What NewAgers Say When You're Listening

This is Constance Cumbey and - have no doubt - she's a Christian. A Christian who got turned on to NewAge long before I did, but who's also had a very-similar experience: specifically, a chance to hear of their hopes and dreams - from their own mouths - before they knew we didn't share them.

I can attest that this is how NewAgers talk in private. These are their beliefs and goals. They are occultists, and, like all believers, they're reacting in accordance to (or for-and-against) certain religious symbols - symbols the average secularist or atheist pays no mind, as they focus like-a-laser on the Christian beliefs they grew up with.

It's not exactly in the NewAger's interests to admit what they're trying to do - they'd be crazy to admit helping an Anti-Christ to appear - even to an atheist. It's much more beneficial just to say they don't like organized religion, or they're "spiritual not religious," without revealing what that actually means. Or (religiously-speaking) what that impulse's history, from Paganism onwards, has been.

While I personally don't believe in an Anti-Christ, anyone who understands Christianity should be able to grasp that NewAgers are acting within occult beliefs: imagining themselves as gods (when Christians say there's only supposed to be one) trying to re-define evil downwards (because they don't like Christianity's rules defining "good" behavior) etc. That's how the road to NewAge is illuminated. It's the "sophisticated" embrace of evil. Why, you could even say that, since atheists haven't been taking NewAgers as seriously as Christians, they've actually been giving "the dark side" a helping hand.

Yes, NewAge is the dark side of Christian belief (because no form of spirituality can be called atheism) and anyone old enough to have witnessed publishing's re-branding of books - from "occult" to "New Age" to "Mind/Body" - should be able to grasp how far it's been allowed it to go. (Look at the popularity of Oprah's Book Club: what is she primarily selling again?)

Make no mistake: NewAgers are busy, dancing around their golden calf, while playing everyone - believers and, especially, non-believers - for fools. To NewAgers, the most important part of a non-believer's foolishness is our most deeply-held, and rock-solid, assumption about the nature of ourselves as people:

That we've been too damn smart for religion.

I, for one, think it's long past time for society to pay attention to the kind of "spirituality" NewAgers really believe in - as a final way for all of us, atheists and Christians alike, to prove them wrong.

See? As NewAge has been proving for years: it can provide for the very-strangest of bedfellows.