Collision w/ Zachary Conover: Eckhart Tolle, New Age and Suffering

What's up? This is Zach Conover with Apologia Studios. And today we're going to be responding to some comments by a famous New Age speaker. Let's go ahead and dig in.

New Age Awakening and the Co-opting of Christian Language

The memory of your past becomes relatively insignificant. Yes, you remember it. But the wonderful thing about your past, it has brought you to this point of awakening. No matter how senseless it seemed at the time, because every life is kind of messy in one way or another.

And many things seem, why did this happen to me? Why did I do that? That was so stupid. Why did this have to happen to me? My childhood could have been happy. It was so unhappy. Why did this? But all your past it, it brings you to this point of awakening.

So if you hear the terminology being used here, the word awakening over and over. Now, Eckhart Tolle is the name of this popular New Age teacher. And this type of Eastern spirituality has really made its way into Western culture over the last several decades.

And it's increasingly encroaching in our churches as well. So you walk into any Barnes Noble and you're going to see these popular New Age gurus and their books scattered all over the shelves. Eckhart Tolle is one and he would be in the same league or line as your Deepak Chopra's and these kinds of popular teachers that have their self-help manuals that have all been popularized by Oprah Winfrey on her television show.

And essentially all it is, is New Age spirituality, which is a conglomeration of spiritual beliefs and practices. So you have, you know, Eastern mysticism, you have paganism, pagan spirituality, you have occultism, and then you have all of that, the Buddhism, the Hinduism, tied together with all of these disparate beliefs, you know, reincarnation, and then all of these practices that accompany these beliefs.

So, you know, your yoga, your divination, your sorcery, your witchcraft, your Reiki, your energy healing, your spiritual psychology as it's been popularized today for our modern context, right? So all the talk about the laws of attraction and manifesting your desires, all of this is New Age speak.

It's New Age talk. And it even includes, because the New Age does, Christianity or Christian terminology. The unfortunate thing is that the terminology of Christianity is co-opted. It's stripped of its biblical content.

And then there is new meaning injected into it through the teachings and the worldview of New Age spirituality. So when he's using the term awakening, that is indispensable for the New Age worldview. The New Age worldview at its center, it's not monolithic, but if you could boil it down to a fundamental creed or expression, it's this.

Self is at the center. And when I say self, I mean capital S, as in the god of self. Our fundamental problem is not that we are underdeveloped. It's not that we have a sin nature, as the biblical worldview teaches.

Our fundamental base problem is a lack of proper self-knowledge, right? We don't know who we are. We are, as Toll says in this larger clip, an emanation of the divine or an emanation of the divine source.

So a very pantheistic worldview. All is one and one is all. All is divine, which is very, very different from the biblical worldview, as we'll comment on further in just a moment as he continues. But this language of ascending enlightenment, right?

It's all about reaching higher states of consciousness through these spiritual beliefs and these practices in order to liberate oneself from their false self and reach their true self, which is just essentially to say you need to realize that you are divine.

That's your biggest problem. You need to realize that you are God. And so that's the answer. And so just pay attention to the type of language being used as he introduces now Christ and the cross and this discussion about suffering and human nature to follow.

The Creator-Creature Distinction Versus Oneness Spirituality

So it fulfilled its function, but it no longer gives you an identity. You recognize it, you acknowledge it, you know it, but you no longer derive your sense of who you are from your past. That comes from a deeper place.

You can sense the presence that you are the being that you are not conditioned by your past whatsoever. And this is especially liberating. If you have a very heavy past, if you if dreadful things happened in your past, it is especially liberating to sense that and it's often people who have had a very difficult life that come to this realization.

Okay, so we've already kind of laid the foundations here for New Age spirituality. I mentioned that it is onest in nature.

Dr.

Peter Jones has fantastic material on the essential difference between Christianity as a worldview and basically every other worldview. So Christianity is to us by nature, right? There's a creator creature distinction and that places us in the proper perspective to be able to work through these things.

But as Paul says in Romans chapter 1, Humanity's fundamental issue is that we exchange the truth about God for the lie and we worship and serve the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.

So if you don't have a Christian worldview, if you don't have a twoist worldview with the proper distinction between creator and creature, then you possess a onest worldview where all is one and there are none of these distinctions and that's why there's this constant language about becoming and and ascending and getting in touch with, you know, your essential self.

You hear this kind of language today. Don't don't we hear it? We people talk about becoming the best version of themselves or living up to their truest.

Self.

It's a onest worldview where you are divine. Now toll is a proponent of Christ consciousness, which is kind of a subheading underneath the New Age worldview. So for this worldview, it's important to understand the foundation so that we can properly address how he distorts the cross and the issue of suffering Christ consciousness for the New Ager.

Christ is not the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth, right? This this person outside of us Christ consciousness is is an it it's it's a state of consciousness that we all possess. It's buried within us deep down that we ultimately need to get at right.

We need to unlock this through these various spiritual practices and beliefs. We need to get in touch with that and we need to essentially like Jesus discover that he was divine, right? He realized that he was divine and we need to realize that as well like him.

So you are Christ, right? That's who you are and your problem is you just need to realize that so we have to understand the how the New Agers are co-opting Christian terminology and infusing them with their meaning because all of what you're hearing in this is about self that is the God that our society worships capital S self and it you run into problems with that when you start talking about human suffering because the answers are all inside of you the resources to get better and feel better ultimately inside of you.

Your problem is just a state of a state of mental consciousness that you need to overcome that you need to get over and transcend right get above get beyond and so this one is twist distinction. We need to understand where they're coming from the type of terminology that they're using and the issue of Christ consciousness how it's so far and away different from the biblical worldview.

It doesn't define human nature properly and therefore he has a flawed understanding of Jesus the historical person of Jesus. He has a flawed understanding of the cross and the meaning of human suffering.

And so as we move on in the discussion and we hear him continue to make these remarks just have these things playing in the background because as we keep these things in mind will begin to properly evaluate the religion of our culture right everything is for the God of self everything serves me if we talk about what it means to worship what we're talking about is sacrifice and glory if I'm at the center of everything and everything is about my own journey and transcending myself and liberating myself from the false sense of self that I have so that I obtain this universal cell for this universal consciousness right because I'm an emanation of the divine right this non-personal deity that I am trying to have communion with again trying to be one with again, then you understand the ails that are facing our culture today because everything gets offered up on the altar of self right if this relationship isn't serving me if this marriage isn't serving me then it's got to go it's got to be cut off for the sake of self if this child that I am pregnant with gets in the way of my desires and my dreams and my goals if it's not a part of the story I'm telling then that child gets sacrificed on the altar of self self is an utterly pervasive God in our land and people worship themselves their own desires and everything is about serving them.

The Cross of Christ and the Reality of Suffering

And as we move into this next section you'll begin to see that even with.

The issue of suffering they have had their crucifixion and then there comes the transcendence of suffering as it's pointed out even for non-christians even if you're not a Christian you don't have to be Christian to understand the deeper significance of the cross which is no different from the Buddha's teachings.

Buddha said I teach suffering at the end of suffering and in the Christian cross it's there as an image. The teaching is that suffering is the cross is the instrument of suffering. Jesus is nailed to the cross this the deepest image of suffering.

But the cross is also the symbol for transcendence of suffering. The cross is also symbol for the divine. It's both quick note here about the cross of Christ.

If you notice the way that he is speaking about this an image right in New Age beliefs and spirituality Jesus is you know a wise guide or he is a good teacher for you to emulate. You know take to heart some of his teachings and he's a good guide for you ultimately to realize that you're divine and New Age teachers would co-op scriptural language and Bible verses.

Right. So when Jesus said the kingdom of God is within you what he was really talking about is that the source of light the source of discovery the answers to all of your problems and the ailments that you face and then the pain and the suffering that you go through.

The answer to all of those things is not something outside of you. It's not an outwardly focused solution where you're getting help from the outside. Know the answers are all inside of you and that's why you need to transcend suffering.

Right. This is very common for Buddhism as well. Part of the you know for noble truce is Buddha dealing with the issue of suffering. Right. Suffering is this illusory thing. It's a mental state of consciousness and it needs to be transcended.

But when we do that it really distorts and perverts the meaning and the significance of the cross of Christ. Because the cross of Christ isn't a metaphor it's not an image per se or just singularly. Of course we see it you know we wear crosses around our necks and it's a it's something that reminds us of the price that Jesus paid.

But that's precisely the point is that suffering is not an illusion. Suffering is very real. Suffering is something that affects us very deeply. Right. Physical suffering in particular. And we see in the physical suffering of Jesus on the cross part of what it means to be human.

Right. Christ took on human nature and part of what he was doing on the cross was to bear the effects of the fall and sins curse. And he really did that. It's not just a metaphor it's not just an image.

Jesus is the God man he is a God in the flesh come to reconcile us to God and the purpose of his suffering. The Bible tells us in first Peter chapter three is that Christ suffered the righteous for the unrighteous that he might bring us to God.

So the Creator took on flesh to take the penalty that we deserve for you know our sin for our lawlessness for our law breaking and the subsequent effects of that downstream are suffering and hurt and travail and all of the things that we experience as a result of living in a fallen world.

Jesus bears that penalty he takes that death and then he over comes that by his resurrection he triumphs over that. And that's just that's not just a metaphor that's the Son of God actually suffering as a man not only enduring the physical agony of the cross but also enduring the alienation from his father where the father actually took the wrath of you know his justice and poured it out upon Jesus.

The wrath that was due to us. Jesus was utterly forsaken on that cross so that we would be accepted and so that we would have a antidote for our suffering found in the suffering of Christ that would ultimately give our suffering meaning in this life.

Now in this worldview the only meaning that suffering occupies is that he's going to go on to tell you it's just something that you need to transcend. You know you might seek out help you might do what you can.

But if you can't do that then you just accept it and that's going to bring you to a state where you're just present in it. You're present and you just feel it. And you go on because the answers are inside of you and you need to be liberated from this state of mind and go on until you escape this and are ultimately reunited with the non-personal divine.

Closing Appeal and Show Outro

Hey, what's up guys?

This is Pastor Jeff Durbin. Thank you for watching Collision. We wanted to provide a solid resource to help you to respond to anything coming into collision with the Christian worldview. There's more as a response to this video and others at apologiasallaccess at apologiastudios .com.

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