The Reality of Superstition in the Church
Dr. Peter Jones, professor of New Testament at Westminster Seminary in Southern California, captures the large view as he surveys how our churches have moved toward experience-driven religion and eastern mysticism:
“Belief that the human is divine, and thus essentially good, helps explain the burgeoning quest for personal spiritual discovery, to the detriment of doctrine and truth. Mysticism has replaced true spirituality. Companies in the West, seeing commercial value in such optimism, are using these ideas to produce better sales personnel. Madison Avenue and the gurus could be an unstoppable, unholy alliance feeding the machine of political correctness. As an expression of divinity, each self is a source of truth.”
If anyone doubts that this is an age of religious fadism, confusion and superstition, just visit a Christian bookstore. There you will find:
• Hannah Hurnard — New Age occultist and aura reader.
• Madame Guyon — a mystic heretic.
• Madeleine L’Engle — who says the God of the Old Testament is “a male chauvinistic pig.”
• Many of the latest psychobabble theories.
• Dream interpretation and prophetic words for the 1990s by Vineyard prophets.
• Alternative medicine and Bible Codes.
• So-called revival stories with people acting like crass fools or animals.
• Instructions on how to get rid of ancestral demons and curses and do spiritual mapping.
Truly it is like Athens and like the second-century age of heresy described by Philip Schaff when he said of that era, “strange medleys of Christian and unchristian elements in chaotic ferment.”
