{"id":6201,"date":"2009-11-20T06:03:35","date_gmt":"2009-11-20T06:03:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/2009\/11\/8-little-foxes-that-spoil-the-5.html"},"modified":"2009-11-20T06:03:35","modified_gmt":"2009-11-20T06:03:35","slug":"8-little-foxes-that-spoil-the-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2009\/11\/8-little-foxes-that-spoil-the-5.html","title":{"rendered":"8 Little Foxes that Spoil the Church&#8217;s Vines 6"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Fox.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/120\/import\/imgs\/Fox.jpg\" width=\"297\" height=\"315\" class=\"mt-image-right\" style=\"float: right;margin: 0 0 20px 20px\" \/><\/span><b>I apologize that the comments were turned off on this post this morning &#8230; not sure how that happened, but it did.<\/b><\/p>\n<div><b><br \/><\/b><\/p>\n<div>On the plane yesterday the man sitting with us told us he was &#8220;raised Jewish&#8221; but that he went to a college where he had to take some Christianity, so he&#8217;s got some Christianity in him, and then he said it&#8217;s all rolled up into an overriding Zen Buddhism. There you have it: New Agers make up their own religion. <b>True or not?<\/b><\/p>\n<div><\/p>\n<div>In their new book, <em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0830838546?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=jescre-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0830838546\">Hidden Worldviews: Eight Cultural Stories That Shape Our Lives<\/a><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=0830838546\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important;margin:0px !important\" \/><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/em>, Steve Wilkens and Mark Sanford examine cultural scripts that work against the gospel work in the Church.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Our theme today: new age. <\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Motto: &#8220;Are we gods or God&#8217;s?&#8221;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I&#8217;ll be honest, this theme doesn&#8217;t interest me. I don&#8217;t find New Age stuff even interesting &#8230; but this chapter got &nbsp;me interested. Basically it argues humans need to find their inner divinity, God-consciousness or Higher Self. Knowledge of the inner dimension is salvation &#8212; it has an undeniable gnostic strain. It is monistic &#8212; unity of material an<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>So what do we learn:<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>1. An emphasis on the spiritual dimension of life.<\/div>\n<div>2. Reveals some common problems with institutional religion.<\/div>\n<div>3. Questions Enlightenment&#8217;s rationality as the gatekeeper.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>But they see fundamental problems in:<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>1. Flip flopping from materialism to spirit &#8212; a bit like transcendentalism.<\/div>\n<div>2. Self-salvation.<\/div>\n<div>3. It can&#8217;t justify its larger social agenda.<\/div>\n<div>4. Tends to the irrational.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I apologize that the comments were turned off on this post this morning &#8230; not sure how that happened, but it did. On the plane yesterday the man sitting with us told us he was &#8220;raised Jewish&#8221; but that he went to a college where he had to take some Christianity, so he&#8217;s got some&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gospel"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>8 Little Foxes that Spoil the Church&#039;s Vines 6 - Jesus Creed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2009\/11\/8-little-foxes-that-spoil-the-5.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"8 Little Foxes that Spoil the Church&#039;s Vines 6 - Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I apologize that the comments were turned off on this post this morning &#8230; not sure how that happened, but it did. On the plane yesterday the man sitting with us told us he was &#8220;raised Jewish&#8221; but that he went to a college where he had to take some Christianity, so he&#8217;s got some&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2009\/11\/8-little-foxes-that-spoil-the-5.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-11-20T06:03:35+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/files\/import\/imgs\/Fox.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Scot McKnight\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"8 Little Foxes that Spoil the Church's Vines 6 - Jesus Creed","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2009\/11\/8-little-foxes-that-spoil-the-5.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"8 Little Foxes that Spoil the Church's Vines 6 - Jesus Creed","og_description":"I apologize that the comments were turned off on this post this morning &#8230; not sure how that happened, but it did. On the plane yesterday the man sitting with us told us he was &#8220;raised Jewish&#8221; but that he went to a college where he had to take some Christianity, so he&#8217;s got some&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2009\/11\/8-little-foxes-that-spoil-the-5.html","og_site_name":"Jesus Creed","article_published_time":"2009-11-20T06:03:35+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/files\/import\/imgs\/Fox.jpg"}],"author":"Scot McKnight","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2009\/11\/8-little-foxes-that-spoil-the-5.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2009\/11\/8-little-foxes-that-spoil-the-5.html","name":"8 Little Foxes that Spoil the Church's Vines 6 - Jesus 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