To pick-up where I left off with My Answer to the New Ager Who Claims to Know God … the primary problem I have with New Age “religion” is the problem of absolute spiritual superiority. Or, for short, the ASS syndrome.
People with ASS syndrome are found in every religious group; I’d guess 50% of the 630 posts I’ve written on this blog have been about the problem of ASS Christians, for instance. (See, for instance, What Christians Want Non-Christians to Hear, or Evangelist or Ego-Driven Meddler?) But it’s been my experience that, more than any other religious group, those within the New Age camp are most prone to displaying advanced ASS, for the simple reason that they’re basically making up their religion as they go. There is virtually no constancy to the New Age belief system. It has no doctrine, no clearly defined set of beliefs, no established practices or methodologies, no authoritative text, no standardizing source. It can be whatever, whenever, and however any New Ager wants it to be. And in practice—which is to say in the ordinary interpersonal exchanges of everyday life—what the Do-It-Yourself open-endedness of the New Age belief system too often results in is its devotees automatically fashioning and donning for themselves the Teflon-coated cloak of absolute spiritual superiority.
New Agers with ASS can’t be touched. Nothing affects them. They’re too wise to be sullied by the plebeian concerns of lesser beings. They’re enlightened, self-actualized, fully aware. They’ve experienced Nirvana, reached samadhi; they are spiritual savants, embodied Bodhisattvas. Looking down from the lofty heights of Mt. Knowitall, the awakened New Ager has naught but compassion for all of us still caught up in the endless cycle of desire and material illusion, who are still mindlessly mired in the miserable machinations of Maya.
That’s what they want you to think of them, anyway. And God help you if you don’t—if you in any way question a New Ager with ASS. It’s like poking a bear with a hot stick. An even slightly challenged New Ager will usually attack you, claws full out, faster than you can cry, “Sorry! I thought you knew what you were talking about!”
What so readily facilitates the New Ager manifesting acute ASS is that what they mostly lack is moral consistency. That their “religion” is largely based on what amounts to purely self-aggrandizing feelings means that the New Ager is never hampered by the troublesome inconvenience of a consistent moral code. Having no external standard, no inherited code of ethics—no Christian Ten Commandments, no Islamic Sharia, no Jewish Halakha, no Buddhist Eightfold Path—means the New Ager always gets to decide for himself what is and isn’t moral. And (of course) whatever they do is, ipso facto, moral, by virtue of the fact that they did it.
Nothing a New Ager can do is so abominable it can’t be justified by way of their ASS. They are only, after all, following their bliss; they’re only doing what “God” wants them to. Tenaciously clinging to what they hold as their divinely appointed right to be jury and judge unto themselves, they invariably render for themselves a verdict of not guilty. You can’t break any laws that you can rewrite at will. No king ever sends himself to the dungeon.
New Agers encumbered with ASS never acknowledge the reality of cause or effect—the role they necessarily play in so much of what happens to themselves or others. Their rubber, in other words, never has to hit the road. They never have to deal with reality; they just keep reinterpreting reality so that they always end up regally poised above it, unaccountable, in their own eyes, as ever.
New Age ASS is terribly toxic. It’s the stuff cults are made of, for one. When you have no God, it’s too easy to assume the job yourself.
As long as I’m venting about this, you know what else drives me crazy about many New Agers? How they completely appropriate all manner of concepts and practices rightfully belonging to the legitimate Eastern religions they’re way too undisciplined to ever actually adopt, and yet act like anything having to do with Christianity is automatically drenched in stupid sauce. They adopt the attitude that they’re too spiritually sophisticated for the moronic simplicities of Christianity—and then refuse to acknowledge that no religion is founded upon a concept any more mystically complex or challenging to logical apprehension than the Christian doctrine of the Triune God.
New Agers: You want soul-stirring cosmic mystery? A truth at once absolute, yet so incomprehensible to the rational mind it would turn the most enlightened Zen master into a babbling, two-handed clapper? Try on for size the Triune God. See how intellectually or spiritually lame three God in one strikes you.
Flip through the Bible sometime. It makes The Bhagavad Gita or the Tao Te Ching read like Big Bird’s Guide to Building Blocks.
Just because it grows in your own backyard doesn’t mean it’s not unfathomably awesome. If you’re gonna pick and choose, why not choose from the best?
Again, I’m not at all saying that all New Agers are victims of ASS syndrome. I’m just saying that no other belief or thought system I know of more readily facilitates the development of ASS than does the fuzzy, feel-good mish-mash of New Age “spirituality.” You tend to find mushrooms growing in dank ground hidden from the sun and covered with manure, because those are the conditions most conducive to their growth. Similarly, New Age “religion” tends to be ideal ground for the development of advanced ASS—for people who, contrary to their standard-issue assertions, aren’t really interested in growing at all.
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As a “New Ager”, I will say that this post has some truth to it. I often grow tired of the superior attitudes that many in the New Age movement put on. I love how everyone is a clairvoyant enlightened being who can channel the ascended masters and is in tune with the secrets of the universe, and yet simultaneously lose their cool if someone cuts them off in the street, or the line’s too long at the grocery store, or someone disagrees with their political views.
I left traditional Christianity because of hypocrisy, but I must say where ever there are people, hypocrisy flourishes.
Absolute Spiritual Superiority is the one common denominator that ALL religions share. Jesus may have said, “I am the way..” but every religion, denomination, and individual place of worship virtually shreiks that only their interpretation of “Truth” is true. “New Agers” may be making it up on the spot as you say. Just like L.Ron Hubbard made up his hornswaggle in his time. Just like Joseph Smith made up the Golden Plates. Just like the very human authors made up a holy book 2000 yrs ago. Just like the Jews before them. And the Hindus before them. And the cave drawers before them. They all made it up on the spot in their time. A fiction today carries no more nor less reality than a fiction of a millenia ago. My evidence to support is this; Baptism , sprinkle or immerse?
I think I was too harsh in this piece.
As a full-fledged, card-carrying, astrology-reading, aromatherapy-wielding, satsang-sitting, kirtan-chanting, past life-believing Jesus fan,
I was a tad wounded.
But then I remembered that I’m not an ASS (& haven’t been one since I was a full-fledged, card-carrying fundy Christian)!
Love you too John!
I’m surprised you even found this old post; if you’ll notice, it’s uncategorized, which means it’s basically buried. I did that on purpose, because this is just … too obnoxious a rant. I should just delete it. Anyway … thanks for not taking its unwarranted insults too seriously.
Completely…I was hoping my light take on it would convey I’m not bothered! I found it stimulating, but I also don’t get the sense that you are truly heavy-handed about all things filed under ‘new age’.
Honestly, I felt kinda invigorated to ‘confess’ my newagey-ness! If where I’ve been, what I’ve prayerfully investigated in my life should crumble from a little critique, then I’ve got some inner work that needs doing. I hope you don’t feel as if you should delete it.
You’re a gem, Mr. Shore. (And I’m gonna keep finding the goodies, so be prepared…)
Uh, yes I do deny it. It is the doctrinal result of church debates long afterwards. As for the link in question, I'm sure the Jews have as much scriptural scholarship as Catholics and they likely hold your PSA to be fodderall as well. Another apologetic draw.
Christian Breyer, what a load of fallderall that link was.
It's like shooting fish in a barrel really. When Jesus says "I am the way" or other such phrases, that is far different phrasing from his simple declaration that "before Abraham was, I am." In the first sentence the use of the very "to be" is meant as a equal sign to link the subject and verb of the sentence. As in if I said "I am a man" means "I = a man." The use of the verb "to be" in the sentence "before Abraham was, I am", there is no subject of the verb. This is the same formulation that the angel revealed to Moses about God, "I AM THAT I AM." God is pure existence.
I have NO idea what that site you linked over to was about. But it does not matter because it is not a part of the Catholic and Orthodox tradition. We have two thousand years of holy men reading the Bible and over that time ideas come and go. But the truth is what remains. We call it the deposit of faith. We are not left on our own, with no rudder to guide us. God left us a Church, "the pillar and bullwark of the truth." In matters dealing with salvation, the truth is out there, is easy to find and will always be there. You can accept that truth or reject it. But in the combined wisdom of the apostles, Fathers, councils, Doctors and saints of the Church is a consensus of teaching that we call the Magisterium. This has little to do with the seldom used (or never used) Papal infallibility. This is the much more commonly used larger infallibility of the whole Church over time. And the consensus of the faithful is that Jesus was consubstantial with the Father. You can either accept or reject that teaching, but you can't deny that this is what has been believed since apostolic times.
Always fun to see the Christians fight, we can count on that since the Resurrection. Thanks for keeping the tradition alive, super productive!
That's it. From now on, I'm going to start using bigger words in my posts.
Peregrinu, I think that many of us (Christians), if pressed on this, are Sabellians, in spite of what Church authorities tell us to believe. It took a long time for the 'majority' of early church leaders to agree upon trinitarian doctrine and it helped to have the emperor on their side.
But you make a good point: because of the church's discomfort with Jesus' message of God's infinite love, grace and mercy (which does not satisfy our need to see 'justice' served nor help maintain religiously supported empire ) it was necessary to flesh out this scripturally hidden concept of the Trinity ( a 'mystery' we can never understand, as Sister Paul told me 40 years ago). The Trinity is necessary to prop up the sad idea that Jesus was the 'perfect' blood sacrifice that God requires to keep us from the hell we deserve.
That scripture does not necessarily present Jesus declaring that he is God. For another detailed take on this check out:
http://assemblyoftrueisrael.com/Documents/I_AM.ht…
They list contextually the list of 'offenses' Jesus commits leading up to this statement. In conclusion they say:
"… Yahshua was not declaring that he is the great "I AM" of Ex.3:14. There are many occurrences in the Greek, which proves that the term "I am" is a very common phrase, a verb of existence, meaning "I am He" or "I am the one." This phrase by it's self is not a 'stone-able' offense, for it is used many times. As we have already shown, there were a lot of implications in this chapter which ground into the minds and heart of the Yahudain leaders. All the offenses combined, culminated at this point, into the prophesied path (end result) for Yahshua."
John 10:30: "I and the Father are one."
How much clearer could He have been, Christian? Of course He presupposed some sort of distinction between Him and the Father and then claimed complete unity – because there are three persons in one God; He is not strictly exactly the same as God the Father in a Sabellian sense.
Likewise, John 14:6: "'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father, but by me. If you had known me, you would without doubt have known my Father also; and from henceforth you shall know him. And you have seen him.' Philip said to him, "Lord, show us the Father; and it is enough for us.' Jesus said to him, 'Have I been so long a time with you and have you not known me? Philip, he that sees me sees the Father also.'"
That's what Christians mean when we say that Jesus is God – we're not Sabellians, and for Jesus to flat-out say, "I am the Father" would be incorrect. When we say "God', we mean God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, including Jesus; when the Jews would have said God, they would have just meant God the Father with no knowledge of the other two Persons. In these passages (and others, including the "Before Abraham was, I AM") were indicating to the Jews that the divinity was not just the strict monotheism they were conceptualizing – there were two other Persons substantially united to God the Father.
If you're saying the Jesus did not say he was God, take a look at this scripture, "Before Abraham was I AM." The Holy Name of God, "I AM." This is partly why he was killed.
Thanks Tony. (I'm using an iPod so must be brief here):
I DO believe the challenge is the 2 part "golden rule" and that one cannot obey one part fully without obeying the other. I don't believe that Chriastinity has the best solution to this callenge though it appears to be the best one for me, realizing that no 2 Chriastians will ever concur on all doctrine, not completly.
I don't think that Lewis'trilemma is irrefutable, especially in light of non-literal approach to scripture, He did not say that he was God, literally nor is he clearly implying such in this unique non-synoptic account. IMHO.
Thanks, Tony
But my question was: “What qualifies as New Age” and then I threw out the suggestion of alternative spiritualities as one possibility. I don’t think it is really possible to pin down one definition of spirituality for everyone, other than to say that, even for the atheist, it is a sense of physical transcendence.
But why and where do you get the idea that we are being challenged at all? I mean, to be ‘more’ than good? “Love God with all your heart mind and soul and do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is a good start (and ending). And not unique to Christianity. Nor to the Abrahamic faiths. Nor is it foreign to some of the “New Age” philosophies out there. What more of truth is necessary?
Jesus said that we should follow him, not worship him.
Mr. Beyer: If you re-read my last post, you’ll notice I responded precisely to what you said by asking you to clarify your use of the word “spiritual”. If that’s defensive, then consider it the product of many discussions that got bogged down in syntactical ambiguities and equivocations.
In Romans, St. Paul talks about the “law written on the heart” of the Gentile, which he opposes to the law of Moses, and which the Church has referenced in its discussions of natural law. “When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law unto themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them” (Rom 2:14-15) …. So yeah, if we interpret “Gentile” in this context to mean “non-Christian”, you’ve said something no one in the Church hierarchy would immediately contradict.
If being good–being moral–were the sole end of humanity, I wouldn’t necessarily push anyone towards Christianity, let alone Catholicism. But if we’re challenged to be more than just good, then the question is, to what kind of being are we challenged? (Which simply repeats the question, “What do you mean by ‘spiritual’?”) That, in turn, demands that we think good and hard about Who/What is challenging us, and what kind of Person the Challenger is. That’s why the traditional paradigms tend to survive and syncretic religions tend to fall apart: The former have done more construction on their intellectual frameworks so they hang together more solidly. (This, of course, is not to say you haven’t thought about what you believe; I would have to be truly dense –as opposed to merely insensitive–not to see that you have.)
The people who suffer most from ASS, in my observation, tend to be the ones who use their religion as a tool for self-validation, not those who are genuinely seeking Truth. Among Christians, it’s usually those who forget that, in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, the one who is justified is the one beating his breast before the altar, repeating, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner” (Lk 18:13). Yet I have seen non-religious people claim to be “spiritual” in the same rhetorical breath that they pour vitriol on the heads of people who do belong to Christian churches.
So it’s not all hypersensitivity, though when you poke the dog with a stick, you ought to expect some growling. Granted that one is moral, just what is it that makes one “spiritual”? Sorry that I keep putting scare quotes around it; I really don’t understand what it means in this context.
Brother I appreciate your words here. The battle is fierce and we should absolutely justify our “growling” because as Dog the Bounty Hunter says so often “that dog don’t hunt, son, it just growls”. Of course he was speaking of heroin at the time but he’s a fellow brother in the Lord, it is important to take it the way he meant it.
I hope this helps.
Blessings,
FJS
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