My colleague Glenn Sunshine is fond of saying, “Let’s not reinvent the flat tire.” In other words, we ought not double down on a solution that definitively failed in the past. Sunshine’s clever editing of the popular saying is relevant to many things, including the recent resurging interest in spirituality.

Last month, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, 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 on the American Right. Among the diverse ideas figuring into this new spirituality are concepts of nationhood, colonizing other planets, and even magic mushrooms. And among those thinking out loud about it all are some Trump administration officials and superstar podcasters like Joe Rogan. Eventually, the odd mix of ideas will collide with more traditional Christian beliefs represented by figures like Vice President J.D. Vance.

One on hand, the discussion indicates a growing, widespread exhaustion with secular materialism. Across cultures, including politics, there are indications of what some are calling “re-enchantment.” Where Klein and Douthat (and many others) disagree is whether or not this new openness to the mystical, spiritual, and other-worldly will be helpful or dangerous.

Klein is a deconstructed Jew who is fascinated by “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 traded away any spiritual insight for political power.

Douthat, a devout Catholic, had the opposite instinct. He argued that the institutional religions survive because they work: “. . . 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.” These encounters, he argued, must be made sense of, and only organized religions that take the supernatural seriously can truly offer that.

In fact, Douthat continued, Christianity is the best option. As he put it, “God is not out to trick you.” Rather, He has revealed Himself in history, and chances are low that a “California seeker” on ‘shrooms will stumble across a truth that millennia of theologians have missed.

Douthat also pointed out that to open random spiritual doors without considering what might walk through is naïve and dangerous. Most religions, Christianity in particular, teach that we live in an embattled cosmos, with spiritual enemies bent on our destruction. Seek, and you may find something you weren’t looking for.

In other words, the “open” spirituality of ayahuasca retreats, astrology, and sexual experimentation is just reinventing a religious flat tire. After all, paganism has been tried over and over for thousands of years and has failed in various and sundry ways. Even more, everywhere the light of the Gospel has reached, those false gods have fled. Going from scientific materialism back to that darkness is not spiritual progress.

Klein wrongly assumes, like many modern people and mainline Protestants, that biblical revelation as a source of authority has been tried and found wanting. This was, perhaps, the central myth of the Enlightenment, which condemned Christianity as superstition and portended to supersede Scripture with reason. However, reason, unguided and unbound, delivered eugenics, death camps, and millions of deaths. Thus, modernism collapsed into postmodernism, with its cynical suspicion of any “overarching stories” of reality.

Today, however, people have grown tired of not believing, and deconstruction is losing its appeal. In such a context, old rehashed “flat tires” of spirituality will attract the spiritually curious but will prove as hollow and dangerous as their ancient versions. God’s real-world visitation in Jesus Christ, on the other hand, checks all the boxes of what the heart desires and the world needs.

Scripture explains why supernatural instincts and experiences persisted, even in a supposedly secular age. God made us for Himself, and He does not hide. As the Apostle Paul said to the pagans in Athens, “He is not far from any one of us.”

A crucial question for those who know this truth is whether we are ready for the return of spirituality. What must we offer to a society of seekers? The content of religious belief matters. What we believe is as important as if we believe. The new openness to spiritual belief is only good news if people learn the Good News.

Source