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Oprah Winfrey, on her XM Satellite Radio program, is offering a course entitled “A Course in Miracles,” which began on 1 January 2008. The course is admittedly one in “mind training” and “thought reversal.” “A Course in Miracles” is a “new revelation” from Jesus to help humanity work through these troubled times. This Jesus of the series began delivering his channeled teaching in 1965 to Helen Schucma, a Columbia University Professor of Medical Psychology. For seven years she took spiritual dictation from this inner voice that described himself as Jesus. Warren Smith, a former New Age devotee, and now a disciple of Jesus Christ, offers the following quotations from the “Course in Miracles:”
- “There is no sin. . .”
- A “slain Christ has no meaning.”
- “The journey to the cross should be the last ‘useless’ journey.”
- “Do not make the pathetic error of ‘clinging to the old rugged cross.’”
- “The Name of Jesus Christ as such is but a symbol. . . . It is a symbol that is safely used as a replacement for the many names of all the gods to which we pray.”
- “God is in everything I see.”
- “The recognition of God is the recognition of yourself.”
- “The oneness of the Creator and the creation is your wholeness, your sanity and your limitless power.”
- “The Atonement is the final lesson he [man] need learn, for it teaches him that, never having sinned, he has no need of salvation.”
There is little doubt but that this is heresy. To buttress this, permit me a summary review of the theology of the New Age Movement (NAM).
God. At the heart of NAM theology is pantheism, that everything and everyone is God. God is thus an impersonal, undifferentiated force or principle, neither separate nor distinct from the physical world. Humans must raise their consciousness to understand that they are God. This point manifests the governing principle of the NAM, namely that self is the prime reality.
How does the NAM raise consciousness so that humans can realize that they are indeed God? A myriad of “doors” to open this level of consciousness are suggested by the NAM. Among those “doors” are certain drugs, meditation, trances, biofeedback, ritualized dance, certain kinds of music, channeling (a form of séance), using crystals, etc. Each of these “doors” enables the human being to come to terms with the truth that they are indeed “God” and that they know no dimensions of any kind. Listen to Shirley MacLaine: “I was learning to recognize the invisible dimension where there are no measurements possible. In fact, it is the dimension of no-height, no-width, no-breadth, and no-mass, and as matter of further fact, no-time. It is the dimension of the spirit. [Dancing in the Light. New York: Bantam, 1985, p. 309]
In the words of James Sire, “When the self perceives itself to be at one with the cosmos, it is at one with it. Self-realization, then, is the realization that the self and the cosmos are not only of a piece but are the same piece.” This defines the ultimate goal of the NAM, which is summarized as “cosmic consciousness.”
Jesus. For the NAM, Jesus is not the one true God. He is not the savior, but a spiritual model, a guru, and as some state, “an ascended master.” He was a New Ager who achieved “cosmic consciousness” and “rose” into a higher spiritual realm of consciousness. That is the nature of his “resurrection.” For the NAM, to speak of Jesus as “God” is not difficult but to speak of Him as the unique, one true God, whose death and resurrection were substitutionary for human sin, is ludicrous. He is a spiritual guru, not a Savior.
Sin. The concept of sin as the Bible defines sin is foreign to the NAM. For this movement, sin is the absence of enlightenment, of cosmic consciousness. There is no need for atonement for human sin; rather, there is the need for proper methods to raise that consciousness as described above under “God.
Most NAM members believe in reincarnation. However, unlike Hinduism, which regards reincarnation as a curse and a horrific cycle that must be broken, the NAM regards reincarnation as more positive, as part of the cosmic cycle of evolution, where the human race achieves the higher stage of cosmic consciousness. Once that realization occurs, ultimate consciousness is attained and reincarnation ends. There will then be mass enlightenment and greater human unity.
Ethics: Good and Evil. As epitomized in the Star Wars trilogy of movies, the NAM sees good and evil as both being part of the “Force.” There is confusion within the NAM about clear distinctions between good and evil, right and wrong. Further, what makes it more difficult for the NAM is that the self is really sovereign. Self is the center of all things and creates its own reality. The result is that self defines good and evil, with the end being no ethical absolutes.
In conclusion, Douglas Groothuis analyzes the NAM as a “counterfeit religion.” Several of its unifying ideas can be distilled into a basic worldview, which Groothuis summarizes in nine doctrines:
- Evolutionary Optimism: A Counterfeit Kingdom. [Christians look to Christ’s return for the kingdom.]
- Monism: A Counterfeit Cosmos. [All is not One (monism). God created a world filled with diversity and plurality.]
- Pantheism: A Counterfeit God and Humanity. [God is personal and humans are not divine.]
- Transformation of Consciousness: Counterfeit Conversion. [True conversion is not the realization of one’s deity through one of the NAM “doors.”]
- Create Your Own Reality: Counterfeit Morality. [Biblical morality is grounded in the moral character of a personal God, and His moral will revealed in Scripture.]
- Unlimited Human Potential: Counterfeit Miracles. [Humans are limited by sin, depravity and being finite.]
- Spirit Contact: Counterfeit Revelations. [Occult practices associated with the NAM open humans to contact with demonic powers, not the true God.]
- Masters from Above: Counterfeit Angels. [Claimed UFO and extraterrestrial sightings validate NAM teachings about self and consciousness, all clearly contradicted by Scripture.]
- Religious Syncretism: Counterfeit Religion. [The NAM is a mixture of Eastern mysticism, Occult practices and western humanism.]
See “‘Oprah and Friends’ to Teach Course on New Age Christ,” Warren Smith http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/007/smith-oprah.htm (November 2007) and James P. Eckman, The Truth About Worldviews, pp. 82-84.
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