Eastern Idolatry by Peter Jones (original source here)

(Dr. Peter Jones is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is the Executive Director of truthXchange. He has authored books on paganism, sick including One or Two: Seeing a World of Difference.)

C.S. Lewis gets many things right. Years ago, he concluded that there were only two possible answers to the religious search: either Hinduism or Christianity, which are ultimate, contradictory expressions of religion—that is, either One-ist pantheism or Two-ist theism (Letters of C.S. Lewis, pp. 479–80).

Pantheism is the “very spiritual” belief that “god” is in everything. From this conviction derives the phrase “all is one and one is all.” This part of God in everything joins everything together. Since human beings are inherently spiritual, pantheism is the original default button of the rebellious creature. God is not above me; God is in me. God (capital g) does not make the rules; I make the rules. As aggressive materialism and atheism decline, people are now happy to be “spiritual” by finding God within. They reject the most basic notion of theism, namely, that God the personal Creator is distinct from the creation as its Maker.

The classic Hindu text The Bhagavad Gita, The Song of God, some twenty-five hundred years old, expresses pantheism in stirring poetic form:

Whoso reveres Me as abiding in all things, adopting the belief in oneness, though abiding in any possible condition, that disciplined man abides in Me.

I imagine that some readers may consider such poetic pantheism as merely an exotic Eastern belief or an interesting religious phenomenon known in far-off cultures. I have news for you: the West is on the cusp of a revival of pantheism, which is a fundamental assault on the truth claims of biblical orthodoxy and now demands the right to regulate public policy according to its view of the world. We Christians had better understand the nature and form of this great enemy of the gospel. Continue reading →