of religion uh is to uh religio realignment or reunite what our egos and survival instincts have put us under namely a fundamental wholeness at the heart of everything that's it right unreal yeah so glennon doyle i i did a review of her book recently and it's just amazing how this idea of oneness is found in her book particularly when she has this discussion with her daughter so her daughter is feeling kind of alone she's feeling separated from everyone and so glennon doyle tells her daughter in fact i'll just read the quote here um she says remember when we were at the beach today and we were watching that little girl wade into the waves and collect sea water in her little plastic buckets well sometimes i feel like i'm one of those buckets of sea next to other buckets of sea wishing we could pour into each other mix together somehow so we're not separate but we always have these buckets between us and then she tells her daughter she says i told her that maybe when we were born we were poured from our source into these tiny body buckets when we die we'll be emptied back out and return to that big source and to each other maybe dying is just returning back out from these tiny containers to where we belong maybe then all the achy separation we feel down here will disappear because we'll be mixed together again no difference between you and me no more buckets no more skin i'll see i actually might have to remember that example to explain how they believe oneness yeah it's i mean that's that's it right there isn't it yeah yes because that's that we're basically all the same substance we're all we are all part of the universe we're all divine we're all part of the same stuff yeah and when you die there is no there is no consequence which leaves them with a really massive problem of justice and evil if you ask me right because that was something that always used to bother me is well isn't this person gonna have to pay for what they did yeah um but yeah that's that's actually a really interesting and intriguing way for her to describe that because that's exactly yeah um how they would and if that's your view if that's your view that everything is all the same we're all one well of course there's not going to be any kind of judgment which leads to the pluralism you know the christian and this is very big in progressive christianity too we're not going to tell the muslim or the hindu that they've got god wrong it's this pluralism of hey we identify ourselves as christian that's the side of god we understand but we're going to learn from hindus and muslims and buddhists and and all these other religious traditions to try to learn more about god because we all sort of have a picture of of who he is but an incomplete picture so you put all those things together so they're not going to tell anyone else they're wrong but like you mentioned before jesus is exclusive it's it's a requirement to deny yourself to to actually let go of all other beliefs and follow him but see this manifests again like like in a popular level with someone like rachel hollis and her girl in her book girl wash her face she says in her book just because you believe it doesn't mean it's true for everyone in so many instances judgment comes from a place of feeling as though you've somehow got it all figured out when they do not so judging each other actually makes us feel safer in our own choices which again that sort of resonates with that fear being at the bottom of that vibration spectrum she says faith is one of the most abused instances of this we decide that our religion is right therefore other every other religion must be wrong and she identified herself as a christian and so she's saying i as a christian you know i can't tell someone else that they're wrong and that's just the essence of religious uh pluralism yes isn't it it's just it's i've never read this book before but i might now that is not a lot of people read that book yeah it was a huge best i i believe the year it came out it was in the top three not just again i try to drive this point home i'm not talking about the top three of christian books or you know christian self-help books this is like top three new york times bestseller across all genres and same with glennon doyle's untamed that book spent weeks and weeks and weeks at number one on amazon new york times bestseller and these are self-proclaimed christian authors and this is what's informing so much of the theology of the progressive christian church well of course so oneness and then religious pluralism the the logical outcome of that is going to be universalism so talk a little bit about universalism yeah so before i do though do you see how this all coincides together how it does have its roots in the new age so people are like how is this getting in the church and like go read rachel hollis book actually like go right yeah um universalism is basically i'm sure a lot of people understand this even if they think they don't but think of the what we were just talking about with everybody going to heaven or just back to the source i mean god is all love no wrath there is no justice hitler's going to be there with you too because guess what he's basically you know the same substance as you he's divine as well all the other people that have done horrible things there is no wrath there is no justice at all for them whatsoever everybody goes to heaven or whatever uh good place you want to call it uh this is absolutely huge and progressive churches which i know you know yeah uh this is progress progressive christianity is something i'm still learning a lot about but the more i learn about it the more i see this like you see you have the shack the shack is universalist people love the shack yeah i'm like do you know what this what this person is saying like you see the spiritual implications of what this book is teaching yeah um well and to build on the shack see a lot of people i think were confused about the shack when it first came out this was 2008 so a lot of these ideas hadn't come into mainstream christianity yet so i think a lot of christians were just assuming that if it's a christian book it's written from a christian foundation with a christian worldview so they let their guards down a little bit they might have been confused about a few things in it but you know a few years after the shock came out its author william paul young came out with a book called lives lies we believe about god where he kind of unpacked his theology which we see all over the shack and he outright admitted to his universalism of course he calls it i want to he he denies that he's a universalist as far as i can tell but it essentially is uh what we would call universal reconciliation so if universalism is a broader term that might mean everybody's going to be fine there's no hell it's all going to be good if you want to drill that down into more christian language it's not a christian belief but uh you know you might try to make it into a christian belief with this universal reconciliation which would essentially say yes jesus is the only way we are saved through him but he saves the whole world and so william paul young i have a quote here from him where he says in lies we believe about god the gospel is that jesus has already included you into his life into his relationship with god the father and into his anointing in the holy spirit the good news is that jesus did this without your vote and whether you believe it or not won't make it any less or more true god does not wait for my choice and then save me he acted divisive decisively and universally for all humankind and then he even said like he puts the push back in there he says are you suggesting that everyone is saved that you believe in universal salvation and he says that's exactly what i'm saying so it's very clear he has come out and said it yes and now i'm really glad that you uh basically broke that down a little bit more because universal reconciliation is universalism but it's like a branch off of it because it's a christian teaching it's somebody saying yes jesus died for you too he died for everybody and we all eventually will be safe because jesus died for everybody um that that has its roots in universalism and i always thought that neither one of these makes sense religious pluralism universal none of it makes sense in light of how the disciples died and jesus's own death it doesn't really make any sense um in the crucifixion in in as far as that goes all right so let's get into this final point here the the idea of mysticism this is kind of a broad term so i'm gonna i'm gonna have you define it and then define it according to the new age and then how that is influencing churches as far as what you're seeing yes and this is the one that i have to be the most specific on because as you mentioned earlier there is in my opinion a difference between somebody who's charismatic and somebody's hyper charismatic so i want to be very clear that i'm being very specific uh with the types of churches that would practice these things um this is a bit tricky to define because a lot of people can be like a christian mystic but that's not new age what i mean when i'm saying mysticism is that they're purposely seeking a spiritual experience on on specifically that for the purpose of power hidden knowledge hidden truths some sort of extra biblical knowledge manifestations of glory powerful spiritual experiences things like that experience is your truth so one of the things that you will hear a lot from and that's just the new age aspect of it but this is everywhere in hyper charismatic churches this is the one out of all of them that i am seeing everywhere if you want to know god then you need to go have a personal powerful experience with him don't put god in a box is like the motto of this and or that i mean god has a box called the bible that's right yeah and that should be your basis of truth you see all these memes where people are trying to shove jesus into this box and as if that's what christians are doing and we're like no actually he gave us a box and said here is my the information about god you know it's like it's it's it's it's such i hear that all the time but anyway continue and that's one thing that um i i i have a major bone to pick with that because that's new age if you don't this is how i got to believe what i did is that i look at the bible like man that is so restrictive i don't what no jesus can do more things than that in fact he kind of sounds like a jerk here so i i think that these other teachers they're so much more spiritual than you and i'm gonna believe them because they talk to god directly hmm what what motivation do you have to pick up your bible and actually read it if they hear from god directly or if you can hear from god directly where's your motivation to dust off that book and think oh i really want to study this today like there's going to be no no none of that and that's the point yeah that i think is the deception itself because experience trumps scripture yes and i like to think of and i see this i working on a video for this but um it's kind of close to my heart but a lot of mega churches do this where you have hands hearts and and uh your mind so you have hands hearts in mind so what a lot of people do is they focus a lot on serving they'll go and help the poor and they got this down okay so they'll really get your feelings they'll get you in the feels and that's what they get you do to get through the door with but there's none of this in fact the intellect the more you think in fact in in the new age the more mindless you become the more spiritual you are yeah so you can't let your thinking get in the way of you having your powerful spiritual experience and that's where mysticism just runs rampant it's all about experience and i always i appeal one scripture is acts 17 where they reason from the scriptures not by performing signs and wonders you see this all throughout scripture yes they perform signs wonders and miracles but that's not only anything they did they believed because scripture was checked the bereans were a noble character for they received the message with eagerness and examined the scriptures daily um on on any level this is not done it's it's you are a religious pharisee if you read your bible too much and think too much and they don't call the bible the sword of the spirit for nothing it's the only offensive is it offensive and defensive that you have in the spiritual battle everything else is defensive so they're taking that away and you know what i mean so and my question always is is jesus enough without the experience that's so good and that's one thing growing up in the charismatic church that part of the reason i think that i went through a process of deconstruction is because you you made a statement earlier that i think would have been absolutely true of me and that's that experience was is your truth and that's why nobody could cause me to doubt until i was in this class where my intellect was constantly being bombarded with all of these arguments i couldn't deny with my mind but i'd always go back to but but those experiences i had when i felt the presence of god and when all of these things would happen but when yeah when it was when it was conveyed like well hey you can have those feelings with a lot of things and if i was really honest i was like you know what i can and that's when it broke down my main doubt was i mean it was around all these intellectual things but the main the the foundation the leg that was right at the bottom that got knocked out was the experience because that i think would have been true for me and i just again i want to clarify um you know in the charismatic church they they do believe that the gifts of the spirit have continued and i'm not going to repudiate that uh there there are times the holy spirit leads and guides and prompts i believe all of that is true and we'll even i've i've heard even wayne grudem and really reputable guys talk about the holy spirit speaking to lead you to do something but i think what we're talking about here is we're talking about new revelation that would be on par with scripture and and even though in these more hyper charismatic streams they probably won't say that it's on par with scripture uh they r it really is in practicality because a lot of times this prophet or somebody will give a word and you're expected to obey it like you would obey scripture and that is not right you have the the the canon is closed we have the word of god as our objective source for truth and you know if if someone says hey i think the lord wanted me to tell you that you're supposed to do x y z my response would be well i'm gonna take that to scripture and i'm gonna i'm gonna see what the scripture says about that and we'll see you know i'm not i'm not gonna take that as an authoritative source for truth and i think that uh in the charismatic church we can become confused about those things and but it's not just manifesting the charismatic church again pop culture we'll just go back to the glenn doyle book there there's this section where she talks about essentially what she's calling a type of meditation where she goes into her closet and she says i sink lower and so as she's basically practicing meditation 10 day 10 minutes a day where she tries to sink lower and lower essentially into herself until she finds what she calls the knowing and the knowing is spelled with a capital k and so this is how she makes decisions she says you know when you really sink low enough into yourself and you find this knowing which she calls the knowing she calls it the self with a capital s she calls it god she calls it all kinds of things she said in fact she says at one point i don't care what you call it just as long as you find it and she says what you do is you feel this liquid gold and so when she makes decision decisions if she's faced with a decision to make she sinks she finds the knowing and if she feels warmth if she feels this liquid gold then it's a yes and if it feels cold or she can't find that liquid gold then it's a no it's such a subjective way of ascertaining truth and and that's all informed by that mysticism uh well melissa we have covered so much ground today this was a absolutely fascinating episode for me i uh i think that we're gonna talk through maybe a couple of other short videos that we can put out on real specific topics that you're got some special expertise and so i'm looking forward to that so if you're listening you're watching be looking for those because those will be great little informative shorter videos uh regarding some of these these topics but melissa thank you so much for being with me today what would you tell our listeners and viewers just as a a parting thought just to encourage them to pursue biblical truth in these areas i would say scripture is suffice and jesus is enough love it in short basically because it's it's never it's never more than that and there's satisfaction in that he's the bread of life for a reason or you know the the living water he will sustain you love it thanks melissa thank you so much for tuning in today if you enjoyed listening to or watching this podcast you can go to elisachilders.com and click the subscribe button or you can subscribe on youtube or itunes or wherever it is that you're listening to this podcast don't forget to go to patreon.com alisa childers and take a look at some of the ways that you can come alongside us financially and with your prayers to help get the message out to more people have a great week [Music] you

Channel: Alisa Childers

Views: 158,647

Keywords: 9-22-20, green

Id: _nKrJvOdl3w

Length: 59min 54sec (3594 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 06 2020