I have never been into New Age religion. I swerved close to it at one time. I was intrigued by Buddhism and tended toward Eastern religion in college before I became a Christian.
New age philosophy was also intriguing to me in those days, though I didn’t have a label for it. Buddhism has made for a good entre into New Age religions in the west, but my path took a turn away from New Age philosophy and Eastern religion a long time ago.
I have been a student of religion since I took a world religion class in college. For what it is worth, I have never thought that scientific truth and religious truth were incompatible, but I have never felt that one necessarily leads to (or excludes the other) the other.
Further, it seems self-evident that all truth is harmonious. Any contradiction between the science and religion, or one belief and another, is likely due to an errant interpretation of one or the other, or both.
Science deals with the realm of the natural world, matter, energy and all the things that we can touch, feel, measure and quantify. Religion deals in the metaphysical. Metaphysical reality is no less true for being hard to “grasp” (physically). Beauty is no less “true” than gravity, but they cannot be approached in the same way.
We all put our faith in something; though materialists don’t want to believe that. A materialist is someone who believes simply and only in the natural, material world and science, which reveals the truth of the natural world. So they say.
The materialist puts his confidence in the premise that nothing exists but for the time, space, matter and energy and entrusts himself to that proposition. Such a statement, ironically, is a metaphysical one for which the materialist can provide no scientific proof.
Such a premise and commitment to it is belief and requires faith as sure as anyone who believes in a god.
Truth matters.
I could ignore the truth of gravity, but I do that to my own peril. My disbelief in gravity at some point is likely to get me into trouble, and it might land me in the hospital.
Spiritual truth matters as well, though it is much more difficult to grab hold of for obvious reasons. So I am attracted to people who are able to reach some clarity in the realm of spiritual truth, like Steven Bancarz, a former expert in “spirit science”.
Steven Bacarz was the owner and editor of the Facebook page, Spirit Science and Metaphysics. He wrote for the largest New Age website on the Internet. Steven’s website was so successful that he had 150,000 to 200,000 views every day and “was making a killing off of ad revenue”.
Then, he terminated the webpage and now advocates a different way. He describes his “journey down the rabbit hole” that led him into the New Age movement and his change of direction in his own words in the following video:
Truth matters.
That has been a driving principle for me since I was a senior in high school. Not that I have any particular corner on the truth market myself.
I hope that I have a good grasp of it, but we can all find ourselves down a rabbit hole. I have had to back out of a few myself .
People gravitate toward science and naturalism for its predictability and reductive qualities. Charles Darwin was averse to spiritualism for which his counterpart, Alfred Russel Wallace, was known. Perhaps, that is why Darwin didn’t trust religion, as Wallace went down his own rabbit holes.
Darwin came to doubt his intuition, perhaps in part, due to the experience with his friend. Officially, he chose not to trust his intuition that the world has meaning because, he said, his mind developed from lower life-forms. “Who would trust the convictions of a monkey’s mind?“, he said.
Yet Darwin obviously trusted the intellectual conclusions he reached in his mind that life evolved through natural selection. Darwin doesn’t explain (let alone seem to acknowledge or understand) the inconsistency between distrusting one element of his mind while trusting another.
Darwin was a brilliant man, of course. Darwin’s inconsistency simply underscores that we are all susceptible to inconsistencies and, therefore, errant thinking. Scientists, like spiritualists, are equally susceptible.
While both Darwin and Wallace blazed the trail for the concept of natural selection acting on random mutations that has been a foundation for modern scientific thought about the origins and development of life, both men were errant in their metaphysical thinking. It’s safe to say they were better known for their science.
I will say it again: truth matters. As much with spiritual or metaphysical thinking, as it does with scientific thinking. Thus, when someone presents themselves with clear-headed, well-researched and coherent thinking, notice should be taken. Such is the case with Steve Bancarz, in my opinion.
Having been down the rabbit hole of New Age spiritualism, and finding it wanting and misleading, he presents a thoughtful counter-position to the New Age philosophy with unique clarity. In his own words, he describes New Age spirituality as “Hindu mysticism boxed in occult knowledge and wrapped up in a bow of paganism”. It is a counterfeit spirituality comprised of old ideas “mish-mashed” together.
Having been on both sides of the fence, Bancarz can speak with some authority on these issues, acknowledging dark, oppressive and depressive forces that plague people who pursue New Age spirituality. In fact, New Age spiritual thought finds its roots in Satanism more than the components of the mish-mashed parts.
The New Age movement presents a “false gospel” according to Bancarz, who was once considered an expert in New Age spiritualism. He was headlong into the New Age movement and became a spokesman for it until he found a different, better path.
That path took him out of the rabbit hole of “spirit science” and into the light and the clarity of the Gospel of Jesus. If you are a New Age adherent, or maybe just dabbling in it or curious about it, take some time to listen to Steven Bancarz who was once considered an expert and a spokesman of it. He now spends his time presenting Reasons for Jesus.
Navigating by Faith 