Pursuing Holiness

Two interesting posts at Crosswalk this week. The first examines worldview:

What’s Bothering Oprah, Eckhart Tolle and Today’s New Age Thinkers
I have a few questions—but they are not about whether Oprah Winfrey, Eckhart Tolle or Marianne Williamson are good, smart and nice people. I’m sure they are. My concern is about the ideas they hold—since good, smart, nice people can hold false beliefs and be wrong about all kinds of things. Sometimes, even the most important things.

I have questions about their worldview.

… Right now, Oprah is co-teaching an online class with author Eckhart Tolle, based upon her current Book of the Month, his “A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose.” And, Oprah’s promoting a daily radio show on her XM channel featuring Marianne Williamson teaching from “A Course in Miracles.”Both Tolle and Williamson are New Age thinkers. Oprah says she’s a Christian—arguing that she can reconcile “her” Christianity with what they’re teaching. If she’s a Christian, she’s an ignorant one, because Christianity is incompatible with New Age thought.

Actually, Oprah is engaging in a de facto repudiation of Christianity. I can dance around in my underwear, but it doesn’t make me Madonna. Similarly, Oprah can call herself a Christian, but her beliefs clearly are not compatible with the Christian faith. And the fact is, she acknowledges that - admits she’s moved on from Christianity while simultaneously claiming the title of Christian. She’s a Christian, but she’s a “freethinking” Christian.

So if you can’t go along with this, you’re not “freethinking;” you’re in bondage, you’re repressed, you’re missing out on something better. What’s annoying about this is if you don’t want to be a Christian, don’t be one! But stop trying to redefine the concept. The fact is that when someone claims Christianity but goes completely off the reservation - a la Fred Phelps, or now, Oprah - it’s completely appropriate to call them on it according to Jude 1:3-4.

The second Crosswalk post invites Christians to examine themselves to see if they are worshipping unbelievers. This is more subtle - it’s for the benchwarmers who come to church every week.

Paul’s Four Criteria of the ‘Worshipping Unbeliever’
But how can we know who falls into the ranks of what we might call “worshiping unbelievers”? What “test” might we apply to discern the presence of unbelief in those assembled for worship in our churches? The story of Jesus’ experience in His own home town of Nazareth, recorded in Mark 6 and Luke 4, provides some guidelines to discerning the shape of unbelief that we can apply in taking up Paul’s exhortation to the Corinthians. We may discern four facets to the shape of unbelief from the people who worshiped in Jesus’ congregation in Nazareth.

These benchwarmers are the ones most susceptible to New Age philosophy because they think they’ve tried Christianity and that it failed to satisfy them. There must be something more! they cry. And there is. But it’s within the church, not without. This is exactly why the shallow teaching of the mega-churches that leaves people unaccountable, and the dumbed down gospel of the “seeker sensitive” movement should be forcefully repudiated. Even the founders admit it’s not working:

Some of the stuff that we have put millions of dollars into thinking it would really help our people grow and develop spiritually, when the data actually came back it wasn’t helping people that much. Other things that we didn’t put that much money into and didn’t put much staff against is stuff our people are crying out for.

… We made a mistake. What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become ‘self feeders.’ We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between services, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own.

We need to devote time to evangelism, but we must recognize that evangelism is needed within the church, too. Now, more than ever.

written by Laura