LIE: I will be satisfied if I learn the secret knowledge of the world

Lie:      I will be satisfied if I learn the secret knowledge of the world.

Truth: Our knowledge cannot save us; only God can save us.

The philosophy of ancient Gnosticism perpetually reinvents itself. It’s the false religion that will not go away and that has come and gone in many forms over the centuries. But it’s main tenant has not fundamentally changed. That tenant is this: we are saved[1] by knowledge, by being ‘enlightened.’ This lie says that a mystery exists which, if we come to know it, will usher us into the ‘inner sanctum.’

The New Testament writers confronted Gnosticism in the first century church, where apparently it had gained a significant foothold. Paul makes jabs at it in verses like these:

We pray for you . . . that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will . . .  — Colossians 1:9

. . . to the knowledge of the mystery of God, [2] both of the Father and of Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. — Colossians 2:3

Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy . . . according to the basic principles of the world and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. — Colossians 2:9

Let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in the false humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind. — Colossians 2:18

John also spoke out against this plague:

Every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world. — I John 4:3

In these words John addresses another primary Gnostic belief: the material world is evil and only the spiritual world is good. Consequently, Gnostics stand the truth on its head — the creator of the earth is, to them, actually the devil. This means that, to Gnostics, our bodies imprison our spirits.

But how has Gnosticism reinvented itself today? Must we Christians still discern and confront this menace? And if so, how?

Secret societies like Freemasonry, DeMolay, Skull and Bones, are one form of Gnosticism. Freemasons actually trace their roots to ancient Babylon and according to Albert Pike, among their inner circles, they worship the angel Lucifer, the Devil.[3] Freemasons keep their initiates in the dark and only gradually enlighten them by degrees, until the chosen few get to the thirty-third degree, the initiation to the ‘inner circle.’

Gnostic Transhumanism

Transhumanists also embody a form of Gnosticism. The transhumanists’ ultimate goal is to achieve immortality by reverse-engineering the brain and thereby (or so they think) unlock the mystery of consciousness so that they can then upload their consciousness as a massive computer file. You may laugh, but they are very serious. Ray Kurzweil, for example, predicts that by the year 2029, the human mind will have been fully emulated in hardware and software.[4] Esquire magazine describes him this way:

Is immortality one click away? Computer scientist Ray Kurzweil’s conceit is that tech advances will enable it, if humans preserve their brains in software after their bodies have died.

Martine Rothblatt, PhD, founder of Sirius satellite radio and CEO of United Therapeutics, agrees with Kurzweil. “Offloading a mind to software is consistent with physics,” she told CNBC, and it may happen this century.

Rothblatt created a nonprofit where people can store their “mind files,” or records of their digital life. The idea is that when Kurzweil’s predictions come true, those memories will be there for use, Rothblatt said.

Kurzweil is a techno optimist, saying computers will achieve human level intelligence by 2029 and that the movie Her was realistic in its depiction of human and technological interaction. He predicts we’ll be able to reprogram our cells away from heart failure, cancer, and aging, among other diseases.[5]

While that may seem impossible for us to embrace, we Christians can subtly allow Gnostic ideas into our own faith. For example, take the hymn, I’ll Fly Away:

When the shadows
of this life have gone
I’ll fly away

Like a bird from
prison bars has flown
I’ll fly away

Is that what this life is – a prison? Gnostics also liken our spirits to be imprisoned by our bodies – until enlightenment or death frees them. But generally, especially when we’re going through suffering, we can fall into the error of Gnosticism when we demean the physical or downplay, or even dismiss the natural, practical in favor of the purely ‘spiritual.’

Yet it’s true that, our hope as Christians – the hope we have through and despite our sufferings – is not realized while we inhabit this body. Our natural body cannot inherit the future kingdom of God. But all of God’s saints will inherit a spiritual body. Here is Paul on that point. He speaks of how our natural body is to be ‘sown’ to reap a spiritual body in the resurrection:

All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another of fish, and another of birds. . . .

So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.

However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual. The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust; and as is the heavenly Man, so also are those who are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man. — I Corinthians 15:35–49

The words spiritual body may seem to be a contradiction in terms, but those are precisely the words that Paul uses: soma pneumatikon (body spiritual). So the spiritual body that we will inherit at the resurrection of the dead, will be like Christ’s resurrected body. The goal is not to be free of the body, but to replace it with one that will not suffer or die.[6] Our God always intended us to inhabit a body and in the next age it will be no different. His design for human beings to be his image-bearers in the created world has not changed.

Yet we do not know what this spiritual body will be, but we do know that it will be like his glorious resurrection body, his being the first-fruits of our own resurrection. The Apostle John says this:

Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. — I John 3:2

Gnostic Pietism

Another form of Gnosticism is Pietism. Pietists use prayer, meditation and spiritual reading as escapes from the world (not consciously intending to do so, but by omission). Of course prayer, meditation, etc, are not wrong; on the contrary, they are essential to our walk with God. But they become wrong when they’re used as escapes from engaging in the practical, flesh-and-blood world of suffering, of loving our brother and sister and neighbor. God calls us to love our brothers in the here and now, through the difficulties of malfunctioning cars, perishable foods, health battles, marital struggles, unruly children and more. As John also said:

If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? — I John 4:20

Gnostic Conspiracy Theorism

Another form of Gnosticism forms around the seduction of ‘conspiracy theory.’ It’s one that’s been especially attractive to me personally. And it was especially attractive once I discovered that some shocking ‘conspiracy theories’ turned out to be true! But the pursuit of this secret knowledge became ‘the answer’ to so many things and connected so many dots that the pursuit of this knowledge subtly detracted from my own proclamation of the gospel of Christ.

Yes, if you want to deal with conspiracy theories, in the broad sense, I too would dismiss much of it as crazy, unfounded, lacking in humility and reason, and psychologically trying to find coherence where there is none, etc.

Jacques Ellul, in The Presence of the Kingdom, warns of our tendency to too easily accept this searching for coherence when he talks of the ‘explanatory myth’. He says that the average person who is constantly bombarded by various phenomena: news, events, experiences, without the aid of an ‘explanatory myth,’ in which he seeks coherence, is otherwise enveloped in a cloud in a perpetual bewilderment.

The man of the twentieth century . . . oscillates unceasingly between the phenomenon and the explanatory myth: that is to say, between two “shadows,” both of which are extremes, and are opposed to each other. . . Can he help it, that his little personal experiences — which deal, perhaps, with the excellence of a plum or the condition of a razor blade — are drowned in this flood of important illusions concerning the atomic bomb, the fate of Germany, strikes and the like? Now, these are facts of which he will never know the reality . . . On the other hand man evidently needs a certain coherence. He cannot submit to being simply an eye which registers, without understanding, the jerky images of a mad kaleidoscope. Man needs some logical connection, he demands that there should be some coherence between all these surface facts . . . We all know these explanatory myths: the bourgeois myth of the Hand of Moscow; the Socialist myth of the Two Hundred Families; the Fascist myth of the Jews  . . .

If I understand Ellul correctly in terms of today’s media, the ‘explanatory myth’ is a widespread phenomenon sustained by the simplistic messaging of the evening news and the Twitter feed. The extreme of the explanatory myth may be the ‘conspiracy theory,’ but what we’re being fed by media is a steady stream of ‘explanatory myths’ (it’s Trump, it’s Obama, it’s the terrorists, it’s Russia, it’s the deep state, etc).

Yet the world is far too complex to think that we could round up a coherent theory of history or contemporary events — to imagine that we could know: what’s really going on. So I reject this kind of hubris; it’s wrong and it makes the judgment on ‘conspiracy theory’ all too easy and justified.

The danger with conspiracy theories is that they become the explanatory myth. Everything is related to it and life becomes a never-ending pursuit of dark things. Nevertheless, it’s important to discern the truth in what is pejoratively called ‘conspiracy theory’ because, without seeing the reality of these things, we become functionally blind, and become susceptible to assimilation into various forms of mind control.[8]

These lies of Gnostic transhumanism, pietism, conspiracy, even quantum mysticism[9], and others, subtly speak, especially to the philosopher/theologian/prophetic types who think that the truth is ‘out there.’ They imagine that, all they lack is that one missing puzzle piece, and once found, all would become clear and reach a quasi-apotheosis.

From the classic 1999 film The Matrix, it’s what Morpheus said to Neo before he offered him the choice of the red or blue pill:

Morpheus: I imagine that right now you’re feeling a bit like Alice. Tumbling down the rabbit hole?

Neo: You could say that.

Morpheus: I can see it in your eyes. You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he’s expecting to wake up. Ironically, this is not far from the truth. Do you believe in fate, Neo?

Neo: No.

Morpheus: Why not?

Neo: ’Cause I don’t like the idea that I’m not in control of my life.

Morpheus: I know exactly what you mean. Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know, you can’t explain. But you feel it. You felt it your entire life. That there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there. Like a splinter in your mind – driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I’m talking about? [emphasis added]

Neo: The Matrix?

Morpheus: Do you want to know what it is?

(Neo nods his head.)

Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere, it is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, or when go to church or when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

Neo: What truth?

Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind. (long pause, sighs) Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. [classic Gnostic teaching]

(In his left hand, Morpheus shows a blue pill.)

Morpheus: You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. (A red pill is shown in his other hand.) You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. (Long pause; Neo begins to reach for the red pill) Remember – all I am offering is the truth, nothing more.

(Neo takes the red pill and swallows it with a glass of water.)

This is Gnosticism at its best. And it’s the strange mixture of truth and falsehood that makes it most compelling.
Truth: there really is something wrong with the world that is difficult to explain and can drive us crazy.
Truth: we really are, in some sense, a slave.
But false: this secret knowledge will save you. This is the subtlety that can easily be interpreted to mean we were born into the prison of the world and of our own body and must be liberated by knowledge.

But this ache for the missing piece – the secret knowledge of the world – is the big deception. To overcome it we must see that Jesus Christ himself is the mystery that reconciles all things. He is the summation of what life is really all about.

To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. — Colossians 1:27

But it’s not just the knowledge of Jesus Christ; it’s the faith in the presence of the living, resurrected Christ that saves us.

As we understand and know Him, things will start to make sense. And even the things that we don’t understand (of which there will be plenty), will lose their power over us because we believe that he alone has power over it, whatever it may be.

So then:

DO NOT SEEK to know something, even the truth, because you think that knowledge will save you.

Rather:

SEEK to know the truth because you believe that Jesus personifies it, embodies it. And because he embodies it, he therefore is Lord of it, and so can and will save you, so that you, in turn, will embody this truth as his image bearer.

See also the article: Lie: The meaning of life is an unfathomable mystery.

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[1] By saved I mean in the general sense of being delivered from fear, evil, guilt, death, etc and finding meaning, security, satisfaction, love, joy, peace, etc.

[2] Paul uses the key words and phrases of the Gnostics but redefines them around Messiah Jesus.

[3] Admittedly this is difficult to document and can easily be explained away. But I include it here because of other, less tangible evidence.

[4] See also the article: Lie: I am my brain.

[5] http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a35096/immortality-upload-your-brain-ray-kurzweil/

[6] See the article: Lie: Jesus’ resurrection means we will live forever in heaven.

[7] Ellul, Jacques, The Presence of the Kingdom, Second Edition, Helmers & Howard, Colorado Springs, 1989, pg 84–85.

[8] For more information, see the article: Lie: We should keep quiet and not entertain conspiracy theories.

[9] See for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mysticism