← Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis
Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis
The Dangerous Lie Inside the Church: New Thought, Mysticism & the Law of Attraction Exposed
00:45:22
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- [00:00]
A
Just curious on your thoughts on just that mysticism movement, how it's kind of maybe even subtle. Doesn't even seem dangerous. It actually seems like intimate, you know, kind of compatibility with Christ.
- [00:12]
B
It seems to be that there's. There's not that yearning for contentment. It's a yearning for an encounter all the time, and it's never enough. Because that's how you have learned to feel God's presence. That's how you've learned to feel loved. And. And if you don't have that, well, then you're not as blessed as like Sister Super Christian over here, right? She has visions of God every night. I was like, intimately involved in my church and had no idea that what I was believing was unbiblical, occultic. Even what I was into sounded and looked Christian.
- [00:52]
A
Hey, folks. Well, my name is Johnny Erdovanis. I'm here with Melissa Dougherty. Melissa, I want you to introduce yourself in a moment, but been exposed to your ministry as I've kind of done some reading and some research on New Age, New thought, mysticism, universalism, Richard Rohr and so forth. Grateful for all the material that you've produced. I'll plug your show into the show notes and the book that you've written, Happy Lies, which I want you to talk about more. But just introduce yourself, kind of your background, share your story, because I think it's a really helpful catalyst for kind of understanding your experience in what is a really growing movement, not only in our culture, but in the church today.
- [01:34]
B
Sure, yeah. First, thank you for having me on. I'm happy to introduce myself. Most people might know me from YouTube. I am a content creator. I do a lot of YouTube videos. It's call it a mixed bag of theology, satire, apologetics. I am also an apologist. I go to Sesame. I am currently about to get my master's in Christian apologetics. So it's something I'm very passionate about. And I'm also an author, as you pointed out. I written Happy Lies. It is about the New Thought movement, which we will get into. But as far as my background, I became a Christian at 16 and blew my mind. I was not expecting this interaction with my friend that night. I was going through a really rough time. Very dark place, Suicidal, not in a good place. No joy. Very dark. And I had a friend tell me about God's forgiveness. I grew up in a Christian household, right? So this should have been second nature to me, or at least what I thought was a Christian household. But it was really more of a New thought household. As far as the beliefs went, I just didn't know that was what it was. We grew up going to church, hearing about Jesus and had some Bible scriptures here and there scattered in. The interpretation was very different though. It was all about power. I know this is going to sound simple, but it felt magical. It felt like Jesus came here to teach us our human potential. And there was a mystical power that I gleaned from that. That's kind of the impression of Jesus that I got when I was growing up and then became a Christian at 16. It was a total 180. Everything changed in my life. The way I explain it is I felt like I woke up in a Disney movie. Like everything was different. The light was brighter, smells smelled differently, food tasted better. I had this hunger, this yearning to know more about this God. Tell me more. I want to know more. I want to read the Bible. I wanted to go to church. I wanted to get up out of bed and just run to church. I was so hungry to know more. Long story short here I kind of fell into some legalism. I got very disillusioned. I had a lot of questions. I was an apologist from the get go. I was very annoying. I wanted to know all the answers to my questions, the hard ones. What about hell? Violence in the Old Testament. It was kind of a brick wall there though. Did not get a lot of reception. Good reception. With my curiosity, I became kind of a pariah. There's. And so I kind of ended up blending the beliefs that I grew up with. I just didn't know it. I didn't realize that's what I was doing. You had these teachers, these very happy, joyful, positive, spiritual leaders who talked about Jesus, quoted the Bible and they didn't look anything like these Christians over here, these judgmental basement Christians. Right, the lower level, these lower energy Christians. No, they, they seemed like they knew what they were talking about. And I was very attracted to that. And there were books on my shelf that I grew up with talking about Jesus in this mystical sense as well. And so it was just this blending that I didn't realize I was blending. I thought this was true Christianity, this, this more powerful, positive, higher level type of Christianity. And so again, long story short, I had my first child and at that time I was into a lot of beliefs like the law of Attraction, manifestation, affirmations, Christ consciousness.
- [05:12]
A
What do you mean real quick by the manifestations? You know, Christ consciousness. Just for someone that maybe has no point of reference, like asking for a friend, but like how would you define manifestation? Christ consciousness and so forth?
- [05:26]
B
Sure, let me start with Law of Attraction because that kind of flows into all of them. Law of Attraction is very popular. Everybody thinks it's new. Everybody thinks it's just the secret hidden thing that they're just now discovering. It's not new every generation. In this case, it's TikTok believes. Oh my goodness. Have you heard about this? Yeah, I've heard about it. And the Law of attraction basically says that your thoughts, words and feelings manifest your reality. You're a mirror. And what you're thinking, speaking and believing creates your reality. You manifest it. And there's a kind of a top shelf kind of belief in the new thought world where it says that there's basically the law of correspondence is what it's called. Where there's a physical world and a spiritual world. The physical world is affected by your thoughts, words and feelings. And you can pull from the spiritual world to make it happen in the physical.
- [06:26]
A
Like literally.
- [06:27]
B
Literally, yeah. Every, every, everything. You, me, the phone on your desk, your microphone, the camera in front of you, everything. The ocean, okay, has a frequency of vibration, and that's spiritual. So everything in the spiritual world is perfect, is good and holy. Right? In this belief, if you have a vibration or frequency that is positive, good, joyful, that's, that's a higher frequency. In other words, then that's what you will manifest. You will bring that into creation, into your reality. So you better, you got to keep it a high frequency. And I'll get into the problem with this later. So I was really in. That's the Law of attraction in a very elevator version. And manifestation, Christ consciousness is a very new thought term. It's different from universal Christ, which is what Richard Rohr teaches, which is we'll get into him, I'm sure. Christ consciousness. There's something important to know about new thought. New thought is they would call themselves. If I were to define it in two words, it would be metaphysical Christianity. That metaphysical part is very important. It's what I just explained. It's that if there's a physical aspect of the world, there's always a spiritual counterpart. There's always a higher, more spiritual meaning to everything, even words on a page, including the Bible. So if you're reading Matthew 7, you're a pastor, right? You would exegete that. You would think, what. What is the actual point of what's being written here? And then you would relay that not in New Thought. There's always a higher meaning to it. That's what they would call your true authentic self within can define that and exegete it, if you will. There's a different level of understanding that's personal to you. And Christ has a metaphysical meaning along with a lot of other words. But in this case, Christ is separate from Jesus. When we hear the word Christ as Christians, we think Messiah, anointed one. Right? That's what it's supposed to mean. In new thought, there's a higher meaning which says the Christ is the dormant inner divinity within all of humanity. The I am is within you, just like it is in Jesus. So Jesus the man, just like you, he's the human being just like all of us. But he obtained the Christ. He awakened to it. He became conscious of it. You can have the Christ within you and so can all of we, all of us. This is their answer for evil, by the way. If something evil, what we would call objectively evil, they would say, no, that's not actually evil. It's misalignment. It's. They are ignorant to the divinity within them. They just need to be aware of it. Okay, so that's kind of how they would explain Christ consciousness. And I was on a spectrum of this for sure. I was going to church every week. This is important. I was going to church. I volunteered.
- [09:32]
A
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- [10:22]
B
I was like intimately involved in my church and had no idea that what I was believing was unbiblical, occultic, even heretical on some levels. Right. I believe you can be saved and still be in error. I think the issue is when you receive that correction and you realize what you're in, what you do with it. Right? And so that's, that's, you know, unpausing the story here. That's what happened is I, I had two Jehovah's Witnesses come to my door after I had my first child, which kind of wrecked me because I was trying to manifest my birth plan and none of it happened.
- [10:56]
A
Like, this is what's gonna happen. Like it's gonna be an easy delivery, that type of thing.
- [11:02]
B
I did everything right, my friend. I did everything right. I, in my mind was like, yeah, this is gonna.
- [11:07]
A
Where were you getting this from? Like on YouTube or reading. Like, where were you kind of reading at that time?
- [11:15]
B
These things are not that old. Like we, this generation wakes up and to a smartphone, it's actually really new. So in 2011 is when I first had my first child or. No, 2010. In 2010. I know, right? I got out of it in 2011. I got out of New Age and New Thought. And yeah, it was, I was reading about it online, but mostly books. The new thought priestess of our time is Oprah Winfrey. Even Joel Osteen. Joel Osteen has a lot of ties to New Thought and affirmative prayer, things like that.
- [11:54]
A
Yeah, your best life.
- [11:55]
B
I used to watch him. I used to watch him all the time and there was never a twinge in my spirit about it. It was just, he speaks truth and there's lots of other means. Oh, the secret came out from Rhonda Byrne. That was the Bible for the Law of Attraction. There's tons of books, self help books in general. I'm looking at them right now. A lot of them I used as source material for my book that I fed. I, I ate this stuff up anytime that I could read up more on it. It made me feel powerful. I felt really, really powerful.
- [12:33]
A
And you're hungry for the truth at this point. And then these two Jehovah Witnesses and I interrupted you, I asked you where you got this, but like, I don't want to lose where you were going. They came to your door and then keep going.
- [12:48]
B
Yeah, I actually thanked them in my acknowledgments of my book because they really, God providentially used them that Brown the fourth visits. Now, you have to understand my perspective at this time. New Thought in general is a very tolerant and open minded. Right. It's very progressive, Very progressive. I have a whole chapter on how progressive Christianity sounds like New Thought, not New Age. And me and Elisa, my friend Elisa Childers, we have an inside joke about this. Like oh, they're basically the same thing, but they're not. And so I was very progressive and very pluralistic, where all. Maybe perennialism, perennial wisdom, which is just a fancy word for the ancient wisdom that says that there's a deeper link between all religions. There's a truth in all of them. Okay. So I had that belief. And so when a Jehovah's Witness showed up to my door, it was like, oh, they call themselves Christians too. Yay. I had no idea that there was such a definitive difference, because the way that new thought is framed, it doesn't really allow for critical analysis because it's created to make you kind of not think about the negative. Negative thinking is seen as kind of like a critical or critical thinking is seen as negative thinking. And so I kind of needed to shake those cobwebs off. And they. They helped with that. And so I started researching their religion around the fourth visit, because I'm like, something ain't right. And it was in that research that I simultaneously started learning about cults and critical thinking and what Jehovah's Witnesses believe and also seeing things that contradicted completely what I believed. And I wasn't quite ready for that. But what really pulled out the rug from under me was Genesis 3, learning that, oh, this is the serpent's lie that ye will be as God. That's actually a satanic lie. And I remember falling back in my chair thinking, how could I have fallen for that? Because that's at the core of new thought, is Jesus came here to show you your inner divinity. And there's all kinds of Christian scriptures that mix in with that. That is quite deceptive. And we have bought into that on some level. Many Christians have, and I was one of them. And immediately I repented. And that was actually my first step into ministry on some level. I had a lot of ex Jehovah's Witnesses turned Christian actually come and disciple me, help me learn, ask her a lot of these questions. I got into ministry to Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons, and it was quite the ride. And that was 2011, and here I am 2026. Started YouTube about five or six years ago, wrote a book, and that's where I'm at now. So that's a. That's a long introduction to my background and maybe sprinkling in a little bit of the definition of really what new thought is.
- [15:41]
A
Yeah, so you mentioned new thought, and he said, it's not new age. Maybe give kind of that. How would you, you know, distinguish between the two. Because I've grown up around, you know, hearing New Age. And I told you before we hopped on that, like, you know, there were parts in Pocahontas that were. That was my understanding of New Age. When Grandmother Willow speaks and Pocahontas is singing with all the colors of the wind, like, that's. That was it. I knew that terminology at like 5 years old. But how would you distinguish between the two? And you said, Oprah is not New Age. She's new thought, you know. What makes you say that?
- [16:14]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah. Actually, you're not quite off with the whole Pocahontas thing as far as New Age goes. Yeah. So New Age. Let's talk about roots for a second. I love, I love, I'm an origin geek. I love this stuff because it really helps. But origin wise, New Age is more Eastern. Eastern mysticism. Think of Buddhism and Hinduism. Yeah. The claim is that, you know, God is all. It's very pantheistic. And so if we're going to talk about beliefs, it's much easier to point out a New Age belief. In my opinion, even after writing a whole book on it, I still am like, oh, it's so much easier to talk about New Age. But think of things like yoga, astrology, numerology, sacred geometry. Reiki ascribes power to objects like crystals. Like crystals are not New Age. But thinking that crystals have power, Tarot, psychic mediums.
- [17:07]
A
What is sacred geometry?
- [17:09]
B
I don't know.
- [17:11]
A
I was like, I mean, I took geometry in ninth grade and there's nothing sacred about it, but I was just curious. But I'm imagining something with numbers and shapes.
- [17:20]
B
You're exactly right. See, the thing is, here's the thing. I realized pretty much right away after I got out of whatever I thought. I thought it was New Age. I'm like, oh, man, this thing is called New Age. I'm in New Age. Immediately I started realizing, oh, what? I wasn't into that or I wasn't into. I had no idea yoga was New Age. Right. Somebody asked me about Reiki and I'm like, what's that? And then sacred geometry. I'm like, how can geometry be sacred? Like, math is hard, but not sacred, you know? And I. There was like this whole different world that I had never experienced what I was into. Sounded and looked Christian.
- [18:02]
A
Yeah.
- [18:03]
B
And so I didn't realize. I thought it was just all under the New Age umbrella. I'm like, oh, no. I was more into this other stuff, but don't know what this is. But there is some Overlap. Like, for example, spirit guides. Spirit guides were big. I was, I was trying to invoke my own spirit guide.
- [18:19]
A
Like you had a Samuel type of thing and he was going to guide you through life.
- [18:23]
B
Or I'm saying I thought it was biblical.
- [18:26]
A
Yeah.
- [18:26]
B
Is that what you mean though?
- [18:27]
A
Like there's a personal angel.
- [18:28]
B
Yeah, like a spirit that guided you. You had these occultic things that were brought over underneath a Christian umbrella and said, here's why it's actually biblical. And there's power here. It's really. It reminds me of like Lord of the Rings, right, Where you have this temptation of power, but it corrupts you. Like, it works. It works okay. Like it's gonna give you power, but it's gonna corrupt you. That's kind of how it is. It's like my favorite metaphor for the occult. You're gonna be tempted and I was tempted. And so there's that power there, you know, but like there's things that are definitely more in that New Age bucket, chakras, astral projection, you know, so there's things that can define New Age more and New thought. The thing with New Thought is that it's more an origin Gnostic. It's more Gnostic in origin. Claims to be Christian. It claims to be the true Christian message. That there's these lost things from the Bible. You can't really trust the Bible. There's more wisdom and knowledge out there. And I fell for that. I thought that there was, you know, Oprah, we brought her up before. Oprah Winfrey has the beliefs that she has. Not because of New Age, it was a new thought author, Eric Butterworth. She talked about him quite a lot back in the day. He's a Unity minister. Unity is the largest New thought denomination. Who wrote a book, something. Oh, I forgot the name of it, but it was a book that he wrote. It's probably on my shelf. That changed her life, changed everything about how she looked at God. And so when you hear Oprah and she says she's a Christian, by the way, and this is the thing, she says she's a Christian. New Agers don't say they're Christians. That's new thought coming from her mouth. So I made a whole two hour video about how she's not a New Ager, she's a new thoughter.
- [20:25]
A
And Gnosticism, just meaning because you said that, just a higher form of spirituality. Sometimes Gnosticism creeps into the church. It's not people that would like out outright deny the Bible, but it's that There is a, a level of spiritual experience that is available only for the searcher that, you know, gets kind of the reception of some sort of like second echelon of spirituality.
- [20:49]
B
It's hidden, it's secret, hidden esoteric knowledge. True reality is spiritual. Yeah.
- [20:57]
A
So new thought is disguised at times as Christian. It's this higher form of spirituality kind of experience. And so that would be your, your general way to distinguish between new age and new thought is that.
- [21:14]
B
Yes. And to, to define new thought a little bit more. I think it would be helpful because I want everybody to kind of understand that this is. It could be secular, meaning non religious. Right. And it can also be incredibly mystical. And you can fall on this spectrum as a Christian. I did. And I wouldn't have been as maybe super duper mystical. I didn't even know there was a name for this. Right. I just had the beliefs and I applied them to my Christianity because it sounded and looked Christian. And so like, for example, thoughts are things. Thoughts are things was a mantra, if you will, of new thought. That's where, you know, law of attraction manifestation kind of comes from. But that bleeds over, historically speaking, that this whole concept bleeds over into things that affect us today, like the self help movement. The foundation of the self help movement is on the shoulders of new thought authors. The Word of faith movement. I remember getting out of this and I remember looking at some Christian churches and I'm like, why are you guys doing the law of Attraction? I had no idea. I didn't realize there was a word for it, Word of faith, that the word faith, your words create and heal you. The prosperity gospel. And it wasn't until I really started looking into the history of new thought and the Word of faith movement that indeed the Word of faith movement is one third new thought. It's the mind cure movement, Pentecostalism and New Thought. And so, for example, the health and wealth gospel, the idea that God never wills you to be sick, always wants you to be rich, things like that. Think of Kenneth Copeland, for example. He's a very big prosperity preacher. Yeah. Even Bill Johnson on some levels. Right. There's this health and wealth aspect to it that is fundamentally demonstrably new thought in origin. And I have a whole chapter on this. Even the declarations that they have that you're speaking, those are again, demonstrably from new thought. And so this movement of new thought is really very much created a Christian denomination very uniquely. You have a misuse of science. You have vibrations and frequencies like we asked about before or got into before I am affirmations. Those are actually new thought prayers. And you speak in the affirmative, you pray in the affirmative, you don't ask, you affirm. So there's things like this that I think will help people kind of understand that this is an aspect that has kind of affected us all, whether we realize it or not.
- [23:56]
A
Yeah. Regarding. You mentioned the term mysticism a couple times and you know, I think there's such a broad, you know, scope of definition when we kind of throw out terminology, you know. But I think mysticism is something that has creeped into the church more and more. You know, even in reading John Mark Comer's book Practicing the Way he references Catholic theologian Carl Rayner and says the Christian of the future and affirmation. Comer says this, the Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not exist at all as, as far as a Christian. And then Comer says that he begins each day sitting cross legged on the floor praying the psalms and meditating on a passage of scripture. But I found that was, found it interesting because mysticism has always kind of been this almost eastern right to me and like almost transcendental consciousness, Beatles type of thing. And now it's kind of being integrated. And I don't think that Comer's saying that, but it's also like using terminology and then saying things here that I think are confusing for me. You know, just to say like hey, the Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not exist at all like that. This type of spirituality is essential to knowing Christ. And just curious on your thoughts on just that mysticism movement, how it's kind of maybe even subtle, doesn't even seem dangerous. It actually seems like intimate, you know, kind of compatibility with Christ. So how does you got the new thought thing? Like I'd be super, I'd be aware of the Kenneth Copeland, you know, Joel Osteen, Benny Hinn, name it and claim it Word of faith. I, you. I am rich, I am that. So that's on like maybe one spectrum of extreme and then you have like the kind of somewhere on the, in the middle where it's like not that obvious to maybe someone that's grown up in like a bib, a Bible preaching church. But it actually feels right. You're like, no, actually I'm, I'm, I do. I am supposed to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Paul does say I want to know him. The Bible does say to taste and see that the Lord is good. And, and I feel like I'VE been, you know, a victim of cardboard Christianity where it feels like stale. And so everything they're saying is something I want to latch on to. And yet they're kind of bridging these relationships with maybe these theologians or people that come from different backgrounds that are actually errant in kind of some of the things they're saying biblically.
- [26:28]
B
Yeah. Such a good question. Because I think it would be important again to define terms because I think on some level all Christians have a supernatural worldview. All of us do. And what mysticism is like in the broadest sense, in the most graceful definition is a belief in that supernatural. Right. That you can actually have an encounter with the divine in some way. And so on that level, yeah, we're all kind of mystics in that sense. All Christians in that level should be because we have a personal relationship with a, with our Heavenly Father. And so that, that on the surface is something we ought to do. It's good, it is biblical, but it's coming to probably, I don't know, maybe the last decade or so. There's a very different understanding of mysticism. And it is that personal divine encounter with God that, that goes beyond the mental. Right. That goes beyond the physical. And there's almost a lust for it that again, it goes beyond that simplicity of the gospel in Christ. And you want that intimacy, but it's almost like it's forced. It's almost like there's this idolatry of it. It's an idolatry of supernatural, mystical encounters that it's like, oh, you're not going to be loved or favored by God as much if you don't have that. And there's this, I think that there, it crosses a line there. And you can see this in a lot of Christians personal walks when it comes to this. So for example, I would say that in a lot of churches when I say mystical, the line that typically gets crossed is if I don't have this earth shattering experience every time, like it's very, very experiential. There's never just this contentment. And I say never. It seems to be that there's not that yearning for contentment. It's a yearning for an encounter all the time. And it's never enough. It's never enough. You're going to have this encounter one night with God that maybe is a little bit more psychosomatic. Right? Maybe it's more confirmation bias than you would want to admit because that's how you have learned to feel God's presence. That's how you've learned to feel loved. And if you don't have that, well, then you're not as blessed as like sister super Christian over here, right? She has visions of God every night. She goes and has prophetic dreams. And you're like, well, I don't have that. Does that mean I'm not as blessed? Does that mean I'm not as favored? I'm not as loved? And so there's this manufacturing of it. So I think that there's a danger there, right? There's 100% this biblical, beautiful, mystical, if you will, relationship that we ought to have with God. And then there's this just other aspect of it where it's made into this sin. It's made into a sin and it's just overreaching. And it has more to do with our own, you know, our own sin that we have to deal with still.
- [30:00]
A
And you're saying probably environment, craving for that is, can be, you know, sin when you're sense of that you're, you're wanting, you're, you're dissatisfied in the ordinary means of grace and you're longing for something that you don't, you know, some other experience that's actually devoid or divorced from. Like the way that God normatively reveals himself in his word.
- [30:20]
B
It's a good way to put it. Yeah. And I had that as well. For me, it wasn't really, oh, I don't feel as loved by God. It was, I wanted power, I wanted to feel important, I wanted to feel spiritual. So wherever you fall on that spectrum, there is beauty in the contentment of Christ. There's letting him be who he is and being in that and being okay with it.
- [30:46]
A
Yeah. And I think, like, you know, I, I would, I think a lot of it probably has to do with the way that you, you hear God too. Like, there's this. You're going to hear God's voice. And so a lot of the stuff that's being communicated and propagated makes the reading of the scripture, the study of the scripture feel like a, yes, useful tool, but an inferior means by which God reveals himself than some sort of higher, you know, experience that when your eyes are closed and you're deep in thought and you empty your mind of everything else, God is going to convince you or reveal something to you that is not found in the pages of Scripture. And so while you can say, yes, the Bible is the word of God, it ends up practically, even though it may be theologically something you don't believe, but practically it means that, you know, the Bible is, it's helpful, but it's not powerful and thrilling and it gives you this taste in your mouth that even, you know, fellowship with the, with, with the saints is like, yeah, that's good. But like, what I really need is we need some sort of an experience together which is, you know, you see that affected you're, you know, you see that infiltrating, even kind of the worship movement. And, and again, I say that, and I've told you this before, like, I want my relationship with God to be experiential. He's a real person. He's not a thing. You know, I, I, I want to abide in him and he abides in me. And my home, or my heart is the home of the Trinitarian God. And so like, there is this wow element of it, but it does leave people kind of feeling like they're missing something unless they kind of latch onto some other form of truth, which makes them hungry for kind of everything that you're, you're disclosing.
- [32:32]
B
I could not have said that better myself. That's a very, very good way to put it. And it's boring. Reading your Bible becomes boring. Why would I read my Bible when I can hear directly from God? Was kind of my, my way of thinking about it.
- [32:46]
A
You know, it is fascinating and you mentioned one guy earlier and I want to touch on him before we land the plane here. But how does this relate, you know, everything you're saying, New age, new thought, mysticism, to universalism? Richard Rohr. I remember when I was working at Hume Lake, a Christian camp on the West Coast, I kind of started hearing Richard Rohr's name more and more that we can kind of attain to this divinity. God is going to save everyone. We're all children of God. You know, just kind of give a big idea on his teaching and why it's dangerous.
- [33:24]
B
Yes. There's so much to say about Richard Rohr. He has been an anomaly to me. I almost hesitated, I almost hesitated mentioning him in my progressive chapter. Yeah, but because he's so many things. He's a Roman Catholic. Right. But he also says that he's a Christian, but he also says he's a mystic. But he's also into perennial wisdom. It's like pick, pick your lane. And I mean, he's squishy, he's hard
- [33:50]
A
to pin down people. Yeah.
- [33:51]
B
Yes. Maybe not like that. Yeah, that's, that's good. But yeah, he, my friend Elisa, she calls him the Pope of progressive Christianity.
- [34:03]
A
Yeah.
- [34:04]
B
And he's kind of been the spearhead of a lot of these movements within the progressive movement. He has written a book, the Universal Christian, that. I mean, a lot of people read this and they're just. Their mind is blown. They're like, oh, man, this is so profound. It's not new, right? Every generation, it's like, you have to fight it off. Every generation, oh, okay, we've dealt with it. Now we're good. No, the next generation comes up and the same stuff gets brought up, and it's just the same stuff. And so for him, I mentioned perennial wisdom before. If he was along the line of any sort of theological, spiritual thought, it would be perennial wisdom. It's this idea of there's a greater truth in all religions, which is a little slightly different from something like religious pluralism. It goes deeper than that. That if you say you're a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist, or whatever, there's this greater esoteric, if you will, truth within all religions that we're drawing from. So if you say that you're a Christian and you're taking the Bible the way that you take it, that's actually a much lower version of understanding of it than somebody like Richard Rohr, who's, like, more enlightened than you. He has this greater understanding. And one of the things with progressive Christianity, it tends to be very, very, I want to say, the gospel of social justice. It's very focused on more of the humanity, both the humanity and the spirit, but more so of these cultural trends that we see. So you would see him talk about the same talking points that you would see in, like, a social justice church. He would talk about, you know, the true, authentic self within the collective universal Christ, which I mentioned Christ consciousness before. He's using the same words, and there's just no theological seatbelt to it. That's the same word, but for him, he is saying that the Christ is within all things. Like pantheistic. That's within his dog, right? The sky, the moon, everything. It's pantheistic. And that's the Christ. That's the universal Christ. Christ consciousness is only within humans. So there would be a distinction there between his view and something like Christ consciousness. But there's a lot of elements of, I would say, more new thought than new age with somebody like Richard Rohr. And many of the other things that he teaches are just so much more in line with this progressive new thought way of viewing things like evil, who Jesus is, what he came to do, like universalism, which I always thought was kind of A cop out, because they're going to be big about social justice. But then why would you fight for justice when there is no justice? Like ultimately in the end, I always thought that was kind of a strange anomaly. And I guess one thing that people latch onto when it comes to his teaching is the teaching of universalism or and a lot of people don't like that term who are Christians. There are leaders within prominent churches who ascribe to this type of universalism, but they'll call it universal reconciliation, where the idea is that, yeah, there's going to be some sort of, maybe some sort of punishment after death, but ultimately we will ultimately be reconciled to God in the end. So that's still under the umbrella of universalism. And so Rohr is one of the main speakers, the main proponents for these positions. He's very popular. He is, he's actually out here in New Mexico. He is a 30 minute drive, the center for Action and Contemplation. I visited a few years ago. And he is one of the biggest proponents for the Enneagram. In fact, he is probably the Trojan horse. He is the elements, I suppose, the wheels of how the Enneagram became so popular in the Christian church. It's a very tough conversation to have with some people who are really into the Enneagram, but it's still a fundamental truth of, hey, this is actually how this got popularized. He's written a whole book on the Enneagram. So the idea is for, for him, another core idea, and then I'll probably be done kind of summarizing his beliefs. Is the true self within? Right? We, we mentioned the Christ consciousness before. Richard Rohr is a proponent of finding that true self, whatever that looks like. And we can see this kind of how it looks in culture as well. But whatever that true self is within you, that is your divine, that is your intuition, your knowing. And we were talking about the voice of God before. That's mysticism, right? That's what more of what we're talking about. There's this mystical connection that you have with the divine. And whatever that divine looks like, that's your true, authentic self and that's your truth. And I want to say that the name of my book is Happy Lies. And fundamentally, the biggest attack that a lot of these beliefs have, it's not just on Scripture, it's on truth itself. Like Jesus calls Satan the father of lies. And truth is a theme, is a theme within Scripture. And so to mess with that and to make it your truth, not the truth, it's really, ultimately, an attack on truth. Richard Rohr, these beliefs, they're very postmodern. Truth can't really be known, right? So uncertainty tends to be the drone of these types of especially progressive circles. You can't really ever know truth, so you suspend saying if something is true, and so you're not really ever certain about it. And that's kind of self defeating because you're certain about your uncertainties, right? So I think that critical thinking, logic, you know, this attack on truth, I think that there's something to be said about really nailing down how to discern truth from lies. So that's just a little bit on Richard Rohr. There's probably so much more to say about him.
- [40:25]
A
No, that's helpful. And even what you're saying about the certainty of truth, you know, I think it's often been referred to as, like, the hermeneutic of humility in the modern day, where people say, even as they preach the Bible, like, who am I to think that I've come to the right interpretation of this passage? And so they never preach anything with conviction because conviction in a world of tolerance is automatically seen to be arrogance. And so you have, like, that type of thought even, you know, infiltrating a lot of preachers today where they'll make no stance on anything because, you know, who am I to. A lot of godly people disagree on this, you know. And so I think that unity, and I think I, I heard you say this on some other video, but like, unity becomes an idol. And obviously we want to be unified, but unity is never at the expense of truth, but on the grounds of truth. And so that's really helpful. Melissa, you know, what would you say, like, and, and obviously I asked you before, you know, like, hey, maybe there are people that are listening that don't, you know, hey, my. I'm not really sucked into this movement right now. But you said, hey, I, I would be probably hard pressed to find a single person that is not being influenced by this in some way or. And so it's kind of, you know, infiltrating our culture, the churches. You've written a book on it. What would just be kind of your big idea of, you know, maybe to someone that's fallen into this type of thinking, just overarching kind of input to them, direction to them, wisdom. For people that are maybe in this
- [41:53]
B
type of a movement, I would encourage them. I have a call to action at the end of my book that kind of puts us a little bit more into perspective in what I would tell them, but basically when I discovered what this was, there's a few things that people usually do. One, they double down. They defend it. They don't. They don't want to hear it. Right. Maybe they get defensive, or maybe they even have more questions and they're like, I don't understand. I'm confused. I wrote a book about it. So maybe that would help. That would help, kind of help you get clarity for what it is that you're dealing with. Because a lot of people think, well, there's something off. It's not New Age. It's not necessarily progressive. What am I dealing with here? And then the other thing is leaning into it, kind of like what I did. It's okay, this is uncomfortable, but I need to know what's true. It's my big idea. Has everything to do with the foundation of truth. If there's anything that the last I want to say, six years has been drilled into my head, particularly the last six months, six or seven months, is that there has been such a attack, like a delusion on truth. Like, I have never been in my lifetime exposed to so many people who deny basic fundamental facts about reality that you can give them evidence, black and white, right in front of them, and they refuse to see what their eyes and ears clearly see and hear. And that's the big idea, is that, do you want to know what's really true? And if you do, lean into that, find what's true. Because truth can be known. God is the truth. He's the foundation. Jesus taught truth, and it's always been about that. Did God really say, right, you know, you can be like God. And there's this. Yeah, there's this fundamental disruption of how we discern, how do we know what's true? And I'm here to encourage you. You can know what's true, and you ought to run after that. We should be so happy that we can actually know what's truth. It will always win in the end. So. And then one more thing is, I. I have this theme of light, of not being afraid of the light. And I focus it around John 3. John 3 is probably one of my favorite chapters in all of Scripture. And Jesus is, you know, John 3:16. But in 17 verses 17 to 21, he's talking about, you know, the verdict is that light has come into the world. But people loved their darkness.
- [44:35]
A
Darkness.
- [44:36]
B
Yeah, they loved their darkness. So I implore you, if this is you, if you are in this, don't be afraid of the light. People say, don't be afraid of the dark. No, you love your darkness. Don't be afraid of the light.
- [44:49]
A
Well, that's helpful. Melissa, thanks for just the work that you put into writing this book. Thanks for the ministry that you have on YouTube reaching people. And if you want to find out more about Melissa, what she does, her apologetics, I'll put the YouTube channel in the show notes her book as well. But Melissa, thanks so much for coming on and really appreciate you and yeah, grateful for your expertise in this arena.
- [45:13]
B
Yeah, thanks for having me. It's been an honor.