LTRP Note: The following is the third installment (see: part one, part two) that we are posting of Warren Smith’s new book, A “Wonderful” Deception. We hope you have find the chance to read all three chapters that we have made available. They are very important in helping to explain the new spirituality that has come into Christianity through today’s major Christian figures.
“Fractals, Chaos Theory, Quantum Spirituality, and The Shack”
by Warren Smith
A fractal . . . something considered simple and orderly that is actually composed of repeated patterns no matter how magnified. A fractal is almost infinitely complex. I love fractals, so I put them everywhere.1–Sarayu, The Shack
Fractals reveal a hidden “order” underlying all seemingly chaotic events. The fractals are intricate and beautiful. They repeat basic patterns, but with an infinity of variations and forms. The world-view emerging from this scientific research is new, and yet at the same time very very ancient.2–The Sovereign Court and Order of the Ancient Dragon
Shortly after writing the previous two chapters on Leonard Sweet and quantum spirituality, I spoke at a church in Southern California. I had been asked to speak at the two morning services and then again in the evening. In the second morning service, three women approached me and thanked me for warning about the New Age/New Spirituality and how it was working its way into the church. All three told me they formerly attended Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, but they had become dissatisfied and left. They said it had been difficult to leave because so many of their friends still went to Saddleback.
After the evening service, two more women approached me with similar stories. One left Saddleback the previous year and the other had left a church she had been attending for over thirty-seven years. This second woman, Jennifer, had left because her former church was introducing a mixture of Purpose Driven, church growth, and emerging church teachings. She was following up on comments I made about William Paul Young’s New York Times best-selling book The Shack. I had described how The Shack’s author had introduced New Age concepts into his emotional novel about a man’s supposed encounter with “God,” “Jesus,” and the “Holy Spirit” after the brutal murder of his daughter. In the midst of his story, Young suddenly introduces the foundational teaching of the New Age/New Spirituality/New World Religion–that God is “in” everything. The Shack’s “Jesus” told Mack–the distraught father and main character in the novel–that God is “in” all things:
God, who is the ground of all being, dwells in, around, and through all things.3
In speaking to the Southern California church, I had explained that the Bible makes it clear that God is not “in” all things. I explained that Satan–“the god of this world”–wants everyone to believe that God is “in” all things because then everyone would have reason to believe that they were God. When The Shack’s “Jesus” states that God is “in” all things, he actually reinforces what Rick Warren has already written in The Purpose Driven Life–that the Bible says God is “in” everything.4 In an online article I wrote titled “The Shack and its New Age Leaven,” I discuss this “God in everything” aspect.5
In our brief conversation, the second woman, Jennifer, told me she had discovered something interesting in The Shack and had written a short article about it. She asked if I would be willing to read her article. I told her I would.
Fractal Theory and The Shack
Back home a week later, I found Jennifer’s paper in my notebook. I was intrigued by the title–“Fractal Theory in The Shack.” In her article, Jennifer explains that during her research she had rented a DVD movie, which she had been told had New Age undertones. She then describes something she discovered in the movie:
In the movie The Seeker a young boy is a chosen one who is to find signs hidden throughout time, which will help fight against the encroaching darkness. I won’t go into the plot too much but what I will say is, in the movie, each sign that the boy is to find is known as a fractal. When I heard the term fractal, right away I realized that I had heard that same term somewhere else recently. Later on that day I remembered where I had heard it, The Shack.
Beginning in chapter 9 in The Shack which is titled, “A Long Time Ago in a Garden Far, Far Away,” we read about how Sarayu (who represents the Holy Spirit) has created a garden and we learn that the garden is a fractal. We learn about fractals from Sarayu when she says, “A fractal is something considered simple and orderly that is actually composed of repeated patterns no matter how magnified. A fractal is almost infinitely complex. I love fractals, so I put them everywhere.”6
Curious about the term “fractal” that was showing up in both The Shack and The Seeker, Jennifer did some research. What she discovered is that the term “fractal” is directly related to what are being called the “new sciences” of “Chaos Theory” and “Fractal Theory.” What was of particular interest to me was her finding that fractals are directly linked with the occult phrase “as above, so below”–the same occult/New Age term that Eugene Peterson had mysteriously inserted into his paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer. And now, here was Peterson’s endorsement prominently featured on the front cover of The Shack. Given my previously expressed concern about Peterson’s use of “as above, so below” in The Message, I found it interesting that “as above, so below” was apparently related to the term fractal in The Shack and that Peterson had so enthusiastically endorsed the book. (This is an excerpt from Chapter 12 of A “Wonderful” Deception.
—To continue reading more of this chapter and for endnote material, click here.)
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