Bible Reading: 1 Peter 3: 18
For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. 1 Peter 3:1 8
WITH TOTAL SERIOUSNESS, a woman tells her friend in the grocery store checkout about the amazing healing powers of her mystical quartz crystals. “I haven’t had a sniffle or a headache in over a year,” she proclaims. She isn’t the only one who claims unusual, miraculous powers:
- A quiet man says he can communicate with numerous species of animals whales, dolphins, birds-with musical notes and patterns.
- A powerful executive uses ancient Chinese principles to make her business decisions.
- A seventy-one-year-old woman “remembers” being a Roman Catholic nun in the eleventh century.
Gurus, extraterrestrials, hypnotism, astral projection, eastern philosophy-the New Age movement is a smorgasbord of ideas and beliefs brought into the mainstream by actress Shirley MacLaine’s books and television miniseries, Out on a Limb. What people call “New Age” isn’t an organized religion or group. It’s a trend, a way of thinking that takes many forms. However, New Age thought does have some core beliefs: that God is in everything, that we are all God, and that by transforming our consciousness we can discover the “god” within us.
That’s a myth. An avalanche of New Age television miniseries, best-selling books, and business seminars doesn’t make this mind-set something new. Parts of it date back to the Garden of Eden. Genesis tells how Satan, appearing as a serpent, promised Adam and Eve that they would be like God if they ate the forbidden fruit. But Satan-Chief inventor of Half-Truths-lied. Eating the apple didn’t make the first people like God.
The one-of-a-kind message of the Bible isn’t that people can become gods, but that God became a human in the person of Christ and died for our sins so we can have eternal life. You don’t have the power and potential in yourself to become a god, but you can hang tight with the risen Christ and his resurrection power.
REFLECT: What are some of the places where you see New Age thinking in your world? How do you respond to it?
PRAY: Ask God to guard the minds of your non-Christian friends so they don’t put their trust in the false messages of the New Age movement.
