Your Own Personal Jesus

Citing examples from TV, pop music, and best-selling books, an article in Entertainment Weekly noted that "pop culture is going gaga for spirituality." However,

[S]eekers of the day are apt to peel away the tough theological stuff and pluck out the most dulcet elements of faith, coming up with a soothing sampler of Judeo-Christian imagery, Eastern mediation, self-help lingo, a vaguely conservative craving for 'virtue,' and a loopy New Age pursuit of 'peace.' This happy free-for-all, appealing to Baptists and stargazers alike, comes off more like Forest Gump's ubiquitous 'boxa chocolates' than like any real system of belief. You never know what you're going to get. (1)

The "search for the sacred" has become a recurring cover story for national news magazines for some time now; but is a revival of "spirituality" and interest in the "sacred" really any more encouraging than the extravagant idolatry that Paul witnessed in Athens (Acts 17)? 

Not only historians and sociologists but novelists are writing about the "Gnostic" character of the soup that we call spirituality in the United States today. In a recent article in Harper's, Curtis White describes our situation pretty well. When we assert, "This is my belief," says White, we are invoking our right to have our own private conviction, no matter how ridiculous, not only tolerated politically but respected by others. "It says, 'I've invested a lot of emotional energy in this belief, and in a way I've staked the credibility of my life on it. So if you ridicule it, you can expect a fight." In this kind of culture, "Yahweh and Baal-my God and yours-stroll arm-in-arm, as if to do so were the model of virtue itself."

What we require of belief is not that it make sense but that it be sincere....Clearly, this is not the spirituality of a centralized orthodoxy. It is a sort of workshop spiritu-ality that you can get with a cereal-box top and five dollars....There is an obvious problem with this form of spirituality: it takes place in isolation. Each of us sits at our computer terminal tapping out our convictions....Consequently, it's difficult to avoid the conclusion that our truest belief is the credo of heresy itself. It is heresy without an orthodoxy. It is heresy as an orthodoxy. (2)  Continue at Michael Horton