In his book, The Other Worldview, Peter Jones explores the clash between the Christian faith and modern culture. He presents a compelling case for why the church should embrace the gospel’s unique perspective on social justice and cultural engagement. By doing so, he argues that Christians can effectively spread their message and make an impact in today’s world. The central theme of Jones’ book is that Christianity offers a unique worldview that differs markedly from most other philosophies.
He outlines this worldview as one of “the kingdom of God,” a term used to describe God’s rule on earth. According to Jones, this kingdom stands in stark contrast to the secularism which has become increasingly popular in our current society. Secularism places ultimate value on things like material possessions and individual autonomy, while Christianity values relationships between people and service to others. Jones then delves into what it looks like for Christians to live out their faith each day within this different worldview. He calls it “living missionally”—that is, living life intentionally with an outward focus on how we can serve those around us.
This involves actively engaging with our culture by seeking to understand it first before trying to change it—a practice he refers to as “cultural discernment”. Finally, Jones emphasizes the need for unity among believers as they attempt to live out their faith in today’s world.
•Peter Jones argues that there are only two worldviews that underlie how we interpret the world – “Oneism” and “Twoism.”
• Oneism is associated with ancient paganism and it has overtaken the Western cultural structures rooted in biblical truth (Twoism).
• Onism is a lie that has been presented as an explanation of human existence. In the United States, millennials are the first generation to be immersed from birth with such a coherently antibiblical system.
•Carl Jung is an important figure in the history of religious thought.
• His influence can be seen in the rise of paganism and “spiritual but not religious” beliefs in modern society.
• The term “perennial philosophy” refers to the belief that all religions share a common origin and goal.
• This philosophy has been promoted by influential figures such as Prince Charles, Joseph Campbell, and Huston Smith.
•In the 21st century, Western culture is increasingly fascinated by ancient mythology and spiritualities, including many forms of Oneism.
• This trend is evident in the popularity of yoga, meditation, and other Eastern practices; the mainstreaming of the New Age movement; and interfaith efforts by religious leaders.
• Jungian psychology has played a role in this shift, with its emphasis on breaking free from traditional constraints and exploring one’s “instinctual being.”
• The result is a society that is more open to diverse sexual identities and practices.
•Hollywood and the media have been manipulating the rising generation on the issue of sexuality in recent years.
• Pansexuality is a pretext for a much larger agenda.
• The sexual agenda is just a visible symbol of a powerful, century-long deconstruction of the Christian worldview and its replacement with a pagan Oneist cosmology, of which sexuality is a sacrament.
•Sexual boundary-breaking and excesses in today’s culture are due in part to the resurgence of an ancient Oneist worldview that views sexuality as a spiritual act.
• This change can be seen in the way we openly celebrate what would have shamed many previous generations.
• The biblical understanding is that though sexual sin is indeed an issue of immoral behavior, it’s even more an expression of a religious commitment.
• Sexual inversion of the created order is an embodied manifestation of Oneist worship and cosmology.
•There is no inherent limit on what, who, or how many can be married.
• The rejection of sexual individualism was at the core of Christian culture.
• The West is rapidly re-paganizing around sensuality and sexual liberation.
• Through technological advances in medical science, deadly diseases have been eradicated.
• Millions have been lifted from poverty and have gained access to education and health care, leading to longer, more prosperous lives.
• Wayne Baker believes that Americans are solidly bound together through 10 core values.
Rieff wrote, “the rejection of sexual individualism” was “very near the core” of the Christian culture. Today, that same core is being challenged by a resurgence of Oneist thinking that celebrates sexual freedom and expression as a spiritual act. This challenge is manifested in the way our society celebrates what would have shamed many previous generations, the increase of sexually liberal values, and the open acceptance of different sexual identities and practices. The West is quickly transforming from a traditional, Christian society to one that is more open to diverse beliefs and practices, with sensuality and sexual liberation at its core.
There is, therefore, no inherent limit on what, who, or how many can be married—why limit an important aspect of human self-realization to one man and woman, or to only two consenting adults?
•Many have given up on formal marriage due to insecurities, with 50% of women living with a partner they’re not married to (up from 35% in 1995)
• Couples often wait too long to have children, resulting in record levels of infertility
• Emotional health is declining as the family collapses, with suicide now surpassing car crashes as the leading cause of death for Americans
• One third of American employees suffer chronic and debilitating stress
•Despite the initial optimism of the “I’m Okay, You’re Okay” generation of their parents, millennials face 16 percent unemployment, crushing debts for sometimes worthless degrees, a 20 trillion dollar government deficit they did not create, and oppressive taxes.
• To turn their fate around, millennials face the painful task of delaying their lives. In order to pay off their student loans or just to survive, marriage, children and homes of their own will have to wait until a solid economy comes back.
• The sexual freedom Jung advocated was certainly given to young people born after the Sixties revolution. They have access to limitless sexual fantasy in free pornography woven into the fabric of our culture via the internet on personal computers and smartphones.
• In this age of streaming video and widespread Internet access pornography use has become increasingly widespread—among both men and women..
•In Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960–2010, Harvard political scientist Charles Murray shows that since the 1960s America has become deeply divided.
• A new lower class has all but abandoned four principles of the cultural success of America’s founding—honesty, industry, marriage, and religion, which Murray calls “virtue” and on which all segments of the population once agreed.
• This new lower class is separated from the new upper class, “a hollow elite” that has profited from the founding values without retaining the conviction to insist upon them.
• Just a few examples of losing the classic sense of virtue include: The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), in its 2014 general assembly, supported same-sex marriage and ordination of homosexuals while turning down support for “pro-life” principles and favoring abortion; The National Cathedral in Washington D.C., in a special Sunday service marking Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Pride Month hosted Rev Dr Cameron Partridge who was born female but now identifies as trans-man;
• Murray concludes that unless a civic “Great Awakening” takes place among the “hollow elite” to rediscover and put into practice founding principles, America will become a nation of two classes: a hollow elite and a newly impoverished lower class, and this ‘chasm’ will not be closed until America becomes a nation of no classes, as in the Gilded Age.
•Oneists describe civic or political issues that hide a spiritual program below the surface.
• Some phrases that describe aspects of Oneism are: transgressing or denying boundaries, breaking taboos, abolishing “either/or”, non-duality, and oneness—all is one.
• Oneists feel the necessity of obliterating the Twoist distinctions God has placed in creation.
• On the edges of evangelical orthodoxy, Brian McLaren has stated that we need to move beyond our binary thinking. Church historian Diana Butler Bass calls for a “religionless” and “creed-less” Christianity where God is defined in less dualistic terms.
•Michael Boyle of La Salle University argued that the term “evil” should not be used to describe ISIS, as it is too simplistic.
• Jung believed that individuals should decide what is good or evil, and there is no ultimate distinction between Creator and creation.
• Transhumanism sees the end of biological evolution in favor of the evolution of the mind, as the human and machine are joined.
•The New Age is a spiritual phenomenon that arose in the 1960s in response to the deconstruction of secular humanism.
• It is a combination of Eastern and Western spirituality, and has been growing steadily since its inception.
• Conservative Christians have largely rejected it, calling it a cult, but it has continued to grow in popularity.
• Ken Wilber is one of the most prominent voices within the New Age movement, and he advocates for an “integral vision” which combines all aspects of life into one understanding.
•Herbert Marcuse redefines Marxism in the 60s to include “polymorphous sexuality” and the activation of “repressed or arrested organic, biological needs.”
• This new Marxism seeks to destroy Christian culture and replace it with a pagan cosmology.
• The goal is the complete remaking of human identity.
• Quantum physics suggests that there is no need for a specially created universe, that humans help run the machine, and that matter is intelligent. Physicist Fritjof Capra argues that science proves that “living nature is mindful and intelligent.”22 Thus there is no need of the old creationist notion of a specially created universe “with overall design or purpose.”
•Jean Houston is an influential visionary who has had a long career as a teacher and author in human development through mythical spirituality.
• She studied religion with theologian Paul Tillich and learned that beneath the surface crust of consciousness, we all seem to be encoded with this vast mythic and symbolic universe—the internal imaginal reality.
• Houston’s vision of a coming utopia is an expression of the cosmology we’ve been describing—and it would make Carl Jung most proud.
• Yoga is one of the first small steps Westerners often take into the vast and exciting ocean of altered consciousness, discovering a refreshed view of themselves. Yoga is an excellent practice for those seeking to transcend the mind/body duality and, like meditation, it creates a psychic relaxation and expansion of consciousness.
•The goal of yoga is to promote the union of Atman (the individual soul) with Brahman (the greater soul), which is not a personal being but a spirit force.
• Yoga takes you beyond healthy bodies and into a spiritual realm where you can achieve inner peace.
• Mindfulness meditation is a Buddhist technique for the suppression of desire that helps practitioners pay attention to their surroundings without reacting to any events. It was introduced to the West in the 1960s by Jon Kabat-Zinn, a professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts.
•Eastern meditation techniques involve silencing the mind, in contrast to Christian meditation which fully involves and stimulates the mind.
• “Silence the mind” is a term also found in ancient Gnosticism, for which meditation was an essential element. In Hinduism the same is true.
• Swami Vivekananda, a disciple of Ramakrishna, states that through yoga “we get beyond the senses, our minds become superconscious, we get beyond the intellect … where reasoning cannot reach.”
• Intellect is a hindrance according to some New Age teachers. The goal of this spirituality is to destroy binary oppositions by self-induced altered states of consciousness – which Thomas Berry sees as leading to becoming a shaman through transpersonal Jungian psychology.
• Shamanic practices that take us into ancient or obscure religious experiences are being proposed as models of spirituality for 21st-century world citizens by leaders such as Carl Jung who saw shamans as model of spiritual maturity..
•Timothy Leary noted similarities between Jung’s description of the psyche and shamanic beliefs about the soul.
• Michael Smith explores similarities between Jungian psychology and shamanism, noting that Jung saw in the classic shaman the embodiment of true psychological maturity.
• In his personal bio, in addition to his PhD in Christian Theology, Smith presents himself as a “shamanic facilitator.”
• He thinks that “both Jung and shamanism offer considerable possibilities for helping the modern Western health care professional to understand how to draw upon the sacred for healing purposes.”
•Jung was convinced that the only way to heal neuroses was through what he delicately called experiences of the numinosum, behind which term are occult experiences of shamans being in contact with a divinity or spiritual being.
• Modern depth or transpersonal psychology have followed their shamanic master by opening up deep spiritual mysteries of subconscious as way forward for human spirituality in new world. For them, concept of shaman is not just symbol of effective leadership—it is disturbingly real—as work Stanislav Grof illustrates in his work with psychotic patients.
•Stanislav Grof is a leading founder of the field of transpersonal psychology and a pioneer in the use of altered states of consciousness for human healing.
• His work represents the core of a transformed cosmology, one that is based on Jung’s vision of magical transformation.
• Grof believes that deep paranormal experiences in the transpersonal realm will be the wave of the future.
•Grof sees shamanistic spirituality as the only hope for “confronting and transforming … the psycho-spiritual roots of malignant aggression and insatiable greed.”
• From Grof’s perspective, the basic human problems of aggression and greed can be solved only by becoming a shaman, a human being in direct touch with pagan deities.
• In the place of divine forgiveness of sin, Grof advocates “radical inner transformation of humanity” and its “rise to a higher level of consciousness” as “our only real hope for the future.”
• Essentially, only occult shamanistic spirituality will save the planet.
•For Jung, the key to mental health is experiencing the unity of all things.
• Good must be integrated with evil, male balanced with female, darkness with light.
• The shadow is the rejected or negative aspects of the self. If these are ignored, they will result in violence.
• In pantheism, good and evil are part of the whole. When we go within, notions like right and wrong disappear.
• Bruce Davis of the Manson family says that LSD “enlarged my sense of what was permissible.”
• Richard Noll says that Jung’s notion of individuation “redeemed generations from the burden original sin.”
•Noll comments that Jung saw the psychologically mature person as one who is reborn as a genius or “superman.”
• Under Jung’s influence, people are discovering their divine, guilt-free identity.
• Having lost the biblical worldview, our culture no longer has the mental mechanisms to resist outlandish expressions from radicals.
• Sodom and ancient Israel are examples of cities/nations that were divinely judged for their godlessness and perversion.
• Paul spoke of “the mystery of lawlessness” at work in the world but things would get worse with the coming of “the lawless one.”
• There is an inevitable cultural implosion when human beings thoroughly reject God and his revealed wisdom.
•Paul declares that God “gave them over” to sinful desires and a depraved mind
• This term is repeated in Ephesians, where it is explained that the Gentiles are driven by their own ignorance and hard-heartedness
• John Murray describes this as a situation where iniquity is met with no disapproval from others, and actually receives approbation.
•In response to the similar circumstances in his own times, Paul offers a warning and two responses.
• First, he warns of the great temptation for Christians to conform to the fallen world’s manner of thinking and living: “Do not be conformed to this world” (Rom 12:2).
• And he proposes that the two fundamentally Christian responses must be Christian living (Rom 12:1) and Christian thinking (Rom 12:2).
•Rachel Held Evans claims that young Christians are leaving the church because Christianity has become “too political, too exclusive, old-fashioned, unconcerned with social justice and hostile to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.”
• She pleads for the church to be come less concerned with sex (abortion and contraception) and more consumed with eradicating poverty and embracing same-sex marriage.
• Brian McLaren sees his CANA Initiative as developing a “more attractive public opinion of Christianity, spirituality and faith” by creating “new ways of being Christian … new ways of doing theology.”
• In Christianity After Religion, Bass announces the Fourth Great Awakening. But this awakening has little to do with historic Christianity and even less to do with historic evangelicalism.
•Jungian psychologist Mary Bass’ Christology is gnostic, meaning that she believes self-knowledge is true salvation.
• Bass finds evidence for this claim in the gnostic gospels, which are non-canonical gospels that were left out of the Bible.
• Oneism is a worldview that flows out of a way of life and it sees all of existence as one undivided whole.
• Twoism, on the other hand, is a worldview that comes from the Bible and it upholds natural distinctions between things.
•God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, setting it apart from things that are common
• To sanctify something is to dedicate it to God’s possession as something exclusively belonging to him
• The term holos often refers to something being whole or universal, without anything being distinctively set apart
• behind the sense of hagios and holos lies a world of difference – Oneism and Twoism
•Christians cannot think like the world because they are called to be holy.
• Twoism is the belief that there is a Creator who is separate from the world. This affects the way we think about theology, spirituality, and sexuality.
• Oneism is espoused by globalist politicians, United Nations documents defining the planet’s future, Hollywood spiritualists, leaders from all the world’s religions, and self-proclaimed progressive liberals (both “Christian” and non-Christian).
•Modern Oneism is a worldview that claims we can create a paradise of human flourishing where all people will get along.
• This vision is based on the delusional fantasy of the Lie and will become a worldwide nightmare.
• The word “Oneism” carries the meaning of a worldview transformation, brought about by the glory of God, revealed in a sinful world.
• In hearing the gospel, we meet Jesus, the most incredible person who ever existed.
• Hearing and receiving the gospel transforms one’s thinking about God and about oneself—understanding the depth of one’s rebellion andthe enormity of God’s restorative love.
•There are two major choices when it comes to cosmology: a homocosmology or heterocosmology.
•Homocosmology means that essential nature is a homocosmolo of union and synthesis, while heterocosmology means that essential nature is keyed on difference.
•These two choices also apply to theology (homotheology vs. heterotheology) and spirituality (homospirituality vs.heterospirituality).
•The choice between these two worldviews has been presented throughout biblical history, with Moses proposing the beauty of Twoism to the Egyptian and Canaanite Oneist cultures, and Paul announcing this same truth to the pagan Graeco-Roman culture.
•Only the biblical God of Scripture revealed by Jesus through the Holy Spirit is truly personal in his very being, since he is the Trinity.
•Logic is based on the idea of Twoism, which posits that the mind is a distinction-producing, sense-making factory.
• Classic Oneist gurus call their followers to “flee the mind” because it tells us too much about who we are and who God is.
• The problem with “fleeing the mind” is that it leads to inconsistency and a lack of morality.
• Twoist morality posits that human beings are just as incapable of fusing right and wrong and remaining moral as they are of affirming both A and non-A while remaining logical.
•The law is both written on our hearts and in stone, coming from both an internal and external source.
• God’s commandments come from his nature as a transcendent Creator, who created the world out of generosity.
• As created moral beings, we have a conscience that tells us something is wrong within us.
• Oneists believe that the heart is inherently good, while Twoists believe that the heart is deceitful.
•If Oneism is true and there is no difference or otherness, then all is the same and good. The only sin is ignorance of our innate goodness.
• However, if the universe is two and human beings refuse to recognize the God who stands outside of creation, then this rejection root of sin.
• As we noted above, holiness is not as much a moral category as an affirmation of the created order of things; the rejection of this holy cosmos indicates that things are seriously out o order—demonstrated by our record cruelty and egotism throughout history.
• The problem bigger than we think and a solution cosmic proportions needed. Humans “going within” to find their inner divinity will not produce desired results! We need savior from outside.
•The essence of redemption is the bodily resurrection of Jesus, which liberal theologians argue is a spiritual event.
• New Testament affirms that the resurrection was a physical event – Jesus’ body was transformed into a spiritual, yet still physical body.
• Eastern meditation involves focusing on one’s inner divinity to develop ecstatic trances or out-of-body experiences, whereas Christian meditation is focused on communion with the transcendent Creator.
• Spirituality also includes praise, an element lacking in the Parliament of the World’s Religions. By turning people to praise nature as divine, Oneism eventually makes them self-worshipers.
•The gospel brings together Creator and creature, which may undermine Twoism.
• Twoism is the belief that there are two distinct beings: God and humanity.
• This truth enables us to know and do the will of God.
• The goal of Twoism is to know the personal God behind it and be saved.
•The problem with Twoism is that it presents us with a God that is too mysterious and distinct from us to have any relationship with.
• Jung’s solution was to find the god within, but this creates more problems than it solves.
• Christianity offers an effective answer for the problem of cosmic evil.
•Oneism believes that humans are the answer to the world’s problems, while Twoists believe that God is the answer.
• According to Charles Murray, Oneism is causing society to come apart.
• Christian believers are honest about their sinfulness and their need for God’s help.
• The Bible teaches that all people are sinful and in need of salvation through Jesus Christ.
•The Christian gospel is the only hope for salvation from an outside source, as humans cannot save themselves.
• The gospel is a news item of an event that took place in history, and has been confessed by the Christian church for 2,000 years.
• The Nicene Creed expresses what the Church has always believed about Christ being begotten of the Father, coming down from heaven to be incarnate as man, and rising again on the third day.
•The Nicene Creed is named after the city it was adopted in, Nicaea.
• It took the church so long to formalize its beliefs because Christians were persecuted and international gatherings were impossible.
• The creed faces a serious problem with Twoism, which is the clear separation of the Creator and creature.
• Early Christians realized the problem of God becoming man and theologians tried to solve it.
• The gospel is good news because there is bad news and human beings need to be made aware that they are sinners by nature.
• At certain points, God as judge must act as judge within history.
•God has acted objectively for us in our sinful state by taking on the problem of our evil and dealing with it, in one place at one time, in the vicarious work of the Son.
• Scripture says it clearly: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, [but they] are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”
• In exchange for sinners, God exchanges his Son. The given-over Jesus takes the place of given-over sinners and gives them his life. All this is done out of ultimate expression patience and kindness from God.
•Jesus is the divine Son, which means that God is for us.
• The death of Christ demonstrates that God is for us.
• Jesus was born Immanuel, which means “God with us.”
• At his baptism, the divine voice from heaven declares,”This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
• The relationship between what Jesus did and what believers must do explains how Paul can call him “our great God and Savior” in Titus 2.
•Second, we must ask God to show us how to speak his truth faithfully and courageously in the difficult days ahead.
• Do not be surprised: Jesus said he “came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). He calls us to take up that same cross and follow him.
• Indeed, the time is coming when “all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim 3:12). Without the transformative power of the gospel, we will lack courage, and our efforts will be in vain.
• But we must remember that the difficult days are the most revealing. A southern Californian pastor says it well: “Brokenness is somehow key to transformation in this broken world. Grace is often more evident on the heels of disgrace and truth is often more evidence on the heels of falsehood.”