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Explaining New Spirituality to Our Children
New spirituality is a worldview that has infiltrated most areas of our society. It bombards our children with its false truth claims in everything from TV shows to memes, fitness ads to food labels. Training our children to navigate their encounters with new spirituality can be difficult. Messages such as “be true to yourself” and “follow your heart” sound inspirational and are woven into most kids’ entertainment, but can lead to a self-seeking faith. In this article, we'll discuss how we can prepare our children to recognize truth from falsehood when new spiritualist messages bombard them every day.
Expose the Idol
Anytime we want our children to understand the teachings of another worldview, the first thing we must do is expose the idol. What person or object has this worldview substituted for God? In new spirituality, that idol is self.
The new spiritualist worldview teaches that “god” is in everything. Christians can easily confuse this concept with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. But the new spiritualist concept of god is vastly different. New spirituality claims that god is not just in everything, he is everything. This means that every person is god. If you are god and I am god, we each become our own object of worship.
Reveal How the Idol Contrasts God
Once we expose our children to new spirituality’s idol of self, we need to show them how this idol directly opposes what God has revealed about Himself. Scripture is clear that God is the only proper object of worship (Ex. 20:1-2, Is. 45:5, Ps. 86:10, Luke 4:8). He is near His creation, but He is separate from it (Ps. 139:7-12, Is. 55:9, Col. 1:16-17). God is not manifested in different parts of creation such as rocks, trees, or animals. And, while the Holy Spirit does indwell Christians, we do not become God when we surrender our lives to Jesus.
We need to show our children that God has created us to worship Him. When we recognize God’s lordship and submit ourselves to Him, we align ourselves with reality, and God satisfies our souls. This is not true of new spirituality. We want to help our children see that worship of self leads to disaster. When we worship ourselves, we focus on what is best for us, causing disappointment, hurt, and chaos (Is. 44:20, Rom. 1:18-32, James 4:1-4).
Conclusion
Once we have exposed our children to the new spiritualist idol of self and contrasted it with reality, we can then help them see the connection between the worship of self and other new spirituality teachings – such as those on origins, identity, and morality. For more information on preparing our children to navigate new spirituality in our culture, check out Unit Two in Foundation Comparative Worldview Curriculum.
About Elizabeth Urbanowicz
Elizabeth Urbanowicz is a follower of Jesus who is passionate about equipping kids to understand the truth of the Christian worldview. Elizabeth holds a B.S. in Elementary Education from Gordon College, an M.S.Ed. in Education from Northern Illinois University, and an M.A. in Christian Apologetics from Biola University. Elizabeth spent the first decade of her professional career teaching elementary students at a Christian school. Elizabeth now works full time on developing comparative worldview and apologetics resources for children. Her goal is to prepare the next generation to be lifelong critical thinkers and, most importantly, lifelong disciples of Jesus.
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