New Age, Human Thriving, and the Good Inner Self

Will love conquer all? Well, it depends on how you define “love.” One anonymous New Ager, reflecting the thoughts of many others, stated:

• Since this inner nature is good or neutral rather than bad, it is best to bring it out and to encourage it rather than to suppress it. If it is permitted to guide our life, we grow healthy, fruitful, and happy.

The way we regard human nature determines how we address human problems. If we regard human nature as basically good and loving, we will gently try to help humans bring forth and accept their natural and good impulses.

David Spangler adds:

• “The New Age approach is to look at the object, people and the events of our lives and to say ‘you are sacred. In you and with you I can find the sacramental passages that reconnect me to the wholeness of creation.’ It is then to ask ourselves what kind of culture, what kind of institutions – be they political, economic, artistic, educational, or scientific – we need that can honor that universal sacredness.”

For Spangler, “sacredness” doesn’t mean that we are created in the image of God but that we remain fundamentally good at the core. And we bring forth humanity’s good nature by affirming their “sacredness.” If we are told we are sacred, perhaps we will begin to act that way.

But if we are basically good and sacred, why is it that we can’t treat others in a loving manner? Why wars, jealousy, hatred, and ethnic cleaning? A common answer is that suffer from a lack of self-esteem. According to New Age guru, Shakti Gawain, we have failed to learn how to trust in ourselves:

• “When we consistently suppress and distrust our intuitive knowingness, looking instead for external authority, validation, and the approval of others, we give our personal power away…Every time you don’t trust yourself and don’t follow your inner truth, you decreased your aliveness and your body will reflect this with a loss of vitality, numbness, pain, and eventually physical disease.”

However, it often seems that those with the highest levels of self-trust or self-confidence can be the most inhumane of people. It is also possible that the attempt to trust in ourselves comes at the expense of understanding ourselves. Perhaps we shouldn’t be affirming ourselves but examining ourselves. Perhaps we do not measure up to the self-trust that Gawain wants us to adopt. Perhaps instead, we need to learn how to be scrupulously honest with ourselves.

Instead, according to another branch of the New Age, our problems derive from our inhumane institutions. In Understanding the Times, David Noebel explains:

• Every humanist psychologist believes the secret to better mental health lies in getting in touch with the unspoiled, inner self.  When man strips himself of all the evil forced on him by society, he will become a positive agent with virtually unlimited potential…The three major assumptions of Humanist psychology are: man is good by nature and therefore perfectible; society and its social institutions are responsible for man’s evil acts; and mental health can be restored to everyone who gets in touch with his inner ‘good’ self.

How then do we get in touch with our “inner ‘good’ self? The outer layers of social conditioning and acculturation have to be peeled back. How? Humanist psychologists use a number of techniques to affirm and love the client through empathy, reflective listening, and unconditional positive regard for each individual, whatever their conduct.

However, while these affirmative techniques often bring about positive and immediate responses, it is questionable whether they succeed in bringing out the good inner self. Perhaps instead they are temporarily effective in manipulating the desired response from the client.

There is also another problem when we believe in the good inner self. We tend to dismiss all other ways of treating others, especially treating others punitively or critically.

Several humanistic women have confidently informed me that any form of punishment is barbaric. After all, if the tender, gentle, and loving response is all that is necessary to bring out the optimal response, then prison and censure become entirely unnecessary, even inhumane.

I asked one of these very lovely and personable women if she thought that if the Allies had just been more empathetic with Hitler, using more reflective listening, they would have been able to tap into his “good inner self,” and WWII would have been averted.

She answered, “Yes.” I was troubled by her revealing response. I was hoping that she would admit that other responses might have proved more fruitful with Hitler, namely a speedy military response.

Wisdom requires discernment. It recognizes that one size does not fit all. It sees that different responses are needful with different people in different situations.

Life is multi-textured, and it requires wisdom to recognize the complexities. Sometimes empathy will not work with a rebellious child. Sometimes firmness and punishment are required. As a probation officer, I often noticed that my younger probationers would respond positively and respectfully to my firmness, as if they recognized that they needed it, and that I was someone who cared about them enough to set firm limits.

The New Age blames institutions and even organized religion. However, our institutions are made up of individuals, each having a “good inner self.” How then is it that our institutions have become so utterly corrupt? We can’t blame other institutions. After all, humanity pre-dated the institutions we created. The answer must be sought at a deeper level.

Perhaps instead, the problem resides in all of us, in our adversity to the truth. Jesus put it this way:

• And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” (John 3:19-21)

If the problem resides in each one of us, changing institutions will do little to correct it. Instead, we need an answer that goes to the very core of the problem. Perhaps we must be born again. The Prophet Ezekiel prophesied that God would do this very thing:

• And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. And I will deliver you from all your uncleannesses. And I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you. (Ezekiel 36:26-29)

Humanity and its Rut

Humanity has always suffered from a broad array of problems – hatred, envy, bitterness, violence, unforgiveness, and denial – and has never been without various “solutions” and their diagnoses of the problems from which to choose. Inevitably, the solutions take either of two forms – changing either the outer environment or the inner one.

Outer change is often associated with revolution. Something has to be radically changed. Communism/atheism had been convinced that changing the means of production would also change everything else, creating a workmen’s paradise. The infamous Joseph Stalin wrote:

• “Whatever is the mode of production of a society, such in the main is the society itself, its ideas, and theories, its political views and institutions. Or, to put it more crudely, whatever is man’s manner of life, such is his manner of thought.”

Indeed, “man’s manner of life [affects] his manner of thought.” However, there also seem to be deeper determinants of thought – a breeding ground that a change in mere economic superficialities cannot touch.

I had lived on several Israeli Kibbutzim – perhaps the most radical communist experiments. Owning everything in common clearly had failed to touch our most basic problems. Meanwhile, other communist experiments have uniformly proved to be one enormous, unmitigated blight upon humanity.

The Humanist Manifesto II  identifies a quasi-external problem – ignorance – and therefore promotes its opposite, science and technology, as the solutions:

• “Using technology wisely, we can control our environment, conquer poverty, markedly reduce disease, extend our life-span, significantly modify our behavior, alter the course of human evolution and cultural development, unlock vast new powers, and provide humankind with unparalleled opportunity for achieving an abundant and meaningful life.”

While science and technology have enabled us to live more affluent and comfortable lives, they too seem to have stopped short of touching the source of our problems. Consequently, depression and suicide rates have been accelerating.

Some solutions, although blaming society, have taken a more internal focus. David Noebel writes about the confidence that humanist psychology has placed in the self:

• “Every humanist psychologist believes the secret to better mental health lies in getting in touch with the unspoiled, inner self.  When man strips himself of all the evil forced on him by society, he will become a positive agent with virtually unlimited potential…The three major assumptions of Humanist psychology are: man is good by nature and therefore perfectible; society and its social institutions are responsible for man’s evil acts; and mental health can be restored to everyone who gets in touch with his inner ‘good’ self.”

If we all possess a “good self,” how is it that all societies – and they are made up of many “good selves” – have become so evil? And if they have all become evil, what hope can we have? Perhaps then if we change society into a utopia, the same internal forces that had corrupted society initially will once again corrupt it.

Perhaps, instead, our very evident human problems are more resistant to change than the progressives have banked upon. Perhaps each one of us is the problem. This is precisely the substance of the Judeo-Christian revelation. Isaiah indicts the entire human race in this manner:

• Their feet rush into sin; they are swift to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are evil thoughts; ruin and destruction mark their ways. The way of peace they do not know; there is no justice in their paths. They have turned them into crooked roads; no one who walks in them will know peace. (Isaiah 59:7-8)

Nor can we even correct ourselves. Our problems are intractable:

• The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9-10)

Our problems are deeper than we want to acknowledge. As strong as we might be, we cannot lift ourselves out of our rut. Only Another can do that for us.