Before God declared me righteous through faith in Christ, I treated spirituality like a do-it-yourself project.
Raised in New Thought churches (primarily Christian Science) that taught that my mind held the key to reveal what
God had already created perfect in me, I was trained to believe that sickness was my fault and wellness was my doing.

In our New Thought church, and at home with my family, we read and studied the Bible. Yet our Bible studies were
always through the lens of heretical authors such as Mary Baker Eddy and Earnest Holmes. New Thought churches are
very different from the popular inspirational authors such as Norman Vincent Peale, which are about “positive thinking”.

The actual New Thought teachings are more like ancient Egyptian Hermeticism, which holds that everything pivots
upon our thoughts intersecting with the mind of God. The belief is that, since God made us in His image, we are
therefore healthy in all ways. Any sickness is an “error in thinking” and we can reveal our true health by
replacing erroneous thoughts with Bible verses taken out of context.

Once our thoughts are focused upon “the truth”, then our health is revealed in the same way as a curtain is dropped
to unveil a new statue.

We were taught that we were to combat the world’s messages about sickness by reciting “The Scientific Statement of
Being”, which was a neo-Gnostic affirmation that matter is unreal, so therefore sickness was unreal. This belief is
also echoed in the heretical New Age channeled book, A Course in Miracles, which teaches that the physical
world is an outpicturing of our minds. So therefore, they believe that the physical world is malleable since it’s
just an illusion.

New Thought teaches that “God is mind”, meaning that He’s viewed as impersonal instead of imminent. They also
repeatedly recite that “God is love”, yet they never mention His convicting attributes of justice, holiness, wrath,
and righteousness.

As a result, those of us who were born and raised in New Thought churches were programmed to believe that we’re in
charge of our destiny. We had no concept of God’s sovereignty because He was viewed as “Mind” or divine intelligence,
like He was an impersonal super-computer.

Since New Thought holds that humanity didn’t fall and that Genesis chapter 3 is a myth or metaphor, they believe
that humanity is still the sinless and perfect creation that God originally made. So, they don’t believe in the
“concepts” of sin, hell, repentance, or the devil. All of those are “errors in thinking” according to New Thought.

We had the Christian vocabulary, yet we weren’t grounded in Biblical truth. If we had problems, it was due to
“erroneous thoughts”, and so we needed to realign our thoughts to “spiritual truth”. No wonder those of us who came
from New Thought backgrounds are ripe for New Age deception, since both are works-based systems.

In the 1990s, after spending over 30 years as a member of New Thought churches, I segued into New Age, which is even
darker and more works-based than New Thought. The New Age gets its “theology” from various world religions,
particularly Hindu beliefs about reincarnation, polytheism, and yoga.

According to the New Age, we control our reality with our thoughts. The New Age also bases their beliefs about
heaven and the afterlife on near-death-experience reports, which teach that everyone goes to Heaven. So, New Age
is universalistic and also states that you need to break out of the reincarnation cycle through being a “good
person” (which is never defined).

They don’t realize how illogical and contradictory it is to say that “everyone goes to Heaven” and yet “you need
to break out of the reincarnation cycle through your good works.”

I often refer to the New Age as a hamster-wheel of works that you’re expected to perform, such as the below list
of examples of the works-based system:

• Setting your crystals outside under the full moon each month to “clear and recharge them”.
• Praying to the full moon to take away your problems and “energy blocks”.
• Praying to the new moon to grant you your wishes.
• Avoiding travel, contracts, or new work three times a year during “Mercury retrograde”.
• Looking at your vision board daily and imagining all of your wishes are fulfilled.

Since New Age and New Thought has no belief in the fall, sin, hell, or the devil, they don’t see any need for
repentance or salvation. They believe that everyone automatically goes to Heaven no matter what.

That all changed for me as I was reading Deuteronomy 18:10–12, which listed the New Age practices I engaged in such
as interpreting signs and conducting mediumship and divination. God’s Word in the Old Testament and the New
Testament condemns these practices and says that anyone practicing them is an abomination to God.

I’d heard the gospel throughout my life, yet it never made sense to me before, since I’d been taught by New
Thought and New Age that no one is a sinner. Yet, God in His mercy lifted the veil so that I could realize the
depth of my depravity and my desperate need for Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.

I fell to my knees and repented, crying out to God for mercy and forgiveness.

When the gospel confronted me with the truth that God justifies the ungodly through faith apart from works,
everything changed because I finally rested in Christ’s finished work instead of my unfinished efforts.

Everything changed when the gospel shattered my assumptions and showed me that God justifies the ungodly by faith
alone. I saw that I was a sinner in need of Jesus our Savior. God declares sinners righteous because of Christ’s
finished work, rather than my spiritual performance.

We’re justified by His grace through the redemption accomplished by Christ Jesus (Romans 3:24), and our faith is
counted as righteousness (Romans 4:5). When I realized this was the truth I’d been seeking my entire life, the
burden I carried for years lifted because the gospel confronted my pride, emptiness, and despair at the same time.

The gospel exposed that I’m a sinner who couldn’t save myself and that Christ had done everything needed to save
me. I was dead in sin and He made me alive!

I understood that justification is God declaring me righteous because Christ stood in my place, bore my sin,
endured my judgment, and credited His perfect righteousness to me and to all who believe the gospel.

There’s now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). I was transformed from believing in
self-help and the works-based New Age/New Thought systems, into knowing that Jesus did it all through His finished
work on the cross.

God was calling me to rest in what His Son accomplished. The peace I tried to create through self-effort, such as
yoga or eastern meditation, was finally given to me through faith in Christ.

Since we’ve been justified by faith, we have peace with Him through our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 5:1).

I don’t miss New Age or New Thought at all, and I’m grateful to be off the hamster wheel of works-based spirituality.
Praise God for His mercy and grace in saving a sinner like me through my faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ,
who died and rose to save us and reconcile us to the Father!