New Age and Critical spirit

New Age thinkers see the image of God created in man and worship the image instead of the Creator. (see Romans 1:20-25) This could be, I suppose, maybe an improvement over worshiping hand-carved images that are greatly demeaning to humans, but still misses connecting to the Source of life. God's plan is to re-implant His perfect image (seed, incarnation) inside of us and grow it into maturity to become like Himself. “In all who will submit themselves to the Holy Spirit a new principle of life is to be implanted; the lost image of God is to be restored in humanity.

“But man can not transform himself by the exercise of his will. He possesses no power by which this change can be effected. The leaven --something wholly from without--must be put into the meal before the desired change can be wrought in it. So the grace of God must be received by the sinner before he can be fitted for the kingdom of glory. All the culture and education which the world can give, will fail of making a degraded child of sin a child of heaven. The renewing energy must come from God. The change can be made only by the Holy Spirit. All who would be saved, high or low, rich or poor, must submit to the working of this power.” (SD 34)

One of the striking differences between New Age philosophy and real truth of reality is pointed out right here. New Age spiritualism observes the inherent image of God within us and believes that along with that image is inherent power like God's. But this was lost to us in the Garden of Eden when we became corrupted by sin. Since that time our only hope is in the redemption by Jesus and an outside power infused into us through a vital and constant connection with Him to salvage us from the destructive effects of sin.

Criticism immediately places me in an adversarial relationship with others. It forms in my mind an image of them as an enemy to be overcome, changed into my image or attacked. The spirit of fault-finding, of focusing on the weaknesses and short-comings of others is an attempt to compare them with myself with the presumption that I will appear better in the outcome. But instead, the result is that those very problems and weaknesses and faults that I look at in them become more and more integrated into my own soul as a result of my prolonged attention on them. And as they do they increasingly distort my vision and bias me to amplify those problems until I have assembled a log in my eye – a petrified log – that biases me to view more and more people with critical assumptions. And in the process I also begin to judge God Himself as having faults and weaknesses like my own. Hence one of our continued methods of creating God in our own image.

This was brought home to me today as I read these words in My Utmost for His Highest this morning. “God has to destroy our determined confidence in our own convictions. 'I know this is what I should do' – and suddenly the voice of God speaks in a way that overwhelms us by revealing the depths of our ignorance. We have shown our ignorance of Him in the very way we determined to serve Him. We serve Jesus in a spirit that is not His, we hurt Him by our advocacy for Him, we push His claims in the spirit of the devil. Our words sound all right, but our spirit is that of an enemy. (MUHH 1/29)