Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. My colleague Glenn Sunshine is fond of saying, well, let's not reinvent the flat tire. In other words, we ought not double down on a solution that has definitively failed in the past. Dr.
Sunshine's clever editing of the popular saying is relevant to many things, including the recent resurgence of interest in spirituality. Last month, New York Times columnist Ross Dalthitt, author of the new book, Believe Why Everyone Should Be Religious, discussed this resurgence on The Ezra Klein Show. The two explored what might be called an emerging neo-paganism, especially from the American right. Among the diverse ideas that are figuring into this new spirituality are concepts of nationhood, colonizing other planets, even magic mushrooms. And among those thinking out loud about it all are some Trump administration officials and superstar podcasters like Joe Rogan.
Eventually, this odd mix of ideas will have to collide with the more traditional Christian beliefs represented by figures like Vice President J.D. Vance. It'll be interesting to watch.
Now, on one hand, the discussion indicates that there is a growing widespread exhaustion with secular materialism. That's good news. Across our culture, and including politics, there are many indications of what some are calling re-enchantment. recline and doubt it, and many others disagree, is whether this new openness to the mystical, the spiritual, the otherworldly will be helpful or whether it will be dangerous. Klein is a deconstructed Jew who's fascinated by so-called mystery and open to all spiritual experience.
During the podcast, he encouraged a profound openness to seeking spiritual truth by any means, including psychedelic drugs. He also argued that old institutional religions like Christianity are probably unhelpful, mainly because they're old and institutional, but also because they have clearly traded away any spiritual insight for political power. Dowthet, a devout Catholic, had the opposite instinct. He argued that the institutional religion survive because they work. Quote, religion always regenerates itself, he told Klein.
Even under conditions where almost nobody is committed to a particular church or creed, people are going to have dramatic spiritual encounters. And those encounters, he argued, have to be made sense of. Only organized religions that take the supernatural seriously can offer that. In fact, Dalthick continued, Christianity's the best option. As he put it, God's not out to trick you.
Rather, he has revealed himself in history. And chances are pretty low that a California seeker on mushrooms will somehow stumble across some truth that millennia theologians have somehow missed. And Dalthat also pointed out that to open random spiritual doors without considering what might walk through them is naive and dangerous. Most religions, but Christianity in particular, teach that we live in an embattled cosmos with spiritual enemies bent on our destruction. seek, and you may find something that you actually weren't looking for.
In other words, the open spirituality of native drug-infused retreats, astrology and sexual experimentation is really just reinventing a religious flat tire. After all, paganism has been tried over and over for thousands of years, in fact. And it's always failed in various and sundry ways. Even more, everywhere the light of the gospel reached, those false gods all fled. Going from scientific materialism back to that darkness that's not spiritual progress at all.
Klein wrongly assumes, like many modern people and mainline Protestants, that biblical revelation is a source of authority that's been tried and found wanting. This was perhaps a central myth of the Enlightenment, which condemned Christianity as superstitious and pretended to supersede Scripture with reason. Reason, however, unguided and unbound as it was, only delivered eugenics, death camps, and millions of deaths.
So modernism collapsed into postmodernism. with its cynical suspicion of any overarching stories of reality. Today, however, people are just tired of not believing. Deconstruction seems to be losing its appeal. And in such a context, old, rehashed, flat tires of spirituality will attract the spiritually curious, but will ultimately prove just as hollow and dangerous as any of their ancient versions.
God's real world visitation in Jesus Christ, on the other hand, checks all the boxes of what the heart really desires and the world truly needs. Scripture explains why our supernatural instincts and experiences persist. even in supposedly secular ages. God made us for himself, and he does not hide from us. As the Apostle Paul said to the pagans back in Athens, he's not far from any of us.
Now a crucial question for those of us who know the truth about God is whether or not we're ready for this return of spirituality. what must we be willing and ready to offer to a society of seekers? The content Of religious belief matters. What we believe is just as important as if we believe. This new openness to spiritual belief will only be good news.
if people actually learn the good news. And the Colson Fellows Program equips Christians to give an answer for our hope, including to the spiritually curious. Applications for the next class of Colson Fellows are being accepted right now. To learn more about how to think biblically and live out a Christian worldview through the Fellows Program in this time and place where God has called you, visit us at colsonfellows.org. That's colsonfellows.org.
For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. Today's commentary was co-authored by Shane Morris. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, please leave us a review wherever you download your podcast. And for a version of this commentary that you can print or share with others, go to breakpoint.org.
