The Universe Has Your Back: Cultural Fables in a Secular Age, Part 2 of 4
My goal for highlighting four cultural fables in our secular age is to cultivate cultural awareness, to reinforce the need for a robust theological framework that rests on the true story of the whole world (TSWW), and to underscore the need for recontextualization when it comes to engaging in meaningful gospel conversations. Some of these counter-cultural narratives are bold and brash—we instinctively know they contradict the gospel of God. Others have a subtle familiarity, they look and even sound like the gospel, but they are just cheap imitations of the real thing and provide evidence of secularization. I believe that by cultivating cultural awareness we can more purposefully engage in rich conversations about Jesus and the kingdom of God.
As I have pointed out, we are living in a secular age—an age of contested beliefs characterized by galloping pluralism on secular plane. Charles Taylor points out that Christianity is no longer the default religious option but is one option among a supernova of choices. These myriad religions, philosophies, takes, or “spins”[1] on life consider belief in God implausible—even unimaginable. This series attempts to demonstrate how these fables are woven into our cultural, societal, and perhaps, even personal narrative.
The Universe Has Your Back, or does it?
I have noticed an increasing number of references to “the universe” in pop-culture, media, and general conversation. The universe is referred to as an animate, all-knowing, all-wise entity to which we look for guidance, meaning, and protection. Increasingly, people look to the universe to manifest their destiny, to validate relationship or career choices, to verify the coincidental, or to discover their true purpose. What or who is the Universe?
As I began to research this phenomenon, I discovered a mystical world of belief, filled with mindfulness, motivation, and self-help. Social media influencer, Gabrielle Bernstein, caught my attention right away. She’s numbered among Oprah’s Super Soul 100—a handpicked group of innovators, trailblazers, and visionaries “aligned on a mission to move humanity forward.” Gabby Bernstein, according to reviewers, embodies an accessible modern-day spiritual movement that transforms lives. She’s an author of numerous best-selling books, including, You Are the Guru: Six Steps to Move You Through Difficult Time with Certainty and Faith; Happy Days: The Guided Path from Trauma to Profound Freedom and Inner Peace; Judgment Detox: Release the Beliefs that Hold You Back from Living A Better Life; Super Attractor: Methods for Manifesting a Life beyond Your Wildest Dreams, and, The Universe Has Your Back: Transform Fear to Faith.
Bernstein spells out her spiritual journey on her website where she describes a journey that began at a point of crisis and prompted her to immerse herself in spiritual principles and meditation practices. The process helped her to discover her true purpose—”to be a source of love and inspiration in the world,” and her mission—”to help you crack open to a spiritual relationship of your own understanding so that you can live in alignment with your true purpose, too!”
Her website also provides numerous free offerings, products, and podcasts. She invites her followers to “manifest a life beyond your wildest dreams”[2] and offers The Miracle Membership. For $190/year Gabby provides live online meditation and coaching, a monthly mantra as the pathway to enduring happiness, anxiety relief, and much more. Strikingly, Bernstein’s positive thinking messages and mantras include love, forgiveness, oneness, sacrifice, surrender, and self as supreme.
In a post titled, “How to truly know the Universe has your back,” Bernstein describes the Universe as an infinite force of love that surrounds everything. One of her stated goals is to help people establish a spiritual relationship that makes sense to them with a Higher Power of their own design (italics mine). Later, Bernstein invites her readers and listeners to connect with the universe. “You are one with the love of the Universe. Our spiritual path leads us toward spiritual sight. This is when we begin to relinquish our faith in our perceptions of the world to see strength rather than weakness, oneness rather than separation, and love rather than fear.” She also offers up this prayer for connecting with the Universe: I call on the energy of the Universe to guide my thoughts back to love. I surrender the false perceptions I have placed upon myself. I forgive these thoughts and I know that I am love. I am peace. I am compassion. I am the Universe.[3] For Bernstein, we are the universe and masters of our own destiny.
An Example of the Supernova: Pantheism, Self-Help, New Age, and More Expressive Humanism
I zero in on Gabby Bernstein, first, to highlight the spirituality and philosophy just beneath the surface of her message; second, to identify the glimmers of what looks a lot like the gospel, but is, in fact, fool’s gold or caricatures of the real thing; and third, to highlight the opportunities for meaningful gospel conversations.
Inherent in Bernstein’s philosophy is the pluralism I mentioned in the introduction. Her philosophy and teaching, on the one hand, reveals an adherence to an Eastern pantheistic monism, the root worldview for much of Hinduism and Buddhism. Pantheistic monism holds that reality is ultimately personal, and, each person, according to a pantheistic understanding of God is God.[4] This is consistent with Bernstein’s approach that on some level follows the teachings of Indian Swami, Saraswadichandras, who devoted himself to the ancient teachings and revitalization of the practice of yoga and consequent happy, healthy, and peaceful lives.
On the other hand, Bernstein draws from the work of Dr. Wayne Dyer described as “The Father of Motivation” in the fields of self-development and growth, and the New Age. This coming “New Age” promises new level of humanity that plays upon a vast spectrum of consciousness, new dimensions of personal and cultural evolution made possible through drugs, mystical techniques, and virtual reality. Sprinkled throughout Bernstein’s philosophy is expressive individualism highlighted in Part 1, a form of self-worship that relentlessly pursues the freedom to express uniqueness without constraint.
Gabby also promises release from insecurities, a life filled with goodness, meaningfulness, hope, happiness, and fulfillment. Her message is positive, hope-filled, beautifully presented, and she appears to be available to anyone who needs her advice or encouragement. Team Gabby’s responses to questions on her blog posts are kind and generous, and uplifting. Reviewers of her books and events describe tangible ways that her authentic, genuine message has their changed lives.
The Gabby Bernstein brand is sparkly and brilliant, speaks to the issues of the day, and is positively counterculture. She taps into the core longings I wrote about last month and provides pathways and podcasts for peace, prosperity, and purpose for her followers. The comments I read on some of her blog posts reveal deep, heartfelt longings that are met with Team Gabby answers that, although gracious and positive, ring hollow and flat, and seem to only lead back to one of Gabby’s books or podcasts.
Fool’s Gold: A Cultural Fable as Old As the True Story of the Whole World
So, all that glitters is not gold. Beneath the surface lies a belief system that is as old as the true story of the whole world—a belief system that promises a better way, an autonomous way, set free from God’s authority. In a previous post I introduce Philip Rieff’s vacuous sacred center at the heart of what he describes as the third world culture, or anti-culture. He warns, “The third culture notion of a culture that persists independent of all sacred orders is unprecedented in human history”[5] and, yet its roots are easily traced back to the Fall.
The triune God of the true story is the Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer of the entire cosmos. God knows each person from before the foundation of the world, is intimately acquainted with all our thoughts and unspoken words. He numbers our steps and is present with us, even in the darkest places. In God we live and move and have our being (Psalm 139, Acts 17:28). We are his workmanship created for good works prepared beforehand for us by God (Eph. 2:10). He knows our frame and our names.
Jesus Christ, God incarnate, is the clue to human history.
For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together (Col. 1:17).
In addition, the true story of the whole world holds promise now and in eternity. We live not only in the moment but with a hope that is sure and steadfast, but also in anticipation of the fullness of God’s kingdom—redeemed and restored. In future posts I will unpack this more, but suffice it to say, secularization champions human flourishing in the here-and-now without any reference to a life beyond death. This, I believe, lends great meaning to the humanistic ideology, to be discussed another time, and its great effort to “move humanity forward.”
As followers of Jesus, we need to cultivate cultural awareness and to tune our ears, hearts, and minds to the truth in order to quickly identify the cultural fables being written all around us. We cultivate cultural awareness in order to engage in meaningful gospel conversations, to lean into the inherent longings in every person we meet, and to share a different story, the true story—with Jesus Christ at the center—filled with ultimate sacrifice, love, and grace.
Next time we will consider the cultural fable that encourages us to “feed the want” by all means necessary.
[1] Taylor, in Secular, 550, uses this term to describes a particular way of looking at and understanding immanence or secularism, for example, “as a way of convincing oneself that one’s reading is obvious, compelling, allowing of no cavil or demurral.” James K. A. Smith, in How Not to be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 96, provides helpful definitions and descriptions for Taylor’s concepts. Here Smith describes the secularist “spin” as “the denial of contestability [and] the refusal to recognize secularity3. Secularist spin fails to honor and recognize the cross-pressure that inhabitants of our secular age sense.”
[2] Gabby Bernstein, Become the Happiest Person You Know, https://gabbybernstein.com/, accessed October 26, 2021.
[3] Gabby Bernstein, “Connect with the Universe,” https://gabbybernstein.com/connect-with-universe/, accessed October 26, 2021.
[4] James Sire, The Universe Next Dorr: A Basic Worldview Catalogue (Downers Grove, IN: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 121–22.
[5] Rieff, My Life, 13.
