FIRST CENTER OF SPIRITUAL LIVING AND THEIR INADEQUATE GOD

New Age religions want nothing to do with God. They accurately sense that God cares about our conduct and will judge us. They also sense that, somehow, God is related to the guilt and shame, which we experience. Therefore, new-agers hope that when they distance themselves from God, they also distance themselves from these highly disturbing feelings.

However, some new-agers have created new religions with a god, but not a god who cares about moral issues of right and wrong. Reverend Greg Harte represents such a religion called the “First Center of Spiritual Living, NYC,” tailor-made for today’s seekers. On their website, he assures his listeners that:

·       The Universe so absolutely adores you that it responds to your every single thought; it never misses a one.

Harte explains that if we have a problem it’s not with the Universe god but with our own thinking. Instead, this god is an indulgent mother who will just smother you with her hugs and kisses.

Consequently, the God of both love and judgment is entirely rejected along with our feelings of guilt and shame, the products of our dysfunctional childhoods and beliefs. Good feelings are embraced; bad feelings are just pathologies that need to be unmasked for what they are.

However, guilt and shame are necessary teachers. We should feel ashamed of ourselves if we bully or traffic children. Our system of justice should clearly communicate the fact that these crimes are reprehensible. There is a place for shaming as long as there is also a place for forgiveness and restoration.

However, in this New Age god, there is no possibility of reconciliation because there is no division. Evil is just an illusion. According to the Hindu Paramahansa Yogananda, founder of the “Self-Realization Fellowship,” this world, with its morality, guilt, and shame, is just an illusion. He likened our “reality” to a movie into which we entered as if it were real:

·       “Then this cosmic movie, with its horrors of disease and poverty and atomic bombs will appear to us only as real as the anomalies we experience at a movie house. When we have finished seeing the motion picture, we will know that nobody was killed; nobody was suffering.”

This statement is a tribute to the power of guilt and shame and our desire to disassociate ourselves from them, even to the extent of denying reality. Instead, our feelings serve us as does a fire alarm. They alert us to the fact that something is wrong, like placing our hand on a hot stove. The pain tells us to remove our hand. Similarly, our guilt tells us that we have to repair a broken relationship in order to restore and to regain our peace.

In light of this, the New Age god represents a denial of reality, which teaches us to grow up and to take responsibility for our behaviors. Such a god may temporarily comfort us, but so do drugs and a stiff martini. Those who build their lives on these will later pay for their escapism. If he hasn’t already, I suspect that Greg Harte will also be receiving his bill.

I am glad that my God is a righteous God. It is because I know that He will judge that He enables me to focus on loving others. That’s freeing!