The Sean McDowell Show - Analyzing of the Dangers of New Age Movement

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

Why would a New Ager become a Christian? What about the evidence for reincarnation and other evidences offered in defense of New Age beliefs? In this video, I talk with popular YouTuber Melissa Dougherty about her journey to Jesus. SUBSCRIBE TO MELISSA DOUGHERTY on YouTube: (https://www.youtube.com/c/MelissaDougherty: READ: A Rebel's Manifesto, by Sean McDowell (https://amzn.to/3u8s2Oz) *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/

Why would a New Ager come to Christ? What does she think about some of the common arguments for New Age such as reincarnation? And should we be concerned that New Age has infiltrated the church? Well, my guest today is a personal friend. She's had me on her channel a couple times and I've been wanting to have Melissa Dardy back on my channel because your story is fascinating and you're just, you're YouTube rock star. You're doing such a good job in the lane. If people are watching this, make sure you subscribe to

Melissa. Her channel is fantastic, but thanks for joining me. Yeah. Thanks for having me on them. It's a complete honor. You're killing it as well. I think people need your content probably more than mine, and I just really appreciate what you're doing as well. We're gonna do something a little different today. I told you beforehand, I usually script these out where I come up with specific questions on to make sure we get to. This is a conversation between friends. I just want to probe your story and model for many of those watching just what it means to be curious. So you came out of New Age and have come to the Christian faith, but let's go back and take a look at your family. Tell us about the family that you grew up in.

Yeah, so my family, I had a single mom, three girls, and my mother was probably the biggest spiritual leader that we had. And there were the bedrock of everything we believed was kind of like this open spirituality, so to speak, but at the time that's not how it was described to us. It was always about Jesus and how He was the example for us. Now some people hear that and think, oh, that's very Christian, not in the way that it was depicted to us. He was our example literally. Like if He could be God, so could we. If he could do these things, he's modeling that for us and we could do the same things.

And so we were in that sense sharing in that divinity. And growing up, if you're a child and you have these fantastical things told to you, like if you believe it hard enough in your imagination, you could actually make it real. I remember one time asking my mother about unicorns. I really, really wanted unicorns to be real. And she's like, well, you know, they could exist in another dimension.

You know, maybe they're all around us, you know. So there was always like that fluid type of conversation with beliefs. And so you were allowed to have those kinds of fantasies, but you were never really told they weren't real. But my mom, she went to a Lutheran church. We went to a Presbyterian church when we were children. This is really important because lots of people go to church with these types of beliefs. And it wasn't until I was around 16 years old that everything just kind of, you know, the carpet got pulled out from under me and God kind of pursued me in my time. And that's

really when I became a Christian. But still, even until like my young teenage years, I remember hearing stories about, you know, like spirit guides, right? Seeing auras, crystals, having energies. Yeah, and this is a really, really, it helps you feel very, very powerful, Sean. Like this isn't like a, people kind of look at new age and smirk at it.

You know, a lot of Christians like, oh, who believes that? And I'm like, actually, like you believe that you're really intelligent. You believe that it's a really higher spirituality. And a lot of people, the Bible's looked at as just one of many things. Like you're really condensing yourself just to the Bible. Really? Like how narrow-minded are you? And that really made a lot of sense.

Honestly, it did because there's almost like this higher way for us to know and seek out, but you can't conform yourself to the Bible if you do that. And there was a lot of logic that made sense to me. There was aspects of relativism in there, of course. And but when I became a Christian, I was again, I was 16 years old, and I was going through a lot, and that's a whole story in and of itself. I'm sure. Yeah, it was 2003, right?

And I don't even think YouTube was around yet, but I'm not that old. But I think we forget that even smartphones haven't been around for that long either. That's right. I remember having immediate questions, immediate questions. I didn't understand hell. I could not wrap my head around hell existing.

They're really Christianity 101 questions, but they're big questions. There was a sense of guilt that I would feel being in a group of my friends who I loved and adored. I'm like, there's no way. This doesn't make any sense how these people have helped me and they do so much good for everybody else. How could hell exist unless you're just this horrible Hitler type person? I had some universalism in there. I had questions about how we got the Bible all these questions Really, I needed apologetics and I I didn't know that there was a Josh or Shawn McDowell I didn't know that there was a you know what I mean, Elise Strobel that I could just go look up

So I over time fell into Syncretizing basically my Christian beliefs into New Age Yeah, and a lot of the reason why that happened is because the verbiage was the same basically, my Christian beliefs into New Age. Oh, interesting. Yeah, and a lot of the reason why that happened is because the verbiage was the same. Wow. They talked about Jesus and it just seemed way more loving and more spiritual. So that's how that happened. So let me take a step back here.

What did it mean to practice your New Age beliefs? You said you went to a Lutheran church, mentioned crystals. How did you practice it and how central was it to your identity in terms of who you saw yourself to be? Yeah, so I grew up with those beliefs. But it wasn't until I was a teenager and actually started going to church. I went to a church, like a Bible believing church, and never really knew that what I

believed was New Age. But as far as the identity aspect of it, it was core. What was the first part of your question that you asked about what I would do? I was curious about how you would practice when it meant to be New Age. Obviously, Christians, we go to church, read the Bible, fellowship, like these are certain disciplines that we do. What did it mean for you to live out a New Age faith or is the question being asked from a Christian perspective and that's not even how you thought about it? Exactly, yeah.

So I didn't realize that there was a word new age. And oh, this is, this is pivotal. Yeah. So this is kind of the core of the entire part of the problem is that most people don't realize that they've adopted new age beliefs. They have no idea. I didn't realize that there was a word for this, put it that way until I left it. And that's a whole other story of how I left the new age. But when I was in it, I had no clue. I thought this was real Christianity. And yeah, I thought this was what Jesus was really trying to teach us. That you could manifest your reality,

that your words have power. And I should clarify too as well that their new age is an umbrella term, right, for these things. So you can have like a metaphysical manifestation, visualized type belief that is more metaphysical in nature, which is more new thought. And some people have no idea what that means. But what I mean by that is it goes back to the 1800s, like 17, 1800s, you're talking

about the age of enlightenment. You're talking about Phineas Quimby, Christian science roots. You're talking that you are innately divine and that because you're divine, you should be able to do the things that Jesus did. And then you have other things that would be more cult-like, which would be like the crystal ball thing, you

know, would be tarot cards, psychics. And that's why it's such a vague thing. It's like pinning down a cloud, trying to define what each person believed in these beliefs. And a lot of them call themselves Christians. A lot of them would take on that title. And many of them are progressive as well. I didn't realize how progressive I was either. So my identity was in more of that new thought, the visualization. The law of attraction was probably one of the biggest things I was into. And if you don't know what the law of attraction is,

it's a supposed law of the universe that says that like attracts like, that everything in the universe has an energy and a vibration. My camera, you, my computer, everything. And so if my vibrational energy is at a certain height, a certain frequency, then whatever matches that high frequency will be attracted to me. So the lower frequency you are, the lower you're going to be. So if lower frequency you are, the lower you're gonna be. So if you're having negative thoughts, negative feelings, whatever it is, sounds familiar, right?

This is a lot of Word of Faith stuff too, which is a whole different story as well. But that's really where I focused it all into. So crystals, for example. I never really did it. Wait, before we go to crystals, this is what's in The Secret, right? The super popular video, that's the heart of it.

Okay, I used to show that to my students and they were enthralled by it. So that's a way that New Age ideas have been popularized and you just imbibe that. That made sense to you as you were growing up. Oh yeah, absolutely. Okay. Wow. Total sense to me. Yeah, and here's the trick.

I don't know if you've read the book, but I ran with this stuff. They quote scripture. They talk about Jesus. They talk about the Bible. Not just the secret. You're talking about, and I still have them for research purposes, like Eckhart Tolle was somebody I was into.

Wayne Dyer was somebody I was into. Richard Rohr, I would have loved him. I thought that everything that he, The Universal Christ is a book that he wrote. And all these things, they're slightly different, right? But the overall core of their message is the same, which is why you could glean from each one and learn. And I absolutely ran with these things. But all of them talked about Jesus, quoted scripture. And that's why I thought, wow, this is super profound.

This is super spiritual stuff. And I fell for the whole thing. And yeah, you really think that you are not being ignorant, that you guys are ignorant, that you guys are the ones being the closed-minded, judgmental Christians that are saying that there's this little narrow way. That made no sense to me. I thought that Christians were very unintellectual and they didn't want to have these really deep philosophical conversations. I remember asking questions to one of my pastors and just have faith was kind of what I was told

and it was just a really bad response. Yeah, it was a struggle in that sense. So that's why I went to those books on my shelf. So some of the authority is pushed back to scripture, which makes sense in a culture that is influenced by the Judeo-Christian worldview. But I also remember in The Secret, there's this appeal to science.

And it's totally shallow like quantum mechanics and physics and they use these big words and I'm watching this going, this is crazy. I haven't read enough New Age to see if that's a common theme, but how else is the authority given? Is it experience? Is it scripture times and science? Is that a common way this is put forward?

That's a great question. Yeah, quantum mechanics and physics are really abused and especially the metaphysical new thought realm. You're dead on with that. That is the authority because you think it's scientific, right? You think that, oh, this is science that, oh yeah, you know, if I pray over these flowers, or if I give them my energy, they will grow. And the anatomy of water, like not the anatomy, the chemical makeup of water, for example, will change if I'm praying, you know, like these are things that you're told, and you're like, wow,

like, there's this power that I have. And when you're told that it's evidential, like that, that carries weight, especially for somebody who does have a mind that wants some sort of facts, right? And so you take them as an authority. Scripture is not an authority. It's one of many truths, at least in my case. Yeah. And I would say, and this is again, why for me, that's what it was for me, but every individual new-ager that you talk to, maybe not even know that they're in the new age, might have a different opinion. That's why I call it pinning down a cloud.

It's a solid bar belief system. You're picking and choosing, creating your own belief of what works for you. And so that's why a lot of times you kind of have to dig a little deeper and figure out, hey, what do they believe? So what am I working with here? What do you consider scripture to be? Some don't even consider it anything,

but most people will consider scripture to be at least some truth. In fact, I would say every single New Thought New Age teacher that I read who I thought was Christian quoted scripture. That's why I thought it was Christian. So every aspect of that, but yes, you're correct. The ultimate authority is you, itself. And that's really the core message of the New Age is it is the oldest religion in the world. It's a theology type religion. Your ultimate authority is yourself and it's really difficult to discredit someone's spiritual experience. If you're

having a spirit come to you, yeah. This is why I never understood atheism at all because I'm like, okay, well how do you explain?? Like, nobody, like, we're not all psycho. Like, we actually experienced something that was super natural out of the nature that we experienced. It was supernatural. And so whenever you have those things happen, you try to find a frame of reference in your world to make it make sense. And so atheism came very unnaturally to me because of that. But when you have a spirit tell you information that you didn't know, right? How could you have known this? Because you have a spirit giving that information or anything, even if it was a negative experience I had, if it freaked me out, I still had a total rush from it because it told me, oh wow, I I'm important. Like I'm spiritually important to the spirit world

for them to contact me or to do anything with me. So, but yeah, that really was your ultimate authority was yourself. Oh, I can't hear you anymore. That's because I hit mute. So at the time you had these spiritual experiences and you interpreted them through a certain new age light. Looking back now, would you say either you were fooled, it was your brain, or would you

say this is really demonic influence giving you that information? How would you process some of those experiences? I would say that I opened doors, like spiritual doors that I shouldn't have opened. And if I'm perfectly honest, I'm still trying to learn more about that aspect of the spirit world, right? Because I believe people deserve a better answer than, oh, it's just, it's demonic. Well, what do you mean by that? Like, how do you have like your, you know, dead grandmother come visit you and tell you loving things? And you know, not that that happened to me, but it's like you have people who have these

experiences that, oh, well, that was just a demon at your bedside. You know what I mean? It's like, you got to, I mean, maybe work up to that if that's the conclusion, but you kind of have to figure out what exactly it was that you're dealing with. Here's the thing though. This is what I do know is that at any aspect when there was a spirit guide involved, if there was a spirit that you invoked, which to be honest, Sean, I had trouble doing, I was so jealous of other people in these circles that were able to invoke a spirit

guide. I just could not do it. No matter what meditations I did, looking back now, I almost see it as a sort of protection. Who was praying for me? Yeah. And so I think that maybe there was a line that would have been really hard to go back from. But I found that I just was not gifted in those areas,

probably because I was very skeptical though. I wanted to make sure of what I experienced and what I was doing, so it needed to be really extreme if it was something. But what I found interesting was after the fact, I remember there was a sense of why would these spirits, because they distort who Jesus is, but if you were ever to take what they were saying and put a biblical context on it, it almost angered them, right? I found that to be very appealing after the fact. I'm like, why would

they even care? Because the idea of a new age Jesus is that either he's an ascended master, oh, you know, he's one of these many spirit guides, whatever it is, he's just not the son of God. Don't say that. He's not the son of God. We're all sons of God, but he is not the unique son of God, Yahweh in the flesh. That was not allowed. So I thought that was very interesting that you could have pretty much any belief from Mormonism to Hinduism except that So at the time I remember thinking that was yeah, I thought that was really strange at the time, too so

That is interesting now were you? Like alone because you described these circles, but you described going to a Lutheran church. How many other people around you? That was growing up. My mom did. Growing up, yeah. My mom did. I never went.

But when we were children, we went to a Presbyterian church. When I became a Christian, I started going independently to other churches. Oh, gotcha. So where did you grow up? What city or broad area were you in? I'm in the Albuquerque area, New Mexico. Okay, so still in New Mexico. That's where I ran into you to church not long ago. Oh, that's right. You're down here. That's correct. Yeah.

Okay, so you help me understand what is the lure of new age for people? And I think you kind of answer this, but articulate for somebody outside looking in, what's the draw that somebody would say, yes, I want to, whether I use the term new age or not, I want to practice this. Yeah. And to that, the picture that comes to my head is Pinocchio's Pleasure Island. What's not to like? You get to choose what you believe everybody goes to heaven You're basically this walking tolerance coexist sticker Everybody can have their own beliefs and everybody likes you you are

The most tolerant loving Person and you a lot of it has to do with wanting to be liked, you know And a lot of people even to do with wanting to be liked. And a lot of people, even in the progressive world, a lot of reasons why they take on both of these identities where it's progressive Christianity and new age, whatever that looks like, whatever your solid bar of religion looks like is because they want to be loving.

I don't think that they go into it with some sort of ill intent, but there's a massive social incentive to believe these things, to believe in subjective truth, subjective morality because you don't want to rock the boat. You don't want to say something that could potentially hurt someone. And especially in our culture climate right now, that is, oh my word, intoxicatingly appealing. It's so difficult to draw a line of, no, I'm going to stand up for what is true,

not because I feel it's true, because it's demonstrably true, even if that goes against the cultural grain. The appeal, and again, I think of Pleasure Island. You think of, oh man, it appeals to your senses, it appeals to the flesh. Everything that you could think of, and that makes you feel good, and you follow that is gonna be really hard to resist. But the longer you're there, the more it takes you over.

It's like Pinocchio eventually. I mean, you're giving into these desires on Pleasure Island, and over time you become a slave to it. That's kind of the point is that you become a slave to your own passions. If you're not a slave to Christ, you're a slave to something else, even if it's yourself. And ultimately, that's why it is just so unfulfilling. And at the end of the day, will ultimately leave you empty. It is not a long-term belief system. You are always going to feel, you're going to feel a sensation for a time of fulfillment, but

over time it will leave you empty, which is why there's a lot of people that do go into the new age that have experienced abuse, church hurt, name it. That's one reason why it's appealing to, yeah, like it's a kind of a love type thing, but it's a false worldly fleshly love Different religions deal with guilt in different fashions You could argue that in some atheists not all might give an evolutionary explanation for guilt So it's really just genes and its instincts I haven't violated an objective moral norm and need to experience forgiveness for it some works based religions

to experience forgiveness for it. Some works based religions, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witness, Islam, the way you deal with guilt is you work and you do good things. Obviously within Christianity, it's by repenting of our sins and accepting God's grace that we are guilty and we are forgiven by believing in Jesus and what he's done for us. How do New Agers, I guess this is kind of a two-part question, you can take it wherever you want to. In principle, how do new-agers deal with guilt and maybe in practice, how do you see them

doing so? Well, again, it depends on who you ask, but in general, I would say that they would see guilt as a negative energy. It's not something that you want to bring. Okay. Yeah. So think about, like I was saying before with frequencies, if you're experiencing guilt, then you are allowing that negative energy into your universe. You're allowing that into your space. So that means that there's kind of like a lot of self, almost like an illusion, right? You can't allow that into your space. You can't think about it.

You cannot verbalize it. And that's important. And this is what we see in a lot of Word of Faith churches is that you shall not verbalize your negativity. You denounce that. And faith even. Faith is a thing in the New Age world where faith can be seen as a power. So it's not like a faith in God, it's a power used to manipulate your environment. So does that answer your question or there was a twofold question to that? Yeah, it was Chris. In principle, you answered that it would just be viewed as a negative energy and in practice it just might be, so what would that look like in practice then for someone who has

that view? So in practice as far as how they would deal with guilty feelings, okay so if I felt guilty I would immediately think that I'm going to attract more guilt into my life. There is no room for guilt in the Christian world, right? Because that's seen as, and I was, I considered myself a Christian and I believed in like Satan, right? So like that would be almost a satanic thing. There is no way that God would ever use any sort of negativity or bad feelings to get me to do anything. Guilt would be seen as a lower energy that I'm feeling and how I would counteract that is with some sort of positive vibration or positive energy by positive thinking, by renouncing the guilt, or by visualizing the

opposite of guilt, which would be something, some sort of joy or happiness or doing anything like that. So it would match my energetic field. As crazy as that sounds, but that's exactly how I would deal with guilt. The other thing, and this is important, say you did something wrong. Say you did something that requires you to feel bad about it. This kind of skews asking for forgiveness sometimes because if guilt is a negative thing and there's a superiority complex that you kind of have. This was something I saw not in everybody. I wouldn't say people will say it, but you can't live it out. But it's like, okay, well, this is guilt. This is a negative feeling. I must not have done something wrong because

guilt is negative energy. Does that make sense? Yeah. So it's like the result of having guilt or having any sort of negative energy or negative feeling is that you don't exactly know how to approach the correct way to handle living out how to undo that, if you have hurt somebody. You know what I mean? Does that make sense? Yeah, it totally does. Oh, it dropped me. Oh. Sorry, I pulled these out of my ears.

What was that? What did you say? So I muted myself. You knocked out your ears or your head buds. I promise we both do this regularly and we're YouTubers. Yeah, we do. So let's jump back to your story when you, I think you said you were 16. And the way I remember you said you grew up, you embraced this, you felt empowered,

felt a sense of elitism that you understood truth. Things seemed to be broadly speaking going fine. Where was the first crack in the ship that began to make you question the world that you thought was true? It was when I got pregnant with my first daughter. Okay. And it wasn't the ultimate catalyst that did it, It was when I got pregnant with my first daughter. And it wasn't the ultimate catalyst that did it, but that was the first time that I'm like,

I did everything right and it still didn't work out. And what it was is I got pregnant, this is 2009, 2010? Yeah, 2010 is when I had her. And you're pregnant for 10 months, by the way, not nine anyway. So yeah, most people don't know that. But I remember visualizing how I wanted my pregnancy to go because that was the law. That was the law. What you could put out is what you got back. You would meditate on those things, on that positivity, and you do not let yourself go off in a negative field.

And if you don't, if you have enough, with no doubt, and this is where the whole scripture came in. In fact, you probably know this, the secret is based on Matthew 7, 7. It's a complete formula, ask, believe, and receive. If you ask the universe for it or God, however you saw that, whoever your God was, and you believed it with no doubts, you must receive it. And they said it with so much authority and taught it over and over again. You heard all these stories about people believing it. And they're like, this is how you do this. It's a law of the universe. It's a formula. And man, I believed

it and I did everything. I wanted to have this natural birth. I wanted to have everything go this, this, this, and this, this way. And it was so specific that I had no doubt that it would happen. I was absolutely sure. And you know what happened, Sean? The exact opposite. It went horribly. I was two weeks overdue. I had to be induced.

Everything that I didn't want to happen, happened. And it really wrecked me after that. I had a really hard time after that coping. And it was when I had her, though, because she, you know, you have this little baby, you have this daughter, and I'm thinking, OK, there's going to be a point where she might ask me questions about religions. I really want to know what each religion believes and what they, you know, how they compare and all this and that.

And so I started actually searching a little bit more and then lo and behold, I thought that I attracted them to me, but lo and behold two Jehovah's Witnesses come to my door. Oh wow. Oh yeah, this is interesting. This is really fun because God is very interesting in how he gets our attention. And I thought that there were just any other Christian denomination. And this is to be clear, I thought all Christians, if you other Christian denomination and this is this is To be clear. I thought all Christians if you said you were Christian in my book You were good if you said you believed in God you were good. There's many different paths to God

How however you you're a Muslim great. That's your path to God. It's all it's the same God We just worship him in different ways That was my logic. And that was my way of getting along with virtually everyone. So they were there and I'm like, oh great, they're going to teach me these things. They know a lot. They'll be able to... that was again my logic. But this is really what's important is that it's 2010, the internet was not where it was

in 2003. YouTube was around, websites are up, all these things. I thought that most of what they believed in from what I heard from other people were just haters. That's not really what they believed. Nobody would actually believe those things. For example, the biggest thing was Michael being Jesus. Jesus was Michael the Archangel. I'm like, no, that's... They don't believe that. I'm like, that's not true.

You guys are just, you're slandering them. Why are you putting them down? They love Jesus. They say they love Jesus. Leave them alone. Yeah, no. About the third or fourth visit, I'm just asking them questions. I'm just like, okay, well, what about this?

What about that? There was little things that all my goal, my mindset at the time was find what you can agree on. Don't argue. Just find what you can agree on, keep the peace. It was around the fourth visit that one of the women got up and she's like, next week we'll learn about how Jesus is Michael, the archangel. I'm like, what? You'm like, you, you believe

that? And that was it right there. That something happened right there where it was just like, wow, you need research, research, research. You need to go online and research. And little did I know that's like their worst enemy. You're not really allowed to do that as a Jehovah's witness. If you, yeah, if you're devout Jehovah's witness, you do not look up things on the internet against the organization. and long story short, that's what started it all. It was a snowball after that. I researched the everything I could about this religion. However, if that religion was wrong and the Bible was right and if the Bible's

right, that means what I believe is wrong. And that domino effect was really what got me out of it. And it was a forum that I came across talking about the serpent sly. Like you will be as God sounds like a slimy serpent to me. And that that simple sentence was what made me sit back in my chair and realize I had fallen for the serpent sly. That is the oldest lie in the book. And yeah, I repented. And it's a long story, but I got into countercult ministry and I learned a lot of people skills. I learned a lot about

these religions, how cults work. And side by side, I learned what the Bible said in relation to them. So if this is correct, then this has to be wrong. So but yeah, that's basically, that's the catalyst and that's how that happened. So when you saw that lie, which really, I mean, I've said for years to my students, I'm like at the heart of the lie of new age is that you are God. I mean, Shirley MacLaine years ago, I'm like two generations ago, she said, look in the mirror every day and say three times, I am God, I am God, I am God. If that's not opposite of a biblical message, I don't know what is.

That's where authority rests within. When you saw that lie, you said you repented. Was this an intellectual I'm wrong or was this also a sense of, oh my goodness, I am a sinner in need of redemption or did that come through a process, I guess is what I'm looking for? Both. It was immediate. Okay.

I was embarrassed. I had been going to church. I went to church for years. I was actively involved in my church and this is kind of gripe, is that I went to church for years, never have it. You notice that in my story of realizing, oh, there's something wrong with these beliefs didn't happen in my church. It was that if my pastor said something, it was interpreted through different eyes and different ears because again, the verbiage was the same and I liked my church. I liked going.

It was just this element of mixing the two together and not realizing that they're different. If you go to a church and you're hearing how to make your life better all the time, how are you to know really what the Bible teaches? And I thought that was very interesting. I was very embarrassed though. That was the first thing I thought was I was repentant. And the first thing I thought was how could I have not known? And I started going back.

I'm like, what could I have done better? And the first thing is the Bible. I had a lot of questions about the Bible when I got saved, right? I went to a King James onlyist, what was it, a Baptist, a fundamental Baptist church, and they were King James only. And I didn't understand my Bible. I was 16, had questions. I didn't know. It's a 2000 year old Jewish history book, and I didn't know a lot about what was going on or the context or the culture nothing and so I didn't really have a mentor or discipleship nothing like that

So all these things in hindsight made sense of how that could have happened but yeah, it took me a long time to kind of Admit that I had fallen for those things So you would have described yourself as a Christian Did you ever read the Bible before this stage when you were 16, like even once or? I did not. I never read it all the way through, ever. It was always the Proverbs or Psalms or certain things in the New Testament that were said.

But I couldn't tell you if I understood the complete context of a chapter or even a book that was written. I couldn't wrap my head around that it wasn't chronological or how these were written and things like that. You gleaned from it what you could to apply to what you believed. How, as much as you're comfortable, how did this affect your relationships becoming a Christian? Friends, with family, was it dramatic? Did they just celebrate like, hey, that's your truth, you found it and they were happy for you? Is that what it was? Yeah, basically. Basically, and it was very interesting because there was not a lot of pomp

because it was like whatever you believe was to just basically be respected. And I was always the goody two shoes. You know what I mean? Even in high school, I had a very strong moral compass and it made me really annoying, right? Like nobody likes the sensible person. You know, hey guys, maybe we shouldn't do this. You know, like I was that, I was naturally

that way. I didn't really need to be a Christian for that. It was really annoying for them. And then I became a Christian and I became more annoying. But I mean, they loved me and I was always inviting them to church. Like dude, after I became a Christian at 16, the best, even looking back now, the best time of my life was right when I got saved. I was just on fire. I didn't care what I didn't know. I was telling everybody about Jesus, but about three months into it,

it just, I started asking questions and I realized nobody has answers for me. But these books on my shelf do. They talk a lot about hell and how it's just an unloving, you know, fundamental, you know, thing that the church invented, right? Like these ideas that, yeah, like, no, every after the afterlife is going to be a place where we all go afterwards. And if you're not, if it's not met in this life, at some point, you will meet it,

like there was always a way to make it right. So I liked those ideas and it made me likable. As best as you can articulate this, you describe coming up to becoming a Christian, then I would imagine there's all these beliefs you had that weren't Christian that are left over that you don't even realize this and just still probably blend them into the Christian faith and then over time slowly weed them out. What was that process like and do you ever even today years later find yourself going, oh, wait a minute, why am I thinking that way?

That is more new age than it is biblical and still correcting your thinking back? Yeah. So the process was ongoing for a while because I had to weed out a lot. And it was like, OK, so that was 2011 when that all happened. It was 2011 when I cut those ties. It took about two to three years for me to really weed out a lot of the junk. But it was almost instantaneous as far as the authority. So if I could trust the Bible and what this says, I have to unlearn, deconstruct if you will.

I took everything that I thought I believed, right? And I'm like, okay, Jesus being God, okay, I need to shelve these things for now and then I need to revisit them and look at them through a biblical lens. And I ironically have to thank the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons because I had to know if I'm going to witness to them, I need to know how these doctrines work. What is salvation? How are we saved? How is Jesus God?

What is the Trinity? Can we trust the Bible? All these fundamental questions that we need to know. Then there came a point, actually not too long ago, maybe 2017-ish, I realized that a lot of these doctrines I had abandoned are actually taught in a lot of churches, right? Like word of faith, prosperity type preaching. And I'm like, say what? I'm like, whoa, you know, like I just really released a clip of a video today about seed sowing. And the law of attraction, when you're learning about these laws of the universe, the law

of attraction is just one of them. There was many different laws that you would learn about for the law of attraction. And there's a whole backstory behind this, but the law of attraction was basically given to us through a channeled spirit. Like the whole laws of these universes were made popular by, so it was made popular by Rhonda Byrne But she was friends with a woman named Esther Hicks who would channel a group of entities called Abraham and Abraham Yeah, and it sounds very Legion ish right, you know like scripture you're talking about, you know, these group of spirits of entities being Channeled through this woman and one of the teachings is the law of attraction

among many other things. And I found that to be very interesting, but one of the laws was the law of sowing and reaping. And it's so interesting how you can say, you can put a prosperity preacher in what they're saying about sowing and reaping, quoting the same scriptures that I would have, yeah, like that I was taught and learned in the new age.

So that took a while for me to kind of, you know, because it messes with you, right? Because you're, this is what you came from. It's not black and white like Mormonism or Jehovah's Witnesses. You're talking about two things that are the same, but they really believe that this is God. Like this is a, they're like way more Christian-y about it, you know what I mean? Then the new thought was more fluid in what God was. They're like, no, this is in the Bible.

You have to know the difference between the two. That was more of an ongoing process. You described a certain power that you had felt when you were in the New Age and others had felt when you were in the New Age and others had felt and really genuine encounters with I think maybe you call them spirit beings. Would you say when you became a Christian the power is more that you experience the supernatural things but in a different way? Is it less but you'd say we know it's true?

How would you compare and contrast the power that one feels in New Age? Which again you said is what turned you away from atheism. You knew there was a supernatural component to living the Christian life. Are you asking what turned me more towards like the appeal to experiences after I became a Christian? No, sorry, I wasn't clear. I'm saying now that you're over a decade removed and you're a believer in the power of the Holy Spirit, praying, etc. How is that experience of power compare and or contrast with the experience of power you had or you thought you had when you were in New Age? Okay, I understand that better, thank you. I probably wasn't, I probably misunderstood you too. That's a great question because that's one of the

apologetics, if you will, from the prosperity community is that if there's a counterfeit spirit, there must be an authentic, right? So if there's a counterfeit law of attraction, there has to be an authentic. All these things from crystal energies to spirit guides to you name it, there has to be an authentic. So that's something that I've really had to like, logically that doesn't follow, right?

So I've had to learn those things and wrestle with those things. The difference is, and this is one of the biggest things, is that you cannot bend God to your will. And when you, whenever you realize that you have to understand God's sovereignty and holiness and that he is your master and you're not, that's a complete paradigm shift, right? The whole idea, God is supernatural. We're Christians. We believe in a supernatural worldview. We believe in the work of the Spirit. The Bible is a book filled with miracles. I mean, I think it's strange for us to not believe that the Holy

Spirit doesn't work in these ways. My overall difference between it is that it falls down to the sovereignty and will of God, not ours. And I think that's one of the biggest differences is that I don't think a lot of people think that if we believe it strongly enough, then it must happen because God doesn't will sickness or poverty or negativity or any of these things, but I would, I completely, I don't agree with that completely. I believe that God works in his providence for these things. Right? So I have a chronically ill friend, right? How in the world can God use that for his good? And me and her had conversations about that. And she is very inspirational about the whole like, wow, God is really using this for his good. Sure.

You know, so I think that there's an aspect there where I believe that the Holy Spirit works in that way. I just believe that the major difference is that it comes down to his will and sovereignty and not our own. Does that make sense? Does that answer your question? Yeah, yeah, that's totally fair. So there's a lot of discussions in the church things like yoga, the Enneagram, I saw you had a video on that. I did an interview on that. Because I don't have a background in the New Age, my default is when I see these practices is to say, look, it's just stretching, we're calling it yoga. It's just a personality test, even though it has those roots. I don't lead with the concern about it. Although when I get into the details, I tend to see concern

and want to be discerning. But I've often thought if that was my background, even the slightest thing that would hint of new age I would want nothing to do with because that could be the camel's nose under the tent so to speak Yeah, do you tend to approach things like yoga and the anagram to the church saying timeout? There's way more to this than you might think is there? Like are you really sensitive to even the slightest amount of teaching or practices that smack of new age or no? Ironically, I wouldn't say that I like to, I don't like to minor major on the minors. And here's the thing, and a lot of people are like, Melissa, that doesn't make sense.

Here's the thing. A lot of people can become evangelists for minor things that make really no difference in the long run. And like you can have somebody, I believe that you can be a Christian and be mistaken. I mean, I was that you can be a Christian and not understand a lot of these things. But it's almost like a weird symptomatic thing, right? So if you're somebody who is, you're a Christian and you're elevating the Enneagram, for example, let's just take this, or yoga. I'm gonna have a bone to pick with you, right? I'm gonna say something in that aspect

of why I disagree with that or why that's probably not something we need to be doing. However, I'm very mindful about making sure of what I put my energy into, because we can become disciples of the weirdest things, right? Like the King James Bible or holistic healing or discernment. We become kind of distracted with certain things. And as an ex-new major, I think it's perfectly fine to talk about, like, hey, here are the problems with yoga, guys. Here it is. Take the information. I cannot force you to change your mind, but this is what it is. But I believe it's like kind of running

on a hamstring wheel to try to continually focus on that. But yeah, I think that it needs to be kind of felt out in the conversation of why it's an issue. But I do think it's an in-house discussion. I believe that if you are a Christian that this is an in-house discussion that we need to have. But I don't believe that somebody should just be completely, what's the word, just like knocked down and told that their false teachers are even heretics if they don't know these things. You know, like if they, yeah. I think that the, again, that's why I think it's an in-house discussion, but yeah. So for Christians who want to have conversations with people that are in the, in the new age,

what just advice and suggestions? And I realized people in the new age, that's such a broad statement. Like if somebody said, how do I speak to Christianity and their new age? It'd be like there's so many different people who describe as Christians with different experience. And even Jesus approached people very, very differently. But if you're just going to make a few points saying, you know what? Having a spiritual conversation with somebody new age, this would be helpful not to do. And this might be helpful to do.

Does anything come to mind? Yeah. And I don't know if a lot of Christians are comfortable with this because a lot of them, a lot of us can sometimes be afraid of dissonance, right? Where we are challenged in our beliefs and we don't like that. So we stay, we feel comfortable in our echo chamber, right? Here's the thing. It would have been very helpful if somebody who knew what they were doing, right? They knew the Bible. They knew what I believed in. And that's the thing is that they come and I think there's a lot of wisdom

in getting to know where somebody stands, especially if you're in the new age. You kind of alluded to that right before we talked or before you asked this question, is that it's like pinning down a cloud. We'll pin down their cloud. What do they believe about Jesus? Ask them questions about the afterlife. What about hell? What about this?

What about relativism? And in seminary, they call this prolegomena you get, it's the things before the things. Like you ask them the metaphysical questions about God. Does God exist? Who is God? What does that look like for you? What is truth? What do you believe about truth? Is it subjected, objective? You got all your chessboard pieces set up, you know where they are, right? Then you can start asking questions. And one of the things that I really like to focus on is if they say they believe in Jesus, that would be a very interesting conversation to have because it's like, okay, well, who

is Jesus to you? Well, what do you believe about the Bible? Well, Jesus said this, what do you think about that? I take kind of a Socratic type method to it because I don't think they've thought about these things before, where if you read through the New Testament, you're going to find a lot of things that completely contradict your New Age beliefs. And one of my favorite topics to focus on is relativism. A lot of them have a very fluid view of truth. And if you're really wanting to get to a lot of places, if you're going to have a good structured conversation with somebody who has these beliefs, if you

can find that objective truth exists, and if they believe that, then that gives you a really good standard and a good grounding to find out, okay, well, what is that truth? You know, it sometimes takes work. But I believe most of the work is done in those beginning stages, like who is God, what is truth, things like that, because they don't believe the Bible, right? If you're quoting scripture, so what? That does nothing for them. If you're talking about, you know, Jesus of the Bible or anything of your Christian belief, like

if you're really strong Christian, it will do you a world of good to understand their perspective first because then you know their language. You know what their chessboard looks like and you'll be able to speak their language and reach over and really help them kind of bridge that gap. And I think that that's a very effective way to talk to them. One of the best pieces of advice is my dad ever gave me, he said, son, it's more important to understand than to be understood. Yeah.

Yes. And it's just... It goes a long way. I think so. So, okay, let's do this. I've got a rapid fire for you and just kind of your quick answers. And don't feel like they have to be perfect, but just... Okay. And I realize some people are going to... Some New Agers might answer these differently,

but I'm going to ask you some of the big worldview issues of how New Agers would likely view these issues and give us some context. So sin, what would be the equivalent of sin within New Age? It's an illusion. Sin is a no-no word. Sin is basically a word made up by fundamental Christians. This is how I would have viewed it. And many others can agree on different levels of this, but sin is a bad word made up by fundamental Christians. This is how I would have viewed it. And many others can agree on different levels of this, but sin is a bad word made up by Christians to

make you feel guilty. There is no sin. It's an illusion because humans are inherently good. We are all good. Yes. So, okay. So let me follow up on this one before we jump to the next one. That's how they view the Christian idea of sin You said oh, no They completely think that that is the Christian view of sin. So there is no willingness on their part. That's actually yeah That's there's no willingness in a lot of their parts to even understand the fundamental Orthodox view of Christianity. Okay. Yeah, so then what is wrong with a world that would be the functional

equivalent of sin? Is it a failure to tap into your internal potential and live out your godhood? Is that fair? Yep. Humanity is unawakened. In fact, that's why they call it the new age. It's a new age of enlightenment. And so the humanities problem is not evil or pain or suffering in the sense that it's a lack of love. It's a lack of awakening, all these things. So for example, one of the concepts of the new age is called living in the now. And there's an enlightenment that you have to reach to do that. In other words, I'm not sure how many people will understand this or if I can explain it

coherently, but we have the ego. So we have our ego and then we have our spirit. And the ego is like fallen humanity. That's the bad stuff. Like that's the lower energy. Your spirits in this sense, I'm trying to simplify this, and your spirit is really where you wanna be. Like that's the good part because that's how humanity is good. So that's in the aspect that I,

that's probably the best way I could explain that in a simple, simplistic sense. Okay, back to our rapid fire, the afterlife when we die. Very universalistic type. Again, it's very broad. If there is reincarnation, I believe that people were reincarnated until they accepted Christ or they were reincarnated to some sort of higher potential as far as that goes, but it's very universalistic.

Unless you, in my belief was, if you, like there's universalism and there's Christian universalism, and it's universal reconciliation. In other words, eventually we will all be reconciled to God in some way, whoever that God was to them. Okay. Jesus. Who is Jesus? Jesus is the example of your divine nature. Jesus is the ultimate example of what it means

to be God in the flesh. So if he walked on water, if you had enough faith and you were awakened enough, you would be able to do the same things he did. He read minds, so can you. If you had enough understanding of the illusion of our universe, you would be able to manipulate things such as moving something with your mind, just like Jesus did, or even transport yourself to another dimension or another area. Though nobody has done that, that is very interesting that a lot of people believe that about Jesus. But yeah, he's the ultimate authority, our Christ consciousness in that sense. It's something he obtained and we can do. What about God?

Oh, God is a subjective view. As long as you have an idea of God, it could be a source with a capital S, a universal energy, a personal God that is looked at as like a heavenly father that never wants you to have a bad life. He wants everything positive for you from prosperity to health and wealth. As long as there's some sort of higher power in that sense, he or she, and that's important, you can have a feminine aspect to God too, then however you respond to that God and that energy is perfectly fine. So when you talk about God, you're saying he or she, that is as if God is a person or a personal being. My understanding of New Age is that God is really more lower case G and kind of this divine energy source that we tap

into or they're different views with the new age that people just kind of mix and match both of those in my case I looked at God this is again why I have a lot to say about prosperity and word of faith churches I kind of had a very similar view of that that God is like my genie. The law of attraction, God wants to give you an abundant life. That's all that he really wants. This is your heaven on earth and you have to believe it to receive it. And the parallels are so interesting. So that was my own personal view, is that if he's a father, he wants to give me good things, not bad things.

And so it was a distorted view of this parent, basically, that gives you everything you want, because the point is to make you abundant because you're a little God, just like him. Like you can do the same things that he did, yeah. So tell me your thoughts as we're getting towards the end on reincarnation. That was obviously something you believed in before Why do you not believe in that anymore? Because if reincarnation and karma are real who needs hell

Like yeah there I made a whole video on this it was very in depth so if people want to check that out they totally can it was a long video lots of research okay in depth but very briefly I believe that here in Western America I mean we have wrestlers and coffee shops named after karma you know what I mean, we have wrestlers and coffee shops named after karma. You know what I mean? We kind of, and we do the same thing with yoga. I don't think we know what we're doing. We just kind of have this like pop culture way that we're looking at it. And I think in some ways it's kind of innocent.

We have credit karma, right? Like we don't, but I'm talking about like the actual spiritual belief. I believed in a sense of reincarnation. I mentioned this before where it's like, okay, well, if you don't believe in God or if you've done bad things, you will be reincarnated until you believe in God or Jesus, right? Because there's many paths to that. And the real problem that really comes in is karma. Like karma was the one that didn't really make a lot of sense to me

because it seemed very inconsistent. But looking at it logically and scripturally, it doesn't make a lot of sense at all, especially scripturally. I'm very surprised that there's people out there that actually believe that Jesus taught reincarnation. And that's what I believe. I believe that Jesus taught reincarnation. And that's what I believe. I believe that Jesus taught reincarnation because this is what these really super ultra spiritual teachers said.

Sure. Yeah. And so the Bible would be looked at as an error because these people talk directly to Jesus and Jesus says, yeah, I'm reincarnated and, oh, he was Jesus in a past life and so on and so forth. So there was many ways to make that make sense in that mindset. But biblically speaking, if we were to read the Bible, you would never, I mean, Jesus was a monotheistic Jewish rabbi. And so, I mean, if you were to read the Bible, even if you don't believe it, if you don't

even believe in Christianity, you would never read the Bible and come out with the outcome that reincarnation was a Christian belief. So that was really what did it for me. I was like, this is not Christian. This is not something that Jesus taught or the disciples. And it's demonstrably too, just true, just by simply reading this 2000 year old Jewish monotheistic history book It's like a vegan cookbook. I use this example where you would never take a vegan cookbook Sean and Pick and choose the recipe and be like, oh we're having you know

parmesan chicken for dinner That just doesn't make sense You know like you can't do that You can't pick and choose and create this own thing. And at the end of the day, honestly, what really did it, I was like, this is a terrible, what a horrible thing to do. You're living a terrible life and you make mistakes and then you're gonna come back and relive this

until infinity, until you can get it perfect, until you're an ascended master. That sounds like hell to me. So yeah, that was my logic behind it. That simple example you used is one reason why I think your YouTube channel is growing so much in the sense that you share from your experience, you do a lot of research, but these just memorable little practical things that now when I think of a vegan cookbook, I'm going to think of reasons why I don't believe in reincarnation comparing it with the scriptures and the worldview behind it.

Did I miss anything that you wanted to share in terms of your just story or? I don't think so. It's one of those things where we'll think about later and we're like, oh, I should have added that. Oh, that's kind of a plot hole. So I hope not, but I can't think of anything off the top of my head, but yeah. Good. Well, share a little bit about your, just your YouTube channel.

If people are staying with me and following mine, they like apologetics, and so I want them to go and subscribe to your channel, but just tell us a little bit, maybe what makes it unique in your heart behind it. Yeah, I think that all of us as content creators, I think every one of us are artists, by the way. I think that we all have a unique way of doing things, which is why I encourage people to not disregard that part of themselves. You all are different.

We're all different. We have our unique gifts. And Sean and I are great examples of that. But on my channel, I always say you're going to kind of find a mixed bag of theology, apologetics, art, anything that has to do with the Bible, Jesus. And these are the things that come naturally to me. And I think it was Greg Kockel.

He said it this way, that we have our gifts, right? We think it's a calling, but it's not. It's like we're just working out and living in our gifts, right? We think it's a calling, but it's not. We're just working out and living in our gifts, and I think that's the areas that I am the most gifted in. But yeah, that's kind of my heart's on where that goes. Well, you're doing a great job. Just love to see your channel and your influence growing. Thank you.

Super proud of you. Thanks for the times you had me on, and we will definitely do this again. Yeah, for sure. Thanks again so much for having me on. It's been wonderful talking to you. You too.