In his quest to avoid the unpleasant, man starts taking the best
of the teachings of other religions, and combining them into a new picture of
God. Morality itself becomes unhinged
from God or really any objective standard and is simply taught as a goal to
attain to. Imperfection is not only
tolerated, it is put on a pedestal as some sort of mark of honor. In this way man seeks to use his wisdom to
overlook the superstitions of the past and evolve himself to new higher plain
of consciousness. What used to be a
literal love letter to man, the Bible is them positioned as nothing more than a
mere series of allegories for the Jewish people. Christ goes from savior, to substantial
prophet. His teachings are so pure they
are not condemned, but His divinity is put aside completely.
Having bought in to this new found spirituality, the new believer
unencumbered by superstitions of the past is now free. In point of fact, free to become God
himself. The goal of this thinking is
not slanted anywhere near service, but to introspection. Self awareness, and self fulfillment, become
the end goal of mixed truth spirituality.
Giving to the poor as Christ taught becomes a moral value, but is not
carried out for the benefit of the poor, but merely to prove oneself moral
under these new enlightened terms. There
are no hard standards or truths in this conglomeration of thought. When you reach any thing that displeases you
in one venue, you simply switch venues and adopt a competing thought on the
topic.
In this way it is possible to become a spiritual person by
blending Catholicism, Protestanism, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddism, Islam, as well
as unusual native religions or philosophies from around the globe – what some
might call Paganism. Add in some quantum
physics, or modern psychiatry, blend in a little modern philosophy and the
result – a new man, a new 'spiritual' man.
And of course the appeal of this thinking is 2 fold. First, you can pat yourself on the back for
being so wise and free from superstition, i.e. you are evolved. And second, you can still be a spiritual
person who believes in God and have found your own back to Him. No thought of losing the afterlife, just an
expansion on what the afterlife might be.
But the problem with this entire line of thinking is the
fundamental denial of truth it is based on.
To embrace many different religions one must be willing to ignore the
conflicts among them. Those conflicts
are usually fundamental to the picture of the character of God they espouse. Writing them off to superstitions is a cop
out, and avoids the picture of God's character their teachings would
espouse.
People trapped into this new line of thinking usually head there
because they do not want to take the Bible literally. The Bible makes too many demands on them,
that they wish to avoid, or tells too many stories that do not end
happily. Lets discuss the first
objection for a moment. For a person who
embraces his cocaine addiction, and really really loves his cocaine, he will
likely not recognize the negative effects his addition carries with it. The weight loss, health decay, theft for
means to buy more, and the absolute focus on his next fix, more than on loved
ones, career, or anything else in life – none of these mean anything to the
cocaine addict. Trapped in an addition
he likes what he finds. Sure he does not
like everything, but he likes the cocaine enough to ignore the rest. So it is with men who profess to love the sin
they embrace.
No matter how small the negative effects of a sin may seem to the
addict, no matter how harmless the situation may appear to be, it is in reality
creating a toll of damage in its wake that can hardly be undone. The sinner seldom sees or recognizes his own
state. They see the damage of other's
sins but do not see their own. The
'demands' of the Bible to forsake this damage are read as arbitrary commands to
give up pleasure, rather than desperate warnings to avoid pain. The love and care of the author is presumed
to be control and dominance, in short the character of God is misread, as a
result of the love of the addiction of sin we have embraced. No one who has rejected the Bible can claim
to be exempt from this thinking. The
conflicts between man's natural character and inclination to embrace his
painful addictive behaviors stands in sharp contrast to the clear truth of the
Bible which would have man forsake his addiction and embrace a new life without
such chains of pain.
The second objection to the literacy and authenticity of scripture
comes from reading too many harsh stories, or stories without happy
endings. From entire civilizations of
people God instructed the Israelites to kill completely, to bears coming out of
the woods to eat children making fun of His prophet, to a flood that destroyed
the entire world. The consequences to
our imperfect actions from time to time have resulted in permanent
punishments. This is a concept men do
not want to accept. We are fine with the
concepts of forgiveness and long suffering, almost to the point of abusing
them. But to know that evil will one day
be made extinct. To know that someday
those who have chosen to embrace evil rather than allow God to change them will
share the fate of evil. To know that
death does follow separation from God.
These are the less pleasant truths the Bible does teach.
We are not qualified to judge the character of God as these
painful punishments were doled out. But
we are more than able to see His patience with sinful men throughout all of
scripture, and in our own lives, and therefore can conclude that if God did
elect to take permanent action He must have had an overwhelming reason to do
so. This trust in God can easily be
established if the Bible is read in its entirety, from cover to cover, not
ignoring the hard parts, but understanding the purpose of love throughout every
text.
There is one last danger that comes from attempting to embrace
rule-less generic, enlightened spirituality.
It is the replacement of the divinity of Christ with the divinity of
self. Ultimately these philosophies and
lines of thinking, glorify the wisdom of man above all else. Ultimately the conclusion of these new forms
of religion is to evolve man higher and higher on the food chain till he
becomes a god himself. Sound
familiar. Lucifer wanted to become 'like
the most high'. Even he knew he could
not become greater, but the same was his aspiration which he never achieved.
Just looking logically at this premise for a second, it is easy to
examine one's own life and see all the mistakes, misjudgments, and pain we have
caused both to ourselves and to those who love us. If being honest, none of our lives are worthy
of imitation. Yet compare your
particular existence with that of Christ.
Whether you accept His divinity or not for a moment, his life was
perfect. He never caused harm to others,
but sought to save them. He served only
others never himself. He dies a martyrs
death for the love He believed in. He
could have easily been king in this world, which he rejected willingly teaching
the value of the next world. He is the
only person in written history to have a clean historical account. Even under torture he remained true to His
teachings of love. Even in death. Given that account, and looking only at your
own life in comparison, are you so sure that He was not divine, and that you
are a worthy candidate to be divine?
Christ reveals in human flesh the character of God. Christ reveals the only true God as only love
could exist forever, evil will not.
Christ reveals the redemptive character of God, willing to do the work
for us, so that all we need do is accept it.
It is not an exclusionary phrase to say that only by Christ can one be
saved, it is a statement of fact. He is
the ONLY God to die to save his creations.
It is His sacrifice that reveals who the ONLY true God is. Buddha, Mohammed, Moses, and the Pope cannot
make such claims. Nothing in Hinduism or
any other world religion teaches that God came to save us from ourselves and
our bondage to evil. Only Christ. This may seem like a hard truth to some, but
it is the beginning of real freedom, of real redemption, not just for a
mystical afterlife but for here and for now.
Generic spiritualism is nothing but an illusion, next to the truth of
the power of love that Christ alone represents and can affect in your life
today …
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