Drowning in Chicken Soup

First the good news: Despite a lot of pessimistic warnings about the secularization of America, spiritual hunger hasn't disappeared from our culture.

A recent Gallup Poll compares today's religious climate with that of 50 years ago, and it shows that belief in God is just as strong (96 percent) as in 1947 (95 percent). Ninety percent of Americans pray, and 41 percent claim to attend church. Best-seller lists include books with religious themes, from the uplifting feel-good stories of* Chicken Soup for the Soul* to the New Age ideas of Embraced by the Light. However, while 93 percent of Americans "have a Bible or other Scriptures in their household," only 18 percent read the Bible every day (Emerging Trends, April 1997).

Which leads to the bad news: Despite the sincerity in many seekers' hearts, much current "spirituality" contains little basis in biblical truth. It's "theology lite"—or worse, theology with a distinctly dark side.

Last April, 38 members of the Heaven's Gate cult joined their leader Marshall Applewhite in a shocking act of mass suicide. Applewhite's strange teachings blended everything from Jesus to Star Trek, from The X-Files to the Hale-Bopp Comet, in a "sci-fi religion that borrows heavily from Christianity, Gnosticism, theosophy, and a belief in extraterrestrials and life in outer space" (Stephen J. Hedges, U.S. News & World Report, April 7, 1997). While it's easy to write off the Heaven's Gate tragedy as a tragic but kooky aberration, offbeat ideas like Applewhite's have twisted their way closer to the cultural mainstream than we'd like to admit.

In American Demographics (June 1997), Rebecca Piierto Heath observes, "In the 1980s, professing a belief in reincarnation, UFOs . . . and psychics was likely to cause permanent damage to your credibility." But today, she notes, these ideas are so mainstream that "Ivy League researchers have made UFO abduction and past lives fodder for serious academic research."

Several years ago, during a conversation with a public school superintendent, I asked him to explain why the local adult education curriculum included evening courses in reincarnation, astrology, and other subjects offensive to Christians. "People are interested in those topics," he explained.

"Well, a lot of people are interested in the Bible, too," I pointed out. "So could a Christian lead a Bible course as part of the curriculum?"

"No," the superintendent responded. "That would violate the separation of church and state."

And so it goes. It seems you can toss into today's politically correct stewpot almost any ingredient you like—except biblical Christianity.

No wonder so many young people don't know what to believe. When a recent Gallup Poll asked teens about various religions, nearly as many (44 percent) expressed interest in American Indian spiritual worship as in Protestant Christianity (52 percent).

These are confusing times, but Christians aren't powerless. Satan prowls about like a roaring lion, but we can "resist him, standing firm in the faith" (1 Peter 5:8, 9).

We must resist universalism, the popular but false idea that all will be saved regardless of what we believe.

We must resist syncretism, which combines ideas from divergent faiths into a nonbiblical religious blend.

We must resist self-enthronement, which replaces "thy will be done" with "I'll do my own thing."

In a culture eagerly gulping down more helpings of chicken soup for the soul, we'd better make sure the solid meat of God's Word not only appears on the menu, but remains the main course.