Seeing a World of Difference: Lesson 13
“Songs need a listener as much as a singer;
Singing is an act of two.
But there is only One.
Art is an act of two.
But there is only One.
Love flows through the interplay of two,
The lover and the beloved.
But there is only One.
One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever know.”
—Amie Mann, from the movie Magnolia
One or Two: The Stakes
Is it too dramatic to say that many Western countries stand at a crucial juncture in history, teetering on the edge of spiritual and social disaster? Will they be seduced by the erroneous fantasy of Oneism, or seek the sane, natural and supernatural truth of biblical Twoism? Even the Church must choose between orthodoxy and interfaith paganism, disguised under a dress of social justice and mystical spirituality. Right now, the Lie is succeeding so well in some places that progressive optimists would see these very questions as a sign of insanity. In spite of the misgivings expressed in the plaintive song at the beginning of this lesson, many are on a giddy, planet-saving “Journey toward Oneness,” carried along by “Global Spirit” (modern animism) to build a “New Humanity,” based on “unitive consciousness” (all terms used by Oneist thinkers and authors). The International Peace Center teaches a “Living Peace Curriculum” inspired by the ancient earth wisdom of Native North American Indian religion. That is insanity; animistic spirit-worship as the basis of future world peace. This oneness will include the gender blur of the rising generation, which refuses to be confined to normal heterosexual distinctions. The New York Times describes the proponents of this omnigendered society as the “forward-thinking cohort” of the population. The Times is a self-proclaimed “paper of record,” welcoming with open arms the pansexual chaos of future days in which nothing is right or wrong except saying that something is right or wrong.
In the sophisticated twenty-first century we are buying the original lie of Eden, hook, line and sinker (or should we say, hook, line and sinner?). The Lie was and still is the seductive offer of a human utopia, liberated from the Creator’s control and based on the false claim that there is no God but the world itself. The inmates will run the asylum. Such an arrangement has never worked, as human history attests. In spite of this, many blindly chose to believe Lewis Mumford (1895-1990), an American historian and philosopher of technology and science. Prior to World War I, he stated that Western intellectuals were nearly unanimous in believing that the human race could arrive at a state of “universal beatitude.” Instead, we reached a state of world war, twice in twenty-five years! Marxism promised us the New Man. In his place we got Joseph Stalin, paranoid dictator and mass murderer. Nazism promised us the blond haired, blue-eyed Aryan Ubermensch (superman). In his place, we got Adolf Hitler, brown-haired, brown-eyed megalomaniac, ironically the descendent of a Jewish grandmother, and twisted inventor of “The Final Solution.” Folks, human beings cannot save themselves, for the problem lies within us!
Cheese or Ice Cream?
French truck stops have amazingly good food. Though cheap, the menu is healthy, and the final course offers a choice between cheese or ice cream. Gritty French truck drivers invariably choose cheese! What would you choose? Cheese or ice cream? Savory or sweet? The great choice before every human being is not between cheese and ice cream. Would that it were so simple! We all have an ultimate, life or death choice between two all-inclusive, life-determining worldviews: Oneism or Twoism. Your choice will affect your thinking, your spirituality and your sexuality. This is your major choice in life, a choice faced by every human being on earth. As sinners, we are Oneists by birth. But God offers us a way to become redeemed Twoists. God calls us to choose, as did the leaders of his people in both the Old and the New Testaments
- Moses, at his death, says to the Israelites as they prepare to enter the Promised Land: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19 ESV).
- Joshua, Moses’ successor, makes the same appeal before his death. Israel, now in possession of the Promised Land, is surrounded by pagan tribes and nations. Joshua lays out the choice between Oneism and Twoism, between the nature gods or nature’s Creator. Notice, as Paul argues in Romans 1:25 ESV, that there are only two choices (both sets of pagan gods fit the Oneism mold): “[C]hoose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods…beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15 ESV).
- Elijah, during the reign of King Ahab (869-850 BC), one of the most evil of Israel’s kings, calls on the people to decide between Baal (the god of the forces of nature) and Jahweh (the God of Israel’s deliverance). Baal is supposed to be the god of storms, but it is the “God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel” who creates the rain everyone so wants. Standing before a confused people, Elijah says to the prophets of Baal: “you call upon the name of your god, and I will call upon the name of the Lord, and the God who answers by fire, he is God” (1 Kings 18:24 ESV). When the fire fell, the people made their choice. They “fell on their faces and said, ‘The Lord, he is God’” (1 Kings 18:39 ESV).
- Jonah, instead of going east of Israel to Nineveh (the great Assyrian city across the river from the modern city of Mosul, Iraq) travels due west. Jonah takes a ship manned by a pagan crew, headed in the opposite direction from Nineveh! A storm arises, and so do questions about God (as is the case in life and death situations). The scared sailors “each cry out to his god.” They want to know which god is causing the storm. Jonah speaks up: “I fear [on good days!] the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” Here again is the great choice before which each person stands: the storm gods of nature or the one Creator God who made nature and controls the storms?
- Paul, the apostle, proposes this same choice in Romans 1:25 ESV: the worship and service of creation or the worship and service of the Creator.
The Bible confronts us with the ultimate choice between Oneism and Twoism. Fence-sitting is not allowed. Why are so many eager to choose the seductive Lie of Oneism?
ONEISM’S SEDUCTION:
When compared with materialistic secularism or Postmodernism, both of which have left a gaping spiritual hole in our collective heart, spiritual Oneism seems to have a lot going for it. Jean Houston, an occult channeler and guru to ex-first lady, Hillary Clinton during the 1990s, sensed the end of an era. She said: “We are living in a state both of breakdown and break through” and, since human reason has failed us, we need a “new alignment that only myth can bring.”[i] She teaches throughout the world (paid by the UN) that we will be saved by Isis, the Egyptian goddess of magic. One liberal Christian minister gave up on secularism because she realized that intellect was not the way to experience the Sacred, but rather imagination and mystery.
The Lie of Oneism offers the “new alignment” that Houston wants. It offers optimistic peace-making strategies to solve hunger, poverty, oppression, war and human alienation. Apparently, with just the right policy decisions, there is still hope for the planet. In fact, we can arrive at a planetary peace and personal well being never before possible—all this and spirituality as well!
Global Politics
Oneism claims to rid the world of the cold war “us versus them” mentality. Marxism versus Capitalism, the good guys versus the bad guys—such judgmental, confrontational thinking will bring a nuclear holocaust. According to Oneism, we need bipartisanship, cooperation and synthesis. A future world of Oneist peace and prosperity beckons if we see the wisdom of planetary governance and the end of the nation-state. The world will forego its wars and find a convergence of benevolent world socialism, human flourishing and soul-promoting spirituality.
But the problem lies within us!
Green Sense
Oneism profits from the belief that the industrial West has created so much pollution that we are threatened by an ecological meltdown. We need a spirit of global cooperation to rid the planet of manmade environmental disasters and to produce a green, sustainable and healthy world. We have a collective responsibility to save both humanity and the planet, but part of the price tag is Oneist worship of the earth as the Goddess, Gaia.
But the problem lies within us!
Global Religion
Religious wars (“my religion is better than yours”) are out. It is now believed, thanks to Postmodernism’s rejection of normative truth, that our world needs a period of religious peace and cooperation, created through interfaith projects and the comparative study of religion (mystery, myth and imagination). Radical pagan feminism is waiting for the coming of the Goddess Sophia, who, they believe, brought Christians, Jews, Gnostics and Pagans together in the first century religious pax romana. One “minister” encourages his fellow progressive Christians to “cast a wider net and include non-dualistic [Oneist] interpretations of Jesus, the kingdom of God, incarnation, evil and salvation [because] religious dualism [Twoism] is a major root-cause of violence and war.” Interfaith syncretism answers the question, “Can't we all get along?” with an enthusiastic “Yes we can!”
But the problem lies within us!
Personal Harmony
Our number one goal as a culture seems to be personal well being, whereas our number one enemy is guilt. Guilt is an illusion, according to Oneism. Spiritual techniques offer ways to silence the illusions and reconcile you to your higher self, which allows you to flourish according to your deep, unconscious (true) being.
You need healing from the unresolved dualistic trauma of your birth, which has deeply wounded you. The consciousness of and unity with mother and Mother Nature that is lost at birth can be regained through “natural” spirituality. You can be reunited with nature and become personally whole, connected with the Source of All Things. You will have a sense of belonging to the cosmos and will be reborn, with no fear of death. Such spiritual experiences give moments of euphoria and psychological deliverance, unhindered by externally imposed moral limitations.
But the problem lies within us!
Sexual Choice
Socially imposed heterosexual duality is seen as restrictive, because it drives all other sexual identities outside the pale of legitimacy. Self-affirming Oneist spirituality, on the other hand, worships an all-inclusive, loving God, who reserves a place for all human beings and all sexual choices. Homosexuality, in particular, allows one to see the world with the harmonious, non-dualistic vision of mystical religion. It eliminates the old world, polarized by the battle between the sexes, and (by seeing homosexuality in non-moral, non-judgmental categories) frees the human psyche of the false burden of “original sin.” This freedom produces well-rounded, positive citizens, who enjoy all civic rights—including marriage.
But the problem lies within us!
A Viable Future
Neopagan reconstruction is committed to a better, more humane future through physical and spiritual evolution. If the universe is self-emergent, self-sustaining and self-fulfilling, then evolution, in form and in consciousness, will lead to the evolving of a unique earthly species—the new, radically transformed human. A gathering called the Great Rethinking Conference is “an international organization dedicated to assisting in the birthing of a new humanity, and thereby, the realization of the successful cultivation of a sustainable and workable world.”[ii] The faculty is a Who’s Who of Oneist spiritual leaders. Among the more recognizable names are Deepak Chopra, Ram Dass, Lynne McTaggart, Stanislav Grof, Alex Grey, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Tom Robbins, Huston Smith and Marianne Williamson.
This is one of many movements of great power and influence that attract people to Oneism. It is up-beat, forward-looking and utopian, proposing a new day of healing both for the individual and for the planet. This is such good news… but, like jokes, there is also bad news.
The problem lies within us!
ONEISM’S DECEPTION:
Such a utopian vision is more fantasy than reality. The promised global utopia may become humanity’s worst nightmare.
Global Politics
Globalism seems to be a necessity, since, as Disney says, “It’s a small world, after all.” Political, industrial, environmental and financial mechanisms have been created to deal with genuinely global problems. Acid rain does not stop at the border; global warming (or cooling), is, as its name suggests, global. The great danger of globalism, however, is the disappearance of nation-states, which, for all their weaknesses, still serve as a system of checks and balances for flawed humanity. If those barriers fall, we will all be part of one-world totalitarianism. The new spiritualists long for a geo-political structure that will facilitate their redemptive programs. The freedoms we know could evaporate quickly in the hands of well-meaning central planners with utopian visions for the planet.[iii] Socialist utopias have never worked. Usually, they are unmitigated and thoroughly inhuman disasters. I mentioned the genocidal regimes of Stalin and Hitler. I could add Pol Pot, Mao and Kim Jong-Il. The New Spirituality claims to deliver us from these, but alas, Oneist spirituality is no defense against totalitarianism. Ancient Rome was very spiritual, but absolute imperial power corrupted the commander-in-chief/priest-emperor absolutely.
Green Sense
In a biblical worldview, man is God’s viceroy, charged with caring for and exercising dominion over the earth. Twoists are to be as interested in our environment as Oneists. However, care for the earth must not become a pretext to seize political and religious power. Socialist Carol Browner believes that rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change, but Abraham Lincoln would not have agreed. He said you cannot make a weak man strong by making a strong man weak. Suppressing the dynamic of wealth-creation would impoverish everyone. Browner wants to rid the world of the free enterprise system, but to do so in the name of “global warming” would cost billions of dollars and hurt the poor, in order to solve a problem many scientists do not believe exists. Remember that only twenty or thirty years ago, we were worried about scientifically proven “global cooling.” In spite of the Al Gore mantra that the “manmade” global warming science is conclusive, 31,000 scientists signed a document disagreeing. Ecological stewardship is essential, but human hubris can make it dangerous. Worshipers of the earth, with a uniquely this-worldly perspective can exaggerate problems as a means of coming closer to global political control. Spiritually speaking, pagan green thinking asks us to learn our morals from the earth, rather than from the Creator of the earth. You have no doubt heard arguments appealing to the morals of the animal world as examples for us to follow. Such thinking creates even greater moral confusion for our young people. How do we discern the spiritual teaching of nature? If stronger animals devour weaker animals, should humans also choose this practice? Should we sequester a Queen to keep for breeding purposes, as do the bees? No, morality cannot be learned from the earth. It must be learned from communication given to us by the God who created the earth and who made human beings in his image, which is not the case for any other animal.
Global Religion
Peace between religions is desirable, if by “peace” we mean tolerance of views other than our own. Oneist religions share so much in common that they don’t have much trouble tolerating one another. The conflicts that arise between such groups are usually due to political, tribal or racial tensions. However, Oneism, while desiring to be all-inclusive, does have a problem with Twoism. While accusing Christian fundamentalism of intolerance (due to claims that Christianity is the only way to God), all-inclusive Oneism is utterly intolerant of Christian orthodoxy. Biblical Christianity is ignored or even persecuted. Interfaith is right in seeing that most religions have a common core, but it will not admit the validity of Twoism.
Two examples make the point:
- One hundred and twenty-five different religions (including Witchcraft) gathered at the 1993 Parliament of the World’s Religions, but biblical Christianity was not invited. The Parliament was based on the principle that all religions are finally the same, but biblical Christianity did not fit, and was treated as a pariah. Though it apparently did not exist, biblical Christianity was the butt of many critiques and was the religion over against which interfaith people defined themselves.
- Ken Wilber is a leading Neopagan Mahayana Buddhist thinker, appreciated by Bill Clinton, Brian McLaren and Rob Bell. In lesson 7 we saw his chart of the spiritual evolution of humanity, which places biblical theism fourth from the bottom, just under the next best system—Enlightenment Rationalism. Spiritual history has moved on to a higher level.
As we saw, Wilber’s ladder has two problems: all his systems exist simultaneously in history, so there is no “progression” and eight of his nine steps are Oneist. The main defining question in analyzing religious systems is the Oneist versus Twoist, the esoteric versus exoteric question. If religious peace can occur only by suppressing the antithesis that separates Oneism and Twoism, then it is by definition an unstable, ephemeral and false peace, based on subterfuge.
Personal Harmony
No one can deny the immediate stress-relieving effects of Oneist spirituality. Expert spiritualists will testify that the experience of timeless unity with Spirit is not an idea, but a direct apprehension of spiritual reality. It is even claimed that mystical religion, as opposed to dogmatic religion, is more scientific, because it relies on direct experiential evidence and testing. The mystics ask you to take nothing on mere belief.
States of spiritual mysticism are usually created by techniques of physical stimuli, such as sensory overload or mind control through a variety of contrived bodily stimuli.[iv] A Dutch anesthesiologist, Dr. G. M. Woerlee, studied people who had “near-death experiences,” which often include a sense of inner peace, calmness and an inability to be disturbed by danger. He found the root cause of this state to be biological in nature.[v] Mild to moderate oxygen deprivation upsets the function of the prefrontal cortex, the seat of all things intellectual, to produce states of non-rational euphoria, which, he notes, is the goal of all spiritual gurus. Another researcher found that rhythmic light and sound stimulation increased blood flow in the brains of elderly subjects, changing their cognitive functioning. If physical stimuli, under controlled circumstances, have such “spiritual” effects, it is not surprising that physically-stimulated spiritual seekers speak of “direct experiential evidence and testing.”
A yellow-robed Indian guru at the Parliament of the World’s Religions (1993) pointed his chubby finger at Dr. Peter Jones and said, with a twinkle in his eye and in a rich, curry-deepened voice: “You need faith. I don’t. I meet the gods directly.” If this altered state of consciousness is created by a psychosomatic overload, perhaps its derived spiritual truth is doubtful and its absence of fear illusory. The physical stimuli in Oneist spirituality have spiritual repercussions. The paranormal world of the occult is real, and practitioners have regularly spoken of the cruelty with which they are treated by demonic powers. The altered states of consciousness so religiously and constantly sought via “technologies of the sacred,” may be, at first, “physical” states in which, as in hypnosis, the initiate gives up conscious control and is opened up to “powers” that lead from the true God to the gods of this world.
Says yoga meditation life coach, Jennifer Macaluso-Gilmore: “When you step out into the unknown, anything is possible in your life.” But leaving behind your God-endowed rational awareness and self-control in order to give yourself over to unknown spirit power is the first step to losing your personal identity and, eventually, your soul. The Russian princess, Helena Blavatsky, founder of the occult Theosophical Society, towards the end of her life, wrote to an old friend and declared: “I would gladly return, be Russian, be Christian, be Orthodox. I yearn for it. But there is no returning; I am in chains, I am not my own.”[vi] We discard at our peril our rational self-consciousness, which God has told us should be under the control of his Spirit.
Sexual Choice
What kind of a sexual world is Oneist utopianism preparing? Professor Bernice L. Hausman teaches a course at Virginia Polytechnic Institute (Virginia Tech) called “Studies in Theory: Representing Female Bodies,” which explores androgyny. A required assignment instructs students to “choose one day in which [they] dress and comport themselves in a manner either more masculine or more feminine than they would normally.” Hausman’s published works include a book, Changing Sex: Transsexualism, Technology, and the Idea of Gender, and articles such as “Do Boys Have to Be Boys?” and “Virtual Sex, Real Gender: Body and Identity in Transgender Discourse.” Hausman is only one of many radicals forming the minds of our future citizens. Oberlin College in Ohio was founded in 1833 by two Presbyterian ministers. The Christian evangelist, Charles Finney, was its second President.
Today students are exhorted by campus-sponsored speakers to have sex whenever they wish and moreover, they even host events that are too explicit to mention.
Will these liberated future teachers, senators and governors ensure that the coming utopia will be a haven of human goodwill and selfless service? It doesn’t begin with college. Children are indoctrinated in pansexuality long before that. The Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) has clubs for homosexual and lesbian students on college, high school and middle school campuses. Another homosexual organization working in schools, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), was founded by Kevin Jennings, who was named Assistant Deputy Secretary at the Department of Education by the Obama administration.
Jennings favors teaching homosexual techniques to children. His government-backed project of “Safe Schools” will mean eliminating any criticism of or warnings about homosexuality. Children must be taught by official government programs, to embrace homosexuality and all forms of deviant sex, backed up by hate crime laws now in vigor. It is disturbing to see how successfully the pro-homosexual movement is ingratiating itself into the lives of children. Official organizations such as the GSA, the GLSEN and Open Arms Youth Project normalize homosexuality for children as young as twelve or thirteen, and create “safe” zones at school where children can experiment in various forms of “dating.” One has to wonder how “safe” the schools of tomorrow will be. In the meantime, for confused teens, hundreds of websites promote the deviancy “helping” homosexual children to no longer “feel alone.” In the Sixties, the generally heterosexual mantra was one of liberation. Today, the omnisex mantra is: “You are what you are—embrace it.”
This view of sexuality is flooding the culture as a religious value. The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Scholarship and Mentorship Program, part of The American Academy of Religion, is designed to “nurture and promote promising theologians and religious scholars interested in LGBT studies.” The program statement outlines its goals to create within religious institutions a welcoming environment for all gender identities. The Religious Institute, a nonprofit, multifaith organization supported by more than 4,800 clergy, religious scholars and seminary presidents and deans, is dedicated to advocating in faith communities and in society at large for sexual “health” (free-sex), education (condoms) and justice (normalization and legalization of homosexuality).[vii] Such organizations will do nothing to stop the slide into sexual chaos. Some of these scenes are already unfolding on our national stage. Speaking out against them will incur the risk of a fine or even jail time for “hate speech."
In this utopia, those who oppose such sexual aberrations will lose their freedom of speech and religion; schools will be required to teach all forms of sexual expression; sensitivity training at businesses for transgenderism and pansexuality will be mandatory; health clubs, rest rooms and locker rooms will be pansexual; landlords and property owners will be unable to deny rental or sale on the basis of “gender identity or expression;” all crimes against self-identified transgender or homosexual persons will receive extra penalties as hate crimes; bodily mutilations to change one’s sex will become part of mandatory tax-payer insurance coverage; unelected tribunals, like the “Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination” will have broad powers to harass people and impose huge fines for discriminatory behavior.
Under the guise of a new day of taboo-free liberation, everyone’s desires and fantasies must be publicly respected. Our modern culture, because of sexual morals and the ease of internet technology, is awash in active, guilt-free forms of heterosexual and homosexual immorality and pornographic obsession. But sexual anarchy will cause the collapse of stable families, where children can be raised sanely. The family is the bedrock of Western civilization. To eliminate it as a source of cultural authority leaves the individual standing alone against the collectivist state.
Can we stop this omnigendered sexual juggernaut, and if so, by what ideology? If we are already shocked by the sexual anarchy we now see, what will the pansexual utopia look like? If the goal of Oneism is to “join the opposites" and embrace the antinomies, then evil is just as much at home in the pagan circle as is good. By definition, there is nothing outside the Oneist circle, so evil must be included. Oneists believe that the coming Ultimate Reality is beyond good and evil. In June 2009, the Rev. Jesse Jackson added former Chicago Democrat, Congressman Mel Reynolds, to his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition’s payroll. In jail on fifteen convictions for committing wire and bank fraud, for lying to the Federal Election Commission, and for sleeping with an underage campaign volunteer, Reynolds was among the one hundred seventy-six criminals pardoned by President Clinton. This is a first in American politics: an ex-congressman who had sex with a subordinate...won clemency from a president who had sex with a subordinate...then was hired by a clergyman who had sex with a subordinate! His new job? Youth counselor! Though, in some sense trivial, this event indicates what has happened to our culture’s moral sensitivity. How do you build a better culture with such people in authority?
At a much deeper level, moral relativism is expressly practiced in modern witchcraft; witches believe that the spiritual power available to them is neither good nor evil. This is essentially what Carl Jung thought. After a visit to India in 1938, Jung stated how impressed he was that Buddhists and Hindus were able to integrate “evil” into their natural world. He observed that Indian spirituality contains as much evil as good, but does not believe in either. He warned the West not to think of good and evil as opposites. We must each reconcile the light/good and the dark/evil sides of our personality. Jung built this principle, called “individuation” into his influential theory of psychological wholeness. Goddess-worshiping feminists hold the same view. Darkness is an aspect of the goddess, as in Hindu worship of the goddess Kali, who is covered in blood and holds the bodies of dead babies. As goddess of destruction, she teaches that both good and evil must be embraced to achieve wholeness in a world riven by duality (Twoism). She stands as an evocative image of the powerful, autonomous spiritual woman of tomorrow. In the Oneist system, there are no evil actions. It makes no difference whether we slander or praise, love or hate, murder or save someone. Where there are no ultimate moral distinctions, there is no absolute moral responsibility. The Man/God is liberated from moral restraints.
One consistent spiritual Oneist, Neale Donald Walsch, openly states that Hitler went to “heaven” (whatever a this-worldly “heaven” means).[viii] Imagine Hitler nonchalantly sitting on a pink cloud, minding his own business, playing a harp like any other self-respecting angel, because, according to Walsch, his deeds were not evil, they were merely mistakes! The pink clouds are a joke, by the way, and angels aren’t depicted in the Bible as playing harps. That Christmas-card version of heaven is not the one the Bible presents to us. The utopian heaven of Oneism is chilling, for if it has no moral order, it inevitably becomes a monstrous “hell.” And since, in their system, transcendence does not exist, their utopia becomes “hell on earth.”
A Viable Future
The fantasy world of the Oneist state seduces those who blithely believe it will give us unity, sweetness and light. Such an entirely “this-worldly” hope offers no objective evidence that the “new human species” will save us, and it sets us up for dashed hopes and untold suffering. In sum, Oneism fails to provide real hope and is unable to answer the deepest human needs of ethics, personhood, mystery, spirituality and ultimate significance, because:
- By relativizing good and evil, it is ultimately amoral and egotistical;
- By rejecting the God of Twoism, it is at heart impersonal;
- By focusing on this-worldly reality, it lacks true mystery and cannot evoke genuine worship;
- By manipulating the brain through mystical/physical techniques, it opens us to evil, occult, spiritual enslavement to the god of this world;
- By dismissing the true God as the objective source of significance, it has no basis to make meaningful statements, and is merely self-referential.
In all these ways, Oneism is profoundly “anti-human.” It closes itself off from fellowship with God, the transcendent Creator of all things and the ultimate source of human dignity. Currently, this movement is progressing. The number of Christians is plummeting in America, while the number of non-believers is skyrocketing. A study of Americans’ religious beliefs shows the beginnings of a major realignment in the country’s relationship with God. Protestants will soon be a minority for the first time since the Pilgrims arrived on the North American continent. Oneism is not viable and the biblical, Protestant foundations of the culture are eroding. Americans, though interested in God, do not think existing institutions are helping them draw closer to him. Whatever the faults of our churches, the optimistic discourse about “the birthing of a new humanity” or a “new human species” will bring us all down. The “new” optimism is only a tired repeat of the old Marxist idealism, which believed that the “new man” would emerge from the old. How do we purge selfishness from the old as he morphs into the new?
With its added power and planetary reach, global utopia will doubtless be history’s most terrifying experiment, a mixture of Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Orwell’s Animal Farm. The specter of a future world community is melting into a mixture of anything-goes selfishness of the ruling elite, which justifies all its actions as acts of benevolence for the common good. It all ends in ruthless totalitarianism, controlled by an elite class of occult shamans. Oneism exchanges the God of Twoism for “the god of this world,” who is not a god but a creature, the epitome of Evil. Without the true personal God, without the heavenly Father, we creatures—lonely orphans in an impersonal universe, worshiping idols of their own making—are left to ourselves to devour one another.
The prophet Hosea pled with apostate Israel to come back to sanity and return to God, their Father, with these touching words: “[R]eturn to the Lord; say to him, ‘Take away all iniquity…Assyria cannot save us…We will never again say ‘Our gods’ to what our own hands have made, for in you the fatherless find compassion’” (Hosea 14:2-3 ESV).
This has been a depressing lesson. But in the last lessons, we will find relief, for we will meet the only true God, who gives genuine hope not only for a meaningful life right now, but also for the true, utopian “new man” whose identity we already know and who invites those who believe in him to join him in a transformed “new heavens and a new earth.”
[i] Jean Houston, The Passion of Isis and Osiris: A Gateway to Transcendent Love (New York: Ballantine, 1995), 2.
[ii] [Original URL citation provided by truthXchange is no longer available. Please contact truthXchange for more information at www.truthXchange.com/contact/]
[iii] See The Coming Pagan Utopia: Christian Witness in Tough Times, ed. Peter Jones (Escondido, CA: Main Entry Editions, 2013). This volume is a collection of essays from the 2013 truthXchange Think Tank.
[iv] See lesson 8 and the truthXchange 2008 Think Tank compendium, Global Wizardry: Techniques of Pagan Spirituality and a Christian Response, ed. Peter Jones (Escondido, CA: Main Entry Editions, 2010) which describes such techniques.
[v] 4. Dr. G. M. Woerlee, Mortal Minds: the Biology of Near-Death Experiences (Amherst, N.Y: Prometheus Books, 2005).
[vi] Walter Leaf, A Modern Priestess of Isis (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1895), 219.
[viii] Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue, bk. 2 (Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads, 1997), 35.