Book Review on Castles in the Sand
by C. Pack
(Used with permission)
“Spiritual Formation is Dangerous…. And Here’s Why”
As a former New Ager, I have become increasingly alarmed at the New Age/New Spirituality practices and beliefs that I have seen flowing into the church. I was saved in a conservative, evangelical church that boldly proclaimed the gospel: Jesus is THE Way, THE Truth and THE Life, and no-one comes to the Father but by Him. Yet, within 2 years time, this same precious church began to preach sermons on past mystics (St. John of the Cross), began offering yoga classes, and began to adopt practices that eerily reminded me of my New Age days… all of which are an assault on the true gospel.
In my spiritual immaturity, I just assumed that there was a type of mysticism that was okay within the framework of Christendom. I even participated in “setting the stage” for these new practices to come into our church: I helped hang blackout curtains to set the right “atmosphere,” I set up candles, I carefully placed incense stations so they were out of reach of small children, etc.
However, after doing a little research (just to put my mind at ease), I came to the startling realization that these “Christianized” practices (yoga, contemplative prayer, Lectio Divina, etc.) were identical to what I (and my New Age friends) had done, way back in the 80s and 90s…they just had new names.
This book by Carolyn Greene unmasks the demonic nature of these practices and shows how our Christian children are being exposed to them. The heroine of this novel, Teresa, goes off to a Christian college that has always had a reputation for being doctrinally solid. Unbeknownst to her (and her foster grandparents, who themselves attended the school), the college has just begun implementing new classes in Spiritual Formation, Ancient Future, Lectio Divina, and Contemplative Prayer, among others. Not only that, but they’ve bulldozed the boring old soccer field to make way for a Labyrinth…. 
The story cuts back and forth between the experiences of the young student Teresa and another Teresa set in the 16th century – St. Teresa of Avila, a well-known mystic. As the student Teresa is unwittingly sucked deeper and deeper into a vortex of unbiblical practices and demonic deception, she becomes the star pupil of the college’s glamorous new teacher, Dr. Jasmine Winters, who is introducing these enthralled young students to new – yet unbiblical – ways to “experience” God.
On a sidenote, let me state that as parents, we have been “trained” by our church leadership to turn over the spiritual discipling of our children to the leadership, whether at church or school…..but how sure are we that the youth group or private school or “Christian” college our kids are attending are, in fact, discipling them in solid Biblical truths? The emergent church movement, which heavily promotes Spiritual Formation and Contemplative practices, is a HUGE and very popular movement today. It prides itself with being able to “dialogue” with today’s youth, with being culturally relevant to them. But as Christians, we know that our children’s deepest spiritual need is NOT to be “engaged” by someone with hipness and cultural relevancy, but is rather to be given spiritual truth: that they are dead in their sins, depraved at their core, and in need of God’s mercy and plan of salvation, through Christ’s atoning death on the cross. The emergent church movement never gives this message, because at its core, emergent theology is a cross between New Age and Universalist thought (man’s divine inner goodness + good works = salvation).
If the gospel is not clearly given to our youth, but instead we are giving them exciting, but unbiblical, “experiences” – which seem spiritual because they’re wrapped in Christian terminology – then we’ve damned them. In our rush to do the next big thing, we are taking the edge off the blade, as it were, and giving our children just enough “Christianity” to “feel” spiritual and saved, without them coming to God on His terms: through the blood of Christ. These emergent experiences do not have the power to save, but instead are just “a form of godliness” without salvific power (2 Tim 3:5).
This book will be eye-opening for anyone who has heard the terms Ancient Future, Spiritual Disciplines, Spiritual Formation, Contemplative Prayer, Lectio Divina, etc. and perhaps wondered what they were, and if they were biblical. They absolutely are not… and Carolyn Greene shows us why. (Originally posted at Amazon.com, used with permission from C. Pack)
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