What is the New Age movement? What do new agers believe? With Melissa Dougherty - Podcast Episode 67

Welcome to the God Questions Podcast. On today's episode, we have Melissa Daugherty.

She is a New Ager turned Christian online evangelist, so to speak, who really reaches out to people in the

New Age movement. So we're going to have a very interesting discussion with Melissa today. So, Melissa, welcome to the program.

Yeah, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. So I've watched the video where you share testimony, but for those who may not be familiar with you and your ministry, tell our listeners how you came to faith in Christ and your background.

Sure. Well, as you stated, I used to be a New Ager. I'm an ex -New

Ager. It's a little more complicated than that because I actually became a Christian at 16. And that's a whole long, wonderful, beautiful story because my life completely changed after I became a

Christian. And I grew up with a New Age, New Thought background, which

I'll kind of delve into a little bit more here in a little bit of what that exactly means. But safe to say, all people would probably need to know is that it teaches that your mind has power, your words have power, your feelings have power and can manifest your reality, in short.

And I grew up kind of with that as a background and I became a Christian at 16. And I was head over heels in love with Jesus.

I thought he was a cat's meow. I started going to a church. It was an independent

Baptist church. And it kind of, to be honest, after a while kind of disillusioned me.

There was a lot of legalism there and a lot of questions. And that's really what threw me off the rails is

I had hard, tough questions. Like, where did we get the Bible? What about hell?

What about evil? You know, these Christianity 101 questions. And this is 2001 and I don't even think

YouTube was around. Text messaging wasn't around. I mean, I'm not that old. It's just weird how far technology has come in such a short amount of time.

And nobody had questions for me. So it's safe to say I plateaued. And then eventually, as time went on,

I started embracing the beliefs that I grew up with, which was new age, new thought.

And so I was this Christian thinking that I had this higher spirituality and new age and new thought.

The books on my shelf that I grew up with seemed to answer the questions that I had. And so I kind of did the whole syncretism thing.

I took my Christianity and I put it with the new age without realizing that's what I did, which is very important.

All that changed when I got married and had my first child. And I was still very interested in learning more about religions.

I wanted to know about religion. I wanted to know about all these other spiritualities. And I still had questions even with what

I believed. I was very much into the law of attraction at the time. And I decided

I wanted to individually learn about these religions because of my daughter. I wanted to help her when she got older to answer these questions.

Lo and behold, two Jehovah's Witnesses come to my door. It was the strangest thing because I thought that, oh, they're going to teach me the

Bible. And that's a whole other long, wonderful, beautiful story. But God and his providence and sovereignty used them to get me to research not only this religion, but as I went online and I'm researching this religion, it taught me,

OK, if I believe what the Bible says and it doesn't agree with what they teach, what does that say about what

I believe? And it kind of pulled the rug out from under me because I learned that I had been believing things that were basically what somebody online called the serpent's fly.

And it floored me. I didn't realize that what I was believing had a name called

New Age. And it, in essence, was the serpent's fly, that I could be like God. And that was in 2011.

I got started in countercult ministry to Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses because of that experience.

And I have been in that ministry. I had been in that ministry for a long time, and it took me a while to not be embarrassed.

I know how strange that sounds, to embrace ministry, to people coming out of the

New Age, to try to reach them, which I started embracing around 2015, 2016.

And it wasn't until recently that I started using my YouTube channel. So that's kind of pretty much the condensed version, the elevator version of my story.

Sure. So you mentioned that the New Age movement, and what's interesting is that term's been used now for probably going on 30 years.

And it's kind of a catchall that everyone just throws anything that's kind of new and kind of weird into.

So briefly, so what exactly is the New Age movement? I kind of like to call it like pinning down a cloud because it is what you said.

It's like a salad bar belief system. And it really does depend on the individual, on what elements they have chosen to adopt from these belief systems.

Overall, New Age is an umbrella term for you somehow awakening to your inner divinity.

And it's like a platter of religions and beliefs that you can pick and choose from and you make what's comfortable for you.

So in other words, it's very secular and very progressive. The progressive

Christianity didn't really start coming on people's radars until, I would say rather recently, until like five or ten years or so.

I was very progressive and didn't realize it at the time either. So it kind of houses these beliefs like you can create your own reality, tarot cards, oracles, psychics, you know, the crystal ball things.

You think those are kind of stereotypical, but judgment, you shall not judge.

So that's kind of like a big sin, if you will, in the New Age. And you must include everybody.

There's an inclusivity there. You're basically think about the tolerance stickers that you see on the back of cars plus the coexist stickers that you see on the back of the car equals

New Age. And I was more into new thought, which is a little more specific because that goes back to the 1800s with a man named

Phineas Quimby, which is where your mind going back to the mind sciences like Christian science.

Sin is an illusion. All health problems that you have are mental in origin, which means that you through your the power of your words and thinking and visualizing can manifest a particular outcome based on what you're thinking.

So in a nutshell, that's that's it's a lot of Eastern mysticism, like like yoga and things that you would find in certain

Eastern religions just kind of Westernized and Americanized. But you can really do that on any aspect with with the

New Age. So that's kind of the condensed definition of how I would describe the New Age.

Yeah, that would be my experience as well. We're not necessarily in the New Age, but in answering questions from people who are either dabbling in the

New Age movement or curious about it. So what, in your experience, makes the

New Age movement so attractive to people, especially to younger people and not in any sense limiting to younger people?

There's people of all ages who have been involved or exploring or whatever. But what, in your experience, makes the

New Age movement attractive to people? Well, I would say first, two things come to my mind. First, whenever you can, you can be your own sovereign, where you are the ultimate authority, that's attractive.

Where if there's somebody saying no or putting up some sort of parameters that you don't agree with, there is a aspect where we look at that and we don't want that.

We want to do our own thing. We want to go our own way. And the second thing that I found enticing about it,

I personally found this enticing, is that there's this power that you can tap into from the universe.

Sign me up if I can create my own reality by my thoughts and my feelings and my words and which, by the way, the new thought is made to look

Christian. They would quote scripture. They would call themselves Christians and basically say that Jesus was the way shower.

He was the way to show us how we can do the things he did. Signs, wonders, miracles, reading minds, the things that he did, we can do as well because we can also get the

Christ consciousness that he had. And that's very important because it's made to look

Christian. So you think that you're following these these beliefs and you're doing it with maybe a right intention, thinking it's

Christian, but it's really not. It really is about it's undergirded with the serpents lie, with the fact that you are divine.

And I think that's one reason why especially young people find it so enticing. There are no rules. And it's especially and this is where the progressive part comes in.

It's especially enticing because where the culture is, is is matters.

What is being embraced at the time and seen as popular and accepted by the whole, you can do as well.

So you're not going to be somebody that's looked at as these other Christians, you know, that actually take the the archaic

Bible seriously. We don't want to be like them. No, no, no. We want to include everybody. We want to be tolerant and loving.

So you find these redefinitions of terms all throughout this as well. So people find that enticing because it seems accepting and seems loving.

But really, at its core, it's not. It's a caricature of what it really is. So a lot of people, like we've said, will want to explore into the the

New Age movement. What are some ways in your experience, again, that the

New Age movement has infiltrated the church, even some to some extent unknowingly that people are kind of dabbling in the

New Age, thinking it is something that's fully compatible with the Christian faith?

Yes, and that's where it goes back to a lot of these New Age and New Thought concepts are made to look

Christian. And that is very difficult to discern if you don't know the word very well, if you're not into the

Bible. I, for example, was into the law of attraction. And I see this.

I see this in many churches. In fact, especially very prominent celebrity pastors teach things like this, particularly the law of attraction, which is like positive confessions.

If God wants you to be victorious, God wants you to be prosperous. Don't speak that you're unhealthy.

Speak that you're well. Don't speak that you're poor. God wants you to be rich. So think this, speak this.

And it gets to the point, if I'm honest, it kind of gets a little delusional where people will deny reality to embrace these teachings and they have to.

They are taught hardcore that if you have any doubt at all, you will not get your miracle.

You will not get your healing. You will not get what it is that you're praying and asking God for. Because Matthew seven, seven says ask, speak, receive, believe.

Like it's a formula that they have. And then I believe it's in Mark six as well. If you ask and believe, you will receive.

So that's kind of the formula they go into. That has made it into a lot of prominent churches. And I'm sure just saying those words, those buzzwords tipped a few people off of possibly what some of those churches are.

In other aspects, what I'm concerned about as well is there are churches that aren't they know what this is.

They know what the new age is. They're rolling out the red carpet for it and embracing it, bringing it into the church because they teach and believe that, oh, if there's a counterfeit, there must be an authentic for that.

So if there's a way to do crystal energy, for example, or astral project, the devil has stolen those those goods from the church and we need to bring it back into the church.

So they're Christianizing these things. They're trying to to bring it back in and say that it's been stolen.

But the problem is God doesn't say to redeem things that he's forbidden. He says to divorce them.

You can't redeem things that he's forbidden. You can't say, oh, look, astrology and think, oh, there's there's a

Christian version of that. There's not a Christian version for adultery. There's not a Christian version for idolatry.

It it's just not it's what he has deems not good. He says to avoid those things.

These churches are very focused on mysticism and signs, wonders and miracles.

They are wanting revival at any cost. They're not getting it.

So what I see is they think that they can go and dabble in the new age. I say dabble, embrace it more like so that they can receive what they would see as a revival in the church.

Yes, even like so, this episode is being recorded around Christmastime and we get a lot of people who are wanting to debate or argue about to what extent can we redeem different things that the culture is done to Christmas rather than for being a simple celebration of Jesus' birth.

It's all the trappings, all the materials, all those other things. Well, we can redeem some of these things and there's some truth to some of that.

But as you said, there are certain things that are unredeemable. Everything that the Bible forbids, which most of what the new age movement focuses on are things the

Bible says, stay away from, forsake those things, have nothing to do with them.

So trying to bring those type of things in. I really like how you describe that.

So this is the Got Questions podcast. We're just now tuning in with Miss Melissa Doherty. She's an expert in the new age.

And so my next question for you, for those who are involved in the new age movement and don't know

Christ, what in your experience is the best way to share the gospel with someone who's in the new age movement?

Well, what are some pointers you can give on how to help them to really think through what the truth is and who the true

Christ is? Yeah, well, I think a lot of it has to do with like we're to speak truth and love.

And I think it matters how we do that. And being involved with countercult ministry, I have to say one thing

I really, really learned early on in ministry is how to effectively relay truth to somebody that won't hear it.

As a Jehovah's Witness. OK, I mean, if anybody has ever had a theological conversation with a

Jehovah's Witness, you know what I'm talking about. It's tough. So what you have to do is you have to kind of take a step back sometimes and think,

OK, what's an effective way to do this? And I found in my experience and in my personal opinion, listening matters, knowing where they're at.

And you're talking about a religion that you can't just you can go research it. But because it's a cookie cutter or not cookie cutter, a salad bar.

I'm hungry. You have to find where that person is at.

What are they believing? Are they really progressive? Are they more new thought?

Are they more new age? What do they think about Jesus? Who is Jesus to them? What do they think about the Bible? And I kind of see this.

Greg Kolko, he has a book called Tactics, and I see this as a playing chess. Right. It's a strategy game.

And what you're doing, and I'm not trying to say that it's a game, but I'm saying that what you're doing is you're kind of seeing where their pieces are at.

You're seeing where they're at. You gather that information. You care about what they're saying and you ask them these questions so you can gather that information and then go from there.

So I think that depends where they're at. Then when you get that information, you can challenge that.

OK, well, Christ consciousness, tell me what that is. What do you what do you think about Jesus? What do you think about that?

I would say that the best way for a new age or specifically one of the best ways, in my opinion, in experience is the conversations about objective truth is really deep for them, because if truth exists, actual truth, objective truth, not just their truth.

They have to look at what they're believing and think, hmm, this could be an error. So they're very logical people.

They're very smart. And they want to know these things. They like spiritual conversations and they're interested in spiritual things.

Challenging that has a lot to do with some philosophical concepts. But then once you establish, hey, truth does exist.

And how is truth shown in our world? What is it that you can go from from A to B to C?

In other words, you can go from truth existing. Does God exist? Yes. OK, if God exists, how has he revealed himself to humanity?

And then you can get into maybe even apologetics, because most of the time I find whenever you try to tell the gospel, they have a question.

All right. So why does God allow evil? I don't understand, because in this worldview, I can accept certain things, but I don't understand how your

God can send people to hell. I don't understand how your perspective of God can allow this or that or whatever. So we need to be prepared for that.

So I think it's good if we get to that point where they are asking questions. And I would go from there. But those those are the basics of what

I would say to start with, with somebody that's in the new age. Yeah. So it's since you're familiar with God questions and that's what we do is have people come to us and ask questions.

And that, in a sense, gives us an advantage because they're already asking for input from us.

So we very rarely have to do like a cold call sort of thing, like trying to inject the gospel into something.

But one thing that we often run across when we're dealing with someone in the new age movement or even other similar movements is the rejection of absolute truth.

And there's the saying that the only absolute truth is that there are no absolute truths. And so trying to get people to think...

Is that absolute? The like the salad bar approach that you mentioned, like everyone can just pick whatever they want and make their own salad.

Well, there's some things that really, really, really don't go well on a salad. And I don't even like salads to begin with.

So that's the hard illustration for me. But how do you counter that specific mindset that I'm OK, you're

OK? Everyone can have it their way. Kind of the Burger King mentality, so to speak.

Yeah. And then again, that goes back to the relativism, a book that I really enjoy. It's actually always here on my shelf because it had such a big impact on me as a story of reality by Greg Kogel.

And I mentioned him before with his book. I mean, they've obviously had an impact on the way that I embrace these things or approach them.

And in the story of reality, he kind of puts it where every every worldview has like a box top. Right.

And there's there's six worldviews if we're going to get down to it. All right. So, I mean, you have pantheism, you have atheism, deism, theism, panentheism and finite godism.

And finite godism is just polytheistic belief, right? If you have these worldviews, you're drawing from one of them at any given point, but they all can't be true.

And that's really what it comes down to is that you have to you have to grab a puzzle from a different worldview to create your own.

And when you start challenging these beliefs. All right. So if you're if you're challenging somebody like, oh, you can choose your own truth, you can choose your own truth.

Well, what if his truth says that, you know, he can sleep with your wife?

What if that's his truth? That we should all be people that are I mean, monogamy is, you know, archaic.

We should all be polygamous. That's his truth. Do you agree with that truth? Like at some point, if when push comes to shove, having your own truth doesn't actually make it true.

And I love these kinds of conversations with new agers, because when it comes down to it, they have to appeal to themselves as the authority.

And if yourself is the authority, there's no there's no God out there saying there's objective morality or objective truth.

They have no right to say what anybody else believes is wrong. And they don't like that.

And that's really what they don't. I don't think they follow through out to the logical conclusion of what they believe, because if what they believed were actually true, it would be a contradiction in and of itself.

Like you can't have everybody having their own truth, because then you have kind of what we're having in our culture right now.

A smorgasbord of of people's truths. And then what you really end up with is people living by lies.

And at the end of the day, that affects your culture. And if the truth of the government doesn't agree with your truth, then you know, like it's like a domino effect.

So you have to stand for something. And that's really culturally kind of what we're seeing right now is people that are standing for what is objectively true, but it's not popular.

So I think whenever challenging them in those areas and showing them why that doesn't make any logical sense, might put some stones in their shoes and get them to think about what it is.

At the end of the day, they're believing and passing on to other people. Yeah, Melissa, excellent.

I love how you explain these things, and it's one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on the show. So we'll include some links where you can learn more about Melissa and the ministry that God's given her, including your

YouTube channel, which is fantastic. But Melissa, just give our listeners a brief rundown of what exactly is the ministry that God has called you to and how can people learn more about it?

Yeah, sure. So I have a YouTube channel mainly. I didn't really plan for a lot of people to watch it.

Just kind of happened. It was kind of interesting. But I'm a mixed bag. You'll find I do satire.

I do art. You'll find theology, apologetics. You'll find me talking about countercult ministry things on my channel.

I really focus a lot on those things because I really want to edify the church.

I want to help and serve. And that's how I find that I can serve the best. And yeah,

I would say that that's basically what I stand for in ministry. All right.

And again, we'll include links in the show notes on our YouTube channel, in the description and also at podcast .gotquestions

.org. So, Melissa, again, thank you for your time. It's great having you on the show today. Yeah, great. Thanks for having me.

I appreciate it. I'm honored. I would love to have you back sometime. Maybe we could do an episode on how to evangelize those in cults.

That's similar to this, but also a different conversation. So, Melissa, again, thank you. This has been the

Got Questions podcast. Got questions? Bible -ized answers, and we'll help you find them.