Bible Study Guide - New Age Worldview

What is the New Age Worldview?

  • Islam, Christianity, and Judaism are theistic worldviews.
  • Naturalism is an atheistic worldview.
  • New Age is a pantheistic worldview: pan meaning all, theism meaning God; thus, all things are God according to New Agers.
  • New Agers see God as an impersonal God force, spirit, or energy.
  • New Age is a very old worldview held in some form by people since ancient times. It is called New Age today because people who hold this worldview believe that one day a new age or time of peace and harmony will come on earth.
  • The New Age movement includes beliefs about God, the universe, people, truth, and right and wrong.
  • "The force" in Star Wars is similar to a God-character (except it's pantheistic).
  • A New Age book, called What is God?, talks about not who God is, but rather, what God is. This allows the author to describe God as many things; the author doesn't use who because that would imply that God is a Personal Being, something New Agers do not believe.
  • New Agers do believe in Jesus, but they believe He was a special human (and not the God of the Bible or the Son of God the Father), and during His life on earth, He came to realize that He was God (something all New Agers should do).

Truth

  • Christians believe God has revealed truth to His creation through the Bible.
  • Muslims believe Allah has spoken truth to them through the Qur'an.
  • New Agers believe that everything is God, that everything is part of one invisible spiritual energy force throughout the cosmos. This means that New Agers disagree with the ideas found in naturalism, which state that only nature or matter is real. In fact, many New Agers believe just the opposite. They say that only the immaterial or spiritual is real. For this reason, they reject trying to find truth in the scientific study of the natural world.
  • New Agers look for truth within their own mind or consciousness. Once people get in contact with their own "godness," they will suddenly know truth. And many New Agers believe that there are no limits to the truth people can discover within themselves. What people must stop doing is looking for truth outside of themselves.
  • Truth: that which agrees with, accurately describe, and accurately explains reality. Truth is absolute (not relative) and objective (not subjective). It is not based on what a person feels or thinks is true, but on what is actually true.
  • For New Agers, truth is completely subjective. They believe that each person creates his or her own truth. This belief is often expressed in the statement, "If it feels like truth to you, it's true." Truth, therefore, becomes only a feeling or an experience, and no one is free to judge another person's view of truth.
  • New Agers also search for truth in the ancient writings of philosophers and magicians; fortune-tellers, Ouija boards, tarot cards to learn about their future; astrologers study the position and movement of stars (they use horoscopes that describe the position of the planets on the day and time a person was born.) in order to determine a person's future
  • Today many people are confused about who God is, and many believe He is like the God of the New Age movement. Some of this confusion is based on a misunderstanding of the biblical truth that God is both invisible Spirit and omnipresent. New Agers also believe God is an invisible spiritual reality and that He is everywhere in the universe.

Ways Christianity and New Age are Different:

  1. The God of the Bible and biblical Christianity is not an invisible energy force. He is a Personal Being. A Personal Being can communicate, but a force cannot.
    • God revealed His name to Moses (God said, "I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.'"). By revealing His name to Moses, God is saying that He is capable of being known intimately. Only real persons have names. Only real persons have relationships. And only real persons communicate. God, whose name is the LORD, is a Person Being.
    • Although God is an invisible Personal Being, He has revealed Himself physically through Jesus, God the Son. Jesus is not an invisible energy force like the God of the New Age.

     2. Although God is omnipresent throughout His creation, God is not equal to or the same thing as everything in creation.

    • He is the Creator! People and the heavens and the earth are the creation.
    • When we explain this truth about God, we say that God is transcendent. The word transcendent comes from two Latin words: trans, meaning beyond, and escendo, meaning to ascend. In other words, God ascends beyond or is above His creation even though He is everywhere within it.
    • Solomon, King David's son and Israel's 3rd king, built the first temple for God in Jerusalem. King Solomon acknowledged God's transcendence in a prayer at the dedication ceremony for the temple. He said "...The heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!" Solomon knew that God was greater than His creation. He knew that God could never be contained within it or by it.
    • Isaiah 55:8-9 says "'My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,' says the LORD."

Christian View of Truth

  • While New Agers look within themselves to find truth, the biblical Christian worldview declares that truth is not found within people. Jesus explained to His disciples that He is the truth when He told them, "'I am the way and the truth and the life'" (John 14:6). Scripture tells us that God's truth is revealed to us in three primary ways:
  1. creation
    • Romans 1:19-20 - how creation reveals truth - God's invisible qualities - eternal power and divine nature
  2. Scripture
    • 2 Timothy 3:16-16 - how Scripture reveals truth - All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful...
  3. the life and teaching of His Son, Jesus
    • Hebrews 1:1-2 - how the life of Jesus reveals truth
  • When we say that people do not create or find truth within themselves, this does not mean that people do not discover truth. People are always discovering truth.
  • Not only does Scripture tell us where we can find truth, it also tells us where we must not look for truth.
    • Deuteronomy 18:10-11 - And do not let your people practice fortune-telling, or use sorcery, or interpret omens, or engage in witchcraft, or cast spells, or function as mediums or psychics, or call forth the spirits of the dead.
  • And God made it very clear that those who practice the magic arts, including fortune-telling, will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Instead, they will be punished forever apart from God. The apostle John recorded this truth in the book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible.

The New Age View of People

  • in this lesson, you'll explore the New Age view of people, which includes the belief that people live and die over and over again. You'll also explore the New Age view of the universe, which includes the belief that the universe gives life to all things, from the Milky Way to a newborn baby. And you'll discover why people who hold a New Age worldview refer to the earth as "Mother Earth."
  • the New Age "God-force" is often described as the Universal Mind or Self
  • People according to the New Age worldview: each individual is a part of and the same as this Universal Mind or Self called God.
  • a New Age philosopher talks about a cup of water from the ocean. it means, if the ocean is God and all of creation is cups, we all are God (according to New Agers)
  • For New Agers, the most real thing that exists is the Universal Mind or God-force. This does not mean that New Agers deny the existence of the natural or material world. People, the earth, the planets and stars are real. But New Agers say these material things are not the most real things; rather, they are real things. They exist only because they come from and are a part of the immaterial universal God-force.
  • The New Age belief that people are reborn over and over again is called reincarnation. This word is made from the prefix re, meaning again and the word incarnation, meaning the act of becoming flesh. In other word, New Agers believe that people are born over and over again as humans made of flesh and bones, still a part of the God-force.
  • Until people realize that they are God and that everything that exists is one with the God-force or Mind, they will have to be born over and over again. Reincarnation is a consequence for being ignorant of the "most real" and important truths about all that exists. Reincarnation is also a consequence for the way people live and treat others. However, New Agers don't call this sin because they don't believe people have a sinful nature.
  • Karma - the total of a person's good and bad actions that result in good or bad consequences in this life or in a reincarnated life.
  • Galatians 6:7-8 - your actions bring consequences - you reap what you sow - has to do with karma
  • New Agers believe that people and the universe are evolving and moving in an upward direction. (getting closer to the "new age")

Notes from Class

  • New Agers believe this belief about God: Creator = creation
  • But Christians believe: Creator  ≠ creation; in fact: Creator > creation
  • All truth is God's truth; unsaved people can still find truth (ex: a naturalist scientist can find truth but it is still God's truth)
  • most real (immaterial) > real (material)
  • Advent means coming: 1st Advent was for Jesus to bear sin, the 2nd Advent is for Jesus to bring salvation.

Last time updated: 6:15 PM on Thursday, March 31, 2011

 
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