This list includes practices which are 1) quackery - health schemes and remedies known to be false, unsafe, or unproven, being promoted for financial gain; 2) occultic - methods which train practitioners to personally access hidden sources for knowledge and power; and 3) New Age/eastern metaphysics based on a monistic world view, Hinduism, Taoism, native healing, shamanism, and nearly everything else from the world’s spiritual salad bar.
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How Should Christians Evaluate These Practices?
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Christian “alternative” practitioners can utilize health misinformation, misuse Scripture and introduce occultic and New Age ideas into their business and to their clients. Christians are not immune to deception, even in practices which involve metaphysical principles which are contrary to Scripture. Unfortunately, due to the spiritual/philosophical roots or associations involved, participating in alternative medicine practices can lead to compromise of standards and spiritual contamination. It may even lead to early death.
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The scriptures tell Christians to test all things (1 Thessalonians 5:21). Is there evidence that the claims made are consistent with what is known about creation/the physical world so far? In the area of the spiritual, Christians use the Word of God to evaluate the claims of Mormonism, the Watchtower, and the David Koreshes of the world. Using the scientific method to test claims made for things in the natural, physical world is as reasonable and responsible as applying the revelation of the Bible to religious claims.
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How Common is this Problem for Christians?
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As indicated earlier, Christians seem to be peculiarly vulnerable to swallowing the unsubstantiated claims of alternative medicine.
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A popular home health care book promoted by Christians is Back to Eden, written in 1939 by a Seventh-day Adventist who claimed then that he knew the cure for cancer, heart disease, asthma, polio, syphilis and tuberculosis. According to the author, the trip back to Eden is nutritional.
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Another nutritional advice book by a professing Christian (Ed Bashaw, Life Abundantly) shows the metaphysical confusion and contamination which comes with spiritual and intellectual compromise. The author, a multi-level herb salesman, describes a life force (energy) which can be transferred through inanimate objects (p. 38). This is occultism. Throughout the book he depersonalizes the Holy Spirit to the occultic “Spirit” (e.g. pp. 62, 63, 68) and grossly misreads the Word of God (he finds candida, a yeast infection, in Scripture - pp. 55-57). He quotes positively from Unity School of Christianity founder Charles Fillmore (p. 74). He teaches metaphysical causation (pp. 75-77), writing that strokes are caused by “rejection of life,” foot problems come from a “fear of the future,” and halitosis from “vile gossip.” He promotes a theologically bizarre concept from New Thought/occultist Joel Goldsmith that “There is no law of disease” - therefore it does not exist. “This is the truth that sets you free.” (p. 75; emphasis added.) The author thanks his Baptist pastor for creating the environment
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