Conversations with new age god?

I had to buy it. A book entitled Conversations with God: an Uncommon Dialogue sat on a table of books at my local book store waiting for me to pick it up.

"An international bestseller," boasted the cover, which sported one of those naff paintings of mountains and clouds that lets you know it's about bye, peace and brotherhood. I also noticed it was written by somebody with the improbably spelled name of Neale Donald Walsch.

"In the spring of 1992 - it was around Easter as I recall - an extraordinary phenomenon occurred in my life," Neale says. "God began talking with you. Through me." I had to know more. So I grabbed a chair, sat down and read further.

Turns out Neale had been "very unhappy" when he was suddenly overwhelmed by this divine breakthrough. "What had I done to deserve a life of such continuing struggle?" he cried out to God, never thinking for a moment that he might actually get an answer.

Yet lo and behold, he did. Perhaps it was because God was so fed up with being asked the same question day after day that He decided to answer all life's tough questions in one go, or possibly in one book, though that seems to have stretched into three...and counting.

Anyway, the questions and answers were pretty clever, pretty surprising and pretty interesting, I had to admit. And for a few pages, I was hooked. After all, here was God telling Neale and me that He wasn't at all like people think.

"You cannot know God until you've stopped telling yourself that you already know God," God was saying. "You cannot hear God until you stop thinking that you've already heard God. I cannot tell you My Truth until you stop telling Me yours."

"But my truth about God comes from you!" Neale whines. "Who said so?" asks God "Others." "What others?"

"Leaders. Ministers. Rabbis. Priests. Books. The Bible, for heaven's sake!" "Those are not authoritative sources," comes the response.

"They aren't?" "No." "Then what is?"

Then comes just the vaguest whiff of sulphur. "Listen to your feelings. Listen to your Highest Thoughts. Listen to your experience. Whenever any of these differs from what you've been told by your teachers, or read in your books, forget the words. Words are the least reliable purveyors of Truth."

There's something deeply wrong with this, I thought. What about the Word made flesh? What about the Way, the Truth and the Life? Still, I was fascinated, took the book home and read it in one go in less than an hour, I knew exactly what was wrong.

But another book, The Christ of the New Age, written by Father Alessandro Olivieri Pennesi and published by the Vatican last fall, explains it better.

According to Father Pennesi, New Age proponents speak of Christ but theirs is not the Christ of the Gospels. "Instead of the religion of God who became man, New Age followers prefer that of a man who becomes God," he writes "The primary difference is that New Age adherents believe Jesus was simply a man; through a process of enlightenment, he reached the status of Christ, as Buddha, Muhammad and Krishna did. But He was definitely not God; neither, in their view, is he the only way to God, nor is Christianity the one true religion."

According to Father Pennesi, New Age proclaims a new coming of Christ which will usher in an era of universal harmony and peace, but it will be someone other than Jesus who reaches the peak of "Christ-consciousness."

The New Age movement also teaches its followers that they are already God, understanding that "God is not a person but the highest expression of transpersonal awareness, the highest vibration of the cosmos."

Father Pennesi sums up New Age thinking this way: The truth is that which each person constructs on the basis of his own divinity...Truth is measured on the basis of the results obtained in terms of harmony, ecstasy, 'oceanic' feelings and relaxation." "Suffering and death have no value. What counts is survival tied to techniques of expanding one's consciousness The golden age is coming, at the latest in 2160 with the beginning of the Age of Aquarius, when peace, harmony, justice and love will reign in a New Age when people have learned to manage and use the laws of the cosmos."

For emphasis, Cardinal Paul Poupard, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, adds this: "In the New Age Movement, internal enlightenment takes the place of faith; freedom through one's own creative potential takes the place of salvation; self-absorbed introspection takes the place of prayer; and the promotion of a vague universal harmony takes the place of a Gospel mandate to help the poor."

This analysis fits Walsch's book perfectly...which means it likely applies as well to Books Two, Three and how many other moneymakers Walsch churns out...ad infinitum and ad nauseam.

But this wasn't what clinched it for me. Nor was it the mention of John Denver in Walsch's faux imprimatur. It was simply this. "My sheep know my voice," Jesus said. As compelling and seductive as Conversations with God was, that disembodied voice was not the voice of My Lord.

How do I know? I just know.

As for where Walsch's voice came from, all I can say is this: Not from any place good or air-conditioned.