Top 5 Blog Posts of 2012 - #1

(I apologize in advance for the fonts and the strange formatting. I am having technical difficulties with my blog.)

 

Akiane has been consistently the most viewed subject of any of my blogs. This former child prodigy is still going strong as a young adult. Her story is even more compelling because of the spiritual nature of her art and her childhood dreams and visions which inspired her. Read and look at her artwork and decide for yourself.

Akiane Kramarik - 2012

I've written a couple of articles about Akiane over the past couple of years. I find her art fascinating and her story interesting. Perhaps the most intriguing thing about Akiane is that she's very hard to put in a category.

Is she a Christian? Is she a "New Age Indigo Child?" One thing for sure - she's incredibly talented.

For those of you who aren't familiar with her back story, Akiane shocked her parents when, at age 3, she began to describe dreams and visions from God. Her mother encouraged her to write down what she saw and thus began an incredible artistic journey.

These visions and dreams eventually lead her entire family on an ongoing spiritual journey. I have written previously of my impression that the church didn't know what to do with Akiane and her visions, and a great many Christians "behaving badly" likely contributed to her not participating fully in the life of church. (These are my inferences from what I have read and heard.) She has been told hateful things like "Burn your paintings~ they are the works of the devil'' and ''You are Satan's daughter.'' Nice.

It's interesting to hear Akiane speak of her faith. She says of Jesus: “He is the only way to God — the only way to heaven and joy. My personal views on Jesus have only matured and deepened since age 4.  As I grow I see how vast and unlimited His love is.”

 
  “Jesus remains my highest authority, love, and God,” she adds. “I pray every day that people will one day follow Jesus, His teachings and feel His love.”

 
Because of her isolation - she admittedly has few friends outside of her own family - it's hard to pin down what she truly believes, and maybe that's part of her appeal. She continues, however, to make Jesus a regular subject in her art, he's been featured in 9-10 of her paintings. Below is a recent picture of Jesus she completed called "I Am."

One story that drew attention to Akiane's work was the story of Colton Burpo, the young boy who was the subject of the book "Heaven Is For Real." He identified her painting of Jesus as the image that most closely represented what he had seen when he had a dramatic experience on the operating table. The feature that both of them keyed on was the eyes. "All I remember were the eyes," Akiane says, "and they were like no other colors that were ever created. The closest color I can depict through paints is a sapphire hue." Colton identified the color of Jesus’ eyes as blue-green. I've included the painting below.

For all of her mystery, Akiane remains a prodigious talent, with some paintings selling in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Her gifting is obvious, and the source, she insists, is God Himself. I won't argue with that. I continue to watch her career with interest and hope that she can find a church, "the Body" of the Christ she loves so much, because God calls all of us to community.

Related Articles:
Akiane Kramarik
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Is Heaven For Real?
Akiane
Book Review - "Heaven Is For Real"

Book Review: "Why Jesus?"

Book Review: Ravi Zacharias, "Why Jesus? Rediscovering His Truth In An Age Of Mass Marketed Spirituality" New York, NY: FaithWords, 2012. 281 pages.

Reading one of Ravi Zacharias' books reminds me of going out to dine at a nice restaurant after only eating at fast food joints. It's a little bit more work, but a lot more rewarding. I remember when I first started reading Ravi. I would have to have a dictionary close by because his vocabulary was and is a lot larger than mine. The extra effort is worth it. His writing has had more influence on my life and ministry than almost anyone else.

"Why Jesus" was written in response to the new spirituality espoused by such luminaries as Oprah Winfrey and Deepak Chopra. As Ravi states in his introduction, "it is hard to imagine a culture more gullible than that of America today, priding itself on being a culture that is willing to absorb anything indiscriminately." (p. xiv) The combination of the power of the media, spiritual hunger and erroneous teaching mixed with bits and pieces of the truth is a volatile combination.

This book sorts through the roots of these new movements, identifying why they cannot ultimately satisfy, finally ending with a case for why spiritual satisfaction can only be found in the person of Jesus Christ. The journey is a long one, but Ravi's perspective is particularly helpful. He was born in India, with a deep understanding of the culture of his birth and also of the Eastern roots of the new spirituality (which is not new at all).

Chapter 1, called Movie Making or Soul Making, delves into the power of the media to shape worldview. He states "The world of entertainment has become the most powerful means of propaganda, and the audience is unaware of how much it is being acted upon and manipulated, paying for it not only in cash but in having its dreams stolen." (p. 6) Ravi is not claiming a conspiracy theory, rather that many of the creative among us have been seduced by Eastern thought, which has also paraded itself in scientific terminology. The following quote summarizes the chapter well:

"We have found a religion that has helped us to revolve around ourselves, and once we have believed that the spiritual imagination needs no boundaries because we are gods, everything becomes plausible and nothing needs justification. We are now in the precarious situation where science has given us the tools - and possible the imperative - to convey fiction, and fiction has the pervasive power of science. This is the New Spirituality." (p.10)

Chapter 2 - How The West Was Lost Through Its Gains continues with a history of how the views of North Americans have been shaped by television and now the internet. Far from being benign, "the visual media, especially television and movies, manipulates us into seeing with the eye, devoid of the conscience, whose role it is to place parameters around what we see."

"The end result is spirituality without dogma, religion without God, argument without substance, rationalization without rationality, and tranquillity by transfer of funds from the seeker's bank account to the company that makes the best offer of nirvana, at the same time producing dogmatism about relativism in matters of ultimate meaning."

Part of the reason for the decline of the influence of Christianity in North America was the abuse of the media and the audience by Christian televangelists, who have been used as caricatures. The spiritual hunger continued, but the young rejected the faith of their fathers and opted instead, for an "egalitarian, all-inclusive, nonjudgmental, non-Western way of looking at things." (p. 38)

Ravi suggests three layers that make up the "rebellion against the status quo of Western society... first, the disillusionment with materialism and the status quo; second, the shallowness and, at times, hypocrisy of the Church, or of those who claimed to be Christians; and third, and perhaps most compelling, a desire for liberation from all restraint, especially in matters of sexuality."

Chapter 3 - Exhaling The Old, Inhaling The New deals with the philosophical shifts in society from rationalism to empiricism, then to existentialism, finally arriving at postmodernism. These shifts have had a great impact in all aspects of society, certainly in how we engage and answer the most important questions. As Ravi states: "We are at a time when postmodernism defies certainty, truth, and meaning; when spiritualism dabbles in quantum theory; and when randomness has become the order of the day." (p. 58)

Chapter 4 - From Oprah to Chopra deals with the rise from obscurity to the pinnacle of the New Spiritual movement of both Oprah Winfrey and Deepak Chopra. Ravi here goes into detail on the journey of Oprah and her changing spiritual views. "Once you have gained a following of such magnitude; once you can do no wrong by virtue of the adulation you receive; once you are one of the richest people in the world and can buy the companies that sponsor you; once you have a magical impact on the minds of people... is it not a short step to playing god in the minds of your followers?" (pp. 74-75) Oprah uses her considerable platform to push The New Spirituality espoused by people like Eckhart Tolle. Deepak Chopra, in a similar vein, pushes his blend of spirituality with quantum physics. What do they have in common? Wealth and spiritual talk.

Chapter 5 - The Religion of Quantum focuses on Chopra and his "new spirituality combined with his brand of gimmickry." He speaks of Chopra's claims that "'quantum healing' can defeat the aging process, that the mind may be healed by harmonizing or balancing the 'quantum mechanical body.'" 
Ravi points out that Deepak's claims misrepresent both science and Hinduism and are a disservice to both - but they have made Chopra rich and popular.

Chapter 6 - Go West, Young Man speaks of the trend in American culture to embrace unquestioningly all that is Eastern. Ravi here brings his extensive knowledge of Eastern thought and Christian theology to shine a light on the hypocrisy of many in the New Spirituality movement, who promote positive aspects of Eastern religions while completely ignoring the flaws. At the same time, Christianity is attacked for the abuses of some while its role in shaping Western Civilization is ignored. "In Europe, Christianity was abused when it was used for political power; in America it has been abused by using it for economic power. And today it is abused by its detractors who deny its power and remove it from any position of moral authority." (p. 102).

Chapter 7 - The Three Gurus is a chapter dealing with the three gurus whose influence has shaped much of Eastern mysticism today. These are Swami Vivekananda, Yogananda and the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (founder of the Transcendental Meditation movement). Ravi quotes Richard Neibuhr as he summarizes the affect of their teachings: "'in all these religious theories and expressions, what we are really looking for seems to be 'a God without wrath who took man without sin into a kingdom without righteousness through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.'" (pp. 129-130).

Chapter 8 - Smiling Your Way Through Puzzles deals with the manner in which Eastern religions deal with questions of truth. This chapter is helpful for anyone wanting to understand the differences between Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism and other branches of Eastern philosophy. Portions of all of these - and of Christianity - are blended together to form the New Spirituality. "If you shine your light on one chapter of the New Spirituality, it can almost look like Christianity. But when you shine the light on another chapter, you're sure it's Buddhism, then Hinduism, then Taoism. This is brilliance at work in a culture of spiritual hungers and an aversion for dogma... But still hanging over our heads is the fact that relativism must eventually pay its dues in the currency of reality." (pp. 148 - 149).


Chapter 9 - Do You Really Want To Live? speaks to the question of meaning. What is life all about? How does the Christian worldview make sense of the problem of pain and the pursuit of pleasure? These are questions which other belief systems struggle to answer and for which the Bible provides unique responses.

Chapter 10 - The Ties That Bind carries on with the theme from the last chapter, speaking of pleasure and pain in the context of relationship, stewardship and worship which is uniquely offered in Christianity. "There is a clear and unequivocal assertion in the Judeo-Christian faith that God created us for his purpose: to fulfil life's sacred nature within the particularity of an individual life, in relationship with him and his indwelling presence."

Chapter 11 - The Search For Jesus deals with the loss of Biblical literacy in North America and the resulting ignorance of the historical Jesus. This has brought to pass what Ravi speaks of: "The Jesus of the New Spirituality is a Jesus of myth, not fact... New Age Spirituality keeps losing Jesus because it reduces him to just another voice and just another teacher or master." Further, Ravi states his case: "This is the strongest indictment I make against the New Spirituality. They have violated the true Jesus and formed him in their own image. While exalting themselves, they have denigrated him. Against the backdrop and the evolving ethics of a culture that is lost, the New Spirituality has manipulated the text of Scripture, ignored history with redefinitions of their own to leverage cultural desires to their own advantage."

Chapter 12 - Reshaping Jesus To Suit Our Prejudices reveals firstly the damage that has been done by New Age Spiritualists who have either deliberately or ignorantly misinterpreted the Bible to promote their distorted Jesus. "In their deep prejudice against Christianity, advocates of the New Spirituality malign the Christ of history in order to remake him into an image that is consistent with their ideas." (p. 210) Secondly, Ravi speaks of how some churches have contributed to the problem by neglecting the Biblical message of Christ and ignoring the spiritual disciplines. Pages 216-218 provide a succinct critique of the New Spirituality movement.

Chapter 13 - The Greatest of All continues to build the case as to why Jesus is the only answer for those seeking fulfilment. "True spirituality is not a game we play. It is not merely a preference for some position over another. Nor is it at its core a search for some healing balm. It is an ultimate choice of ultimate definitions that require one's utmost commitment."

Chapter 14 - False Assumptions and Magnificent Truths wraps up the book by looking at "The Three All-Important Questions" all worldviews and religions must be examined by. They are:

1. How do they answer the question of exclusivity as it relates to their own belief?
2. What is the source of their authority?
3. How relevant is what they believe to the common experience; what difference does it really make?

Also in this chapter Ravi includes a section on Building A Worldview, which gives the basic components that must be addressed. "Jesus proclaims the truth - that is why it must exclude all that is contrary to it. He lived and spoke with authority - that is why what he said applies to each of us. His message bridges the greatest gulf within us - that is why it is relevant even today, two thousand years later." (p. 269)

This book is not an easy read, but none of Ravi's books are. It is not fluff, but is designed to engage the mind to wrestle with serious issues. It's worth the effort.

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Akiane

I've had so many hits on my post about Akiane Kramarik that I thought I'd revisit the subject. I've been watching with interest some of the interviews posted with her and looking at some of her art again. It's a very interesting story, and part of the intrigue is the mystery surrounding her and her family's beliefs.

Akiane Kramarik is an incredibly talented young artist whose paintings can now sell for millions of dollars. She has been featured on Oprah, CNN, Good Morning America and many others. Part of the intense interest around Akiane is due to the spiritual nature of her art and her claims to have received her inspiration from visions and dreams, beginning at an early age. As a 3-4 year-old girl, she would try to explain to her mother what she was seeing. Finally she began to draw what she had experienced.

Her mother, seeing her obvious talent, began to provide her with the tools she needed to develop. By the age of 8, her work had begun to win her recognition. For samples of her work, listed by age, go here. What is really remarkable is that Akiane's parents were atheists, she was also home-schooled and her family didn't own a television. Yet Akiane continuously provided a stream of spiritually themed art. This plus her continued insistence on her encounters with God eventually lead the whole family to convert to Christianity, according to her mother.

This spiritual journey seems to have changed between this interview in 2006 and 2010. In a wide-ranging video interview in 2010 Akiane spoke of her family's spiritual journey, referring to her own beliefs as non-denominational, and stating that she has always believed in God, and still does. She has painted Jesus, angels and heaven. Much of her art is about people, and is often blended with her poems. She would probably not refer to herself as a Christian but as "spiritual." She writes of other dimensions which she has visited in her visions and dreams, and often puts these visions onto canvas; she says that she has been given glimpses of the future and of the past.

As a pastor, I'm often asked for my opinion about Akiane and people like her. Is she for real? Does God really show her visions of heaven and other dimensions? Has she seen Jesus? Is this what He really looked like? These last questions come from the mention of Akiane's painting in the book, "Heaven Is For Real." This is a book about a young boy who had a near death experience and began to share things with his parents which they hadn't shared with him. He also claimed to have visited heaven and seen Jesus. The painting of Jesus that he claimed was authentic was the one that Akiane had painted at age 8.

Setting that aside, here are some thoughts. Firstly, the modern church has had a hard time knowing what to do with the arts. Generally speaking, the church has tried to put people into molds and keep them there. If artists don't fit the mold, they're often treated very harshly. This seems to have happened with Akiane, as she has received very sharp criticism of her work, even when she was a little child. She refers to some who have told her that her artwork is "demonic" because it has dark shadows in it, and she should burn it. On almost every website you'll find sharp criticism from very outspoken "Christians." Seeing this, I'm not sure how I would react as a new Christian if people told me my creations were demonic. This may help explain her continued spiritual searching. She seems to be saying what Mahatma Gandhi said: "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

Secondly, I do believe that Akiane is gifted with natural talent, and the Bible teaches us that every good and perfect gift comes from God. What we do with that gift or talent is our responsibility. It seems that Akiane is a sincere young lady, trying to make the world a better place. I also believe that children seem to have a much keener sensitivity to God, and much of her earlier work reflects that innocence.

Finally, and here is the part that I hope is not misunderstood, anyone who makes truth claims will be called upon to defend those claims. As Akiane gets older, her belief system will, no doubt, be refined. It is one thing to say that you were inspired to paint a certain work of art; it's another entirely to say that God has revealed some new truth to you for the benefit of the world. When you make a truth claim you will inevitably bump up against others and that will cause friction.

The question is, does Akiane's art reflect God-revealed truth or is it the product of a fertile imagination. My guess is that it is a little bit of both. As a Christian, my frame of reference is Scripture. The same Jesus that Akiane painted as an 8 year old stated clearly, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6) This is clearly a truth claim. It's also a large part of the reason that other religions have such a hard time with Christianity, it doesn't lend itself to compromise.

I, for one, will be watching Akiane's career with interest. She is a very gifted artist - who is doing very well for herself - and, no doubt, has a bright future. I do fear that her very narrow frame of reference (home-schooling, self-styled spirituality, and small management team) will keep her from having her beliefs tested. I believe in the spiritual principle that "iron sharpens iron," and that our experiences and beliefs need to be tested. I won't be rushing to judgment, however, it seems that there are enough people doing that.

Related Articles:
Is Heaven For Real?
Akiane Kramarik
Book Review - "Heaven Is For Real"
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