Several years ago I heard a pastor mention Peter Jones in a sermon dealing with paganism. I learned in that sermon that Jones had done research into paganism, especially the way that all varieties of paganism are related, but I was busy with doctoral work of my own didn’t dig any further into Peter Jone’s works.
It was that sermon from several years ago that I remembered when I saw The Other Worldview on sale. I picked it up on a Kindle daily deal and figured I would read it sitting in a deer stand one day. I quickly discovered that this is not a book for the deer stand.
This book pulled me in so deeply that I was not able to focus on the world outside of it. Jones has devoted his life to the defense of Christianity over against what he deems “oneism” (paganism, monism, etc…). But his research, though scholarly, is not confined to academic libraries. Jones effectively shows that the influx of Paganism has come from a multitude of avenues that include psychology, pop culture, and pagan spirituality. The premise behind his book is that Western culture is broken and can only be recovered by a return to biblical Christianity.
Christian Smith identified the religion of America’s youth as Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. Jones believes that the perversion of Christianity is at least partly the fault of a return to ancient paganism:
Spirituality has become a do-it-yourself life hobby that blends ancient Eastern practices with modern consumer sensibilities.
But, biblically speaking, there are only two religions: the true and the false; the worship of God through Jesus according to his principles or a religion of one’s own making. Jones points us to the words of OT scholar John Oswalt, “[T]here are only two worldviews: the biblical one … and the other one.” Jones describes it this way:
Paul contends that there are only two kinds of minds: 1.The undiscerning, debased mind (Rom 1:28) that elevates the creature (or all of nature) into god by worshiping and serving the creation as God. It builds a worldview on the Lie. 2.The transformed, discerning mind (Rom 12:2), freed from the blindness of sin, which understands God as separate from the creation, and worships and serves him alone as the only object worthy of reverence. It builds a worldview on the Truth.
Throughout the course of the book Jones may overstate the role of Carl Jung in the pagan shaping of Western culture, but he does help us to understand that ideas have consequences. Jung, a student of Freud, believed Christianity to be untenable and sought to reshape society through pagan practices and according to pagan principles.
Jung’s approach to psychology, based on Oneist principles, sought to undo the concept of guilt associated with a person’s wrongs. Through practices that include yoga, mediation, and mindfulness, the human race was to move past moral norms to accept all that lives within them. For Jung there is no good and bad, only two sides of a coin. Jung also argued that all sexual boundaries should be erased and shame associated with sexual deviation should be removed. Thus, because we have lost the biblical worldview, “our culture no longer has the mental mechanisms to resist the outlandish expressions of radicals committed to pushing the envelope.”
One of the greatest strengths of the book is the willingness of Jones to be a cultural commentator and an evangelist. He identifies the cultural and philosophical challenges of our world, but he does with a mind toward seeing sight given to the spiritually blind. His goal in writing is to help others “know the personal God” behind the Christian worldview and be saved.
I admit that I was very skeptical in the beginning about Jones’ premise that there are only two approaches to religion: oneism or twoism. However, at the conclusion of this book I feel more convinced than ever that he is correct. In addition, I see more than ever before the influence of eastern religion (Hinduism, Buddhism, etc…) on the West.
This book is a must read for anyone who desires to understand the spiritual underpinnings of our rapidly changing culture. Through Jones’ work we can also better understand how the social and cultural change that has seemed so rapid in the past ten years has been weaving its way through our culture slowly for the last century.
Quotable Quotes:
- New Age, of our age, have their roots in ancient Gnosticism. That particular philosophy embraced a form of pantheism or monism: God is “the One”
- My plea is not a nostalgic appeal to return to the good old days of yore but an attempt to clarify the confrontation between the only two ultimate worldviews—the only two fundamental patterns of belief that underlie how we make sense of the world. I call these “Oneism” and “Twoism.”
- Spirituality has become a do-it-yourself life hobby that blends ancient Eastern practices with modern consumer sensibilities.
- as the church, we must call all cultures—and ourselves—in every generation to the rule that judges all other rules—the rule of faith, the law of true freedom, the Word of God.
- The gaping irrational hole produced by deconstructive postmodernism cries out to be filled by a new paradigm, a new, unifying, nonrational principle, a metanarrative, a grand récit—a mythical world that can bring mind and spirit together.
- In the 1950s, Jung claimed, “We are only at the threshold of a new spiritual epoch.”3 He believed that he was developing “the world’s final, unitary religion.”
- Carl Jung was driven by the idea that pagan myth reflects the worldwide search to understand and heal the self by discovering that all the gods are found within us.
- Stop and reflect: The modern view of psychological health is based in large part on a paganism-inspired account of the way the world works.
- Goldberg reminds us that in 2009 even Newsweek recognized the shift: “We Are All Hindus Now … large numbers of Americans have arrived at the worldview of Hinduism, where ‘Truth is One, but the sages speak of it by many names.’ ” According to Goldberg, “America is engaged in a reconfiguring of the sacred, comparable to the Great Awakenings of the 18th century.”
- What church father Hippolytus saw in the second century AD as gnostic apostasy is now seen as Christian maturity
- Noll has described Jung’s beliefs: “The shackles of family, society, and Deity must be broken.” Here, the libido is god. In such a view it was easy—indeed, noble—to move on from the narrow confines of past heterosexual license to the broad Elysian fields of contemporary pansexuality.
- The sexual agenda is just a visible symbol of a powerful, century-long deconstruction of the Christian worldview and its replacement with a pagan Oneist cosmology, of which sexuality is a sacrament.
- In 1997, gay activist Paula Ettelbrick clearly outlined the aims of the gay movement: “Being queer is more than sleeping with a person of the same gender … it means transforming the very fabric of our society … the goal [is] radically reordering society’s view of family.”
- Eastern meditation techniques all involve silencing the mind—in contrast to Christian meditation, which fully involves and stimulates the mind.
- In a situation like ours, Christians must not first and foremost seek to be liked but to be lovingly faithful to the gospel. Otherwise, compromise can seem like a virtue rather than a serious danger.
- The secret to powerful, Spirit-filled living under the cosmology of holiness is submission.
- Self-worship and self-praise naturally disgust us all. True worship and true praise are only genuine if turned toward another.
