Truth and Falsity About God, Part 2

By Douglas Groothuis

[Note: You can read Part 1 of this series here.]

The first three books I published were apologetic critiques of the New Age movement and worldview.[1] Having become a Christian in 1976 after exploring Eastern religions, mysticism, and the occult (but not Satanism), as an aspiring apologist, I wanted to explain, expose, and refute the worldview that was capturing the attention of so many through films, books, seminars, and new religious movements. Although I have returned to this topic in other books and writings,[2] the New Age has not been my focus of study or ministry. However, after reading a recent book by Tara Isabella Burton called Strange Rites,[3] I realized that, although the term “New Age” is not used frequently, nothing has fundamentally changed in how Americans view or embrace different forms of paganism. The pantheism, polytheism, spiritism, nature worship, and occultism are all still there. What has changed is that paganism is now more self-consciously aligned with LGBTQ interests and, of course, all of this is usually mediated by the internet (which did not exist when I first wrote).

The subtitle of Burton’s book is enlightening: “new religions for a godless world.” The religions she investigates are all predicated on the nonexistence of the Christian God. In that sense, they are godless, even if they affirm belief in some spiritual being or beings (including, especially, the self). The defining feature of this riotous welter of religions is that they are self-styled or designer religions, with gods no bigger than one’s errant imagination. She writes that “the most common phrase I heard among the people I interviewed was, ‘I make my own religion.’”[4] Burton wrote another book on this theme, called Self-Made, which also captures the approach to this new paganism. She writes that “faith in the creative and even magical powers of the self-fashioning self” are linked to a decline in belief in the Christian worldview, with its assignment of roles and its declaration of objective principles.[5] In an article on “soft occultism,” Patricia Patnode notes that for many young people unaffiliated with a specific religion,

we become the main characters. We feel that we can uncover hidden knowledge of ourselves. We can better understand our true nature, if we only surrender our souls to personality quizzes and horoscope apps. These tools offer us assistance in navigating daily life, replacing or largely supplementing surrender and devotion to a particular God.[6]

Or, we should say that the self becomes the counterfeit god, and the creature attempts to take the place of the Creator—the definition and quintessence of futility.

All of these pagan religious beliefs and practices are addressed by the Bible’s denunciation of idols. An idol is an artificial god, a manmade imitation of a deity. The Old Testament repeatedly condemns them, most explicitly in the Second Commandment (Exodus 20:4-6). A spiritual idol may be a physical artifact or an image or a mere idea. (One can also make an idol out of ideals or ambitions.) Whatever it is, it is not God.

Biblical scholar Jonathan Cahn captures the dynamic of idolatry in his insightful book Return of the Gods.