BEYOND THE
“NEW AGE” LABEL
Rediscovering Christianity’s
Mystical Heart
by Rev. Sheri Spiritual teacher, writer, and founder of Angel Messenger
Crystals are New Age.
Meditation is New Age.
Yoga is demonic.
Breathwork opens you to dangerous spirits.
Astrology is forbidden.
Receiving messages from Spirit is dangerous.
Believing you can communicate with angels will lead you away from God.
If you have spent much time in certain Christian spaces, you have probably heard statements like these.
I certainly have.
New Age.
Occult.
Evil.
Demonic.
Those words can end a conversation very quickly.
They can also prevent us from asking a much more important question:
What does the Bible actually say?
Because “New Age” is not a biblical category.
Jesus never warned his followers about the New Age movement. Paul never used the term. Neither did Moses, Isaiah, Peter, or John.
The modern spiritual movement we call New Age is relatively recent. Many of the practices, objects, and spiritual experiences that have been placed underneath that enormous umbrella, however, are ancient.
Some predate Christianity by thousands of years.
And some are found within the Bible itself.
That doesn’t mean every spiritual practice is healthy.
It doesn’t mean every spiritual message comes from God.
It doesn’t mean Christians should participate in everything.
Scripture itself teaches discernment.
But that is exactly the point.
Discernment is not the same thing as fear.
And calling something “New Age” is not the same thing as demonstrating that it is evil.
This Is Personal for Me
Throughout my life, I have experienced dreams, visions, spiritual guidance, and moments that I understand as encounters with the Divine.
Some have been extraordinarily beautiful.
Some have frightened me.
And some have been horrible to witness.
Spiritual gifts are not always easy or comforting. Sometimes they are a great deal to hold.
But I also know that these experiences are part of a gift I have spent much of my life learning to understand.
And for years, I have encountered Christians who wanted to put those experiences into an easily explained box.
New Age.
Occult.
Evil.
Demonic.
If an experience didn’t fit inside their understanding of Christianity, it had to be dangerous.
But something unexpected happened when I stopped trying to force my spiritual life into the narrow box others had constructed for me.
I didn’t move farther away from Christianity.
I found a deeper Christianity there.
One that can be difficult to see when we remain only on the surface of the tradition.
I found prophets receiving messages from God.
I found people dreaming dreams and seeing visions.
I found angels appearing with messages from Heaven.
I found sacred oil and incense, precious stones and stars.
I found laying on of hands and miraculous healing.
I found contemplation, meditation, fasting, music, ritual, prophecy, and mystical encounters with God.
I found a Holy Spirit described through the language of breath and wind.
I found a Christianity that was far more mystical than I had been taught.
And that made me begin questioning some of the labels we use so easily.
Crystals Were Never Inherently Evil
Let’s begin with one of the easiest examples: crystals and gemstones.
Christians are sometimes warned that crystals are inherently occult or demonic.
But then we have Exodus 28.
God gives Moses detailed instructions for the garments of the high priest. The breastpiece is to contain twelve precious stones arranged in four rows.
Depending upon the translation, the stones include names such as amethyst, agate, onyx, jasper, emerald, sapphire or lapis lazuli, and other precious stones. The exact modern identification of several ancient Hebrew gemstone names remains uncertain.
But the important part isn’t uncertain.
God instructed Moses to put precious stones on the high priest’s sacred garment.
Each represented one of the tribes of Israel, whose names were engraved upon them. The high priest carried those names over his heart before God.
Precious stones appear elsewhere in biblical sacred imagery as well. Revelation describes the foundations of the New Jerusalem adorned with precious stones.
Does Exodus teach modern crystal healing?
No.
But it establishes something much simpler:
A crystal cannot be inherently evil merely because it is a crystal.
If God can incorporate precious stones into sacred worship, then “crystals are New Age, therefore Christians shouldn’t have them” isn’t much of a biblical argument.
The better questions are:
What does the person believe about the object?
How are they using it?
And where do they believe its meaning or spiritual authority originates?
What About Astrology? Look at the Magi
Matthew 2 shouldn’t be ignored.
The people who find the Christ child are the Magi.
Matthew calls them magoi—mysterious learned men from the East whose precise identity remains debated.
But Matthew clearly portrays them doing something we would associate with ancient astral divination: observing a celestial sign, interpreting it as announcing the birth of a king, and following that sign to Jesus.
They see something happening in the heavens.
They interpret its meaning.
And they follow it to Christ.
I find that extraordinary.
What I see in this story is God meeting these men in a spiritual language they already understand.
He doesn’t first demand that they become Jewish religious scholars.
He places a sign where they know to look.
In the heavens.
And that sign leads them to Jesus.
Does this mean Matthew endorses every form of astrology?
No.
But it does mean the story is more complicated than “astrology equals evil.”
The Magi’s knowledge and interpretation of the heavens did not lead them away from Christ.
In Matthew’s story, it helped lead them to him.
Perhaps God has always been remarkably capable of meeting human beings where they are and leading them toward greater truth.
Breath, Spirit, Body, and Soul
Breathwork is another practice sometimes dismissed as New Age.
But the relationship between breath and spirit is ancient and deeply embedded within biblical language.
The Hebrew word ruach can mean breath, wind, or spirit.
That doesn’t mean every breath is literally the Holy Spirit. Nor does it mean every modern breathwork practice is Christian.
But it tells us something beautiful about the biblical relationship between embodied life and spirit.
In Genesis, God breathes life into humanity.
In Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones, breath, wind, life, and Spirit become intertwined in extraordinary imagery.
Then in John 20:22, Jesus breathes upon his disciples and tells them:
“Receive the Holy Spirit.”
For those who use intentional breathing during meditation or prayer to quiet the mind, become present within the body, and turn their awareness toward Spirit, this biblical imagery matters.
Body, mind, breath, and spirit do not have to be enemies.
We are embodied spiritual beings.
So is intentionally slowing the breath, becoming aware of the body, quieting the mind, and turning toward God inherently anti-Christian?
I don’t believe Scripture gives us a reason to say that it is.
Again, the question is not simply what someone calls the practice.
The question is what they are doing with it and toward whom they are turning.
Meditation Is Not New Age
Meditation may be one of the strangest things Christians have been taught to fear because the Bible actually tells people to meditate.
Joshua 1:8 instructs God’s people to meditate upon God’s teaching day and night.
Psalm 1 describes the blessed person as one whose delight is in God’s instruction and who meditates upon it day and night.
Psalm 119 repeatedly speaks about meditation.
And Christianity developed rich contemplative traditions of its own.
Beginning in the late third and especially the fourth century, the Desert Fathers and Mothers withdrew into the deserts of Egypt and surrounding regions to pursue lives centered on prayer, silence, Scripture, fasting, contemplation, and inner watchfulness.
Later Christian contemplative traditions developed practices such as the Jesus Prayer and what became known as prayer of the heart.
Meditation did not arrive when yoga studios opened.
Christians had been practicing forms of meditation and contemplation for centuries.
And the biblical practice is older still.
The fact that Buddhists, Hindus, and other religious traditions also developed meditation practices doesn’t somehow make meditation belong exclusively to them.
Which leads us to an important principle:
The fact that another religion used something before Christianity doesn’t automatically make that thing incompatible with Christianity.
Then What About Yoga?
This same question arises with yoga.
Many Christians have been taught that yoga is inherently evil because of its historical relationship with Hindu religious traditions.
We should be honest about that history.
Yoga is ancient, diverse, and deeply rooted in Indian religious and philosophical traditions. Throughout its long history, different forms of yoga have included much more than physical postures. They have involved meditation, breath practices, spiritual discipline, philosophical teachings, devotion, and other practices within Hindu traditions, as well as Buddhist and Jain traditions.
Acknowledging that history matters.
But acknowledging where a practice came from does not, by itself, answer every question about how that practice is being used by someone today.
Stretching isn’t worship.
Breathing isn’t worship.
Becoming aware of your body isn’t worship.
Quieting your mind isn’t worship.
Intention matters.
If a Christian uses physical postures to stretch and strengthen the body, intentionally slows the breath, becomes still, and directs their heart and attention toward God, are they automatically worshiping another deity simply because some of those practices have roots in another religious tradition?
I don’t think that conclusion follows automatically.
A Christian may also encounter elements of a particular yoga tradition that conflict with their beliefs and choose not to participate in them.
That is discernment.
But that is very different from declaring that every person who practices yoga is participating in something evil.
And this brings us back to something important:
Christianity emerged within an already ancient religious world.
Prayer existed before Christianity.
Altars existed before Christianity.
Incense existed before Christianity.
Sacred meals existed before Christianity.
Priests existed before Christianity.
Ritual washing existed before Christianity.
Fasting existed before Christianity.
Sacred oils existed before Christianity.
Christianity inherited some practices through Judaism. It adapted or transformed others. And it rejected others.
So the question cannot simply be:
“Did another religion practice something like this first?”
If that were our standard, Christianity would have a very difficult time explaining much of its own religious life.
The fact that another religion used something before Christianity doesn’t automatically make that thing incompatible with Christianity.
Origin matters.
Meaning matters.
Intention matters.
What we are actually doing matters.
And, once again, discernment matters.
David, Music, and Healing Through Sound
Then there is 1 Samuel 16.
Saul is suffering deeply, and David plays his lyre for him.
According to 1 Samuel 16:23, when David played, Saul experienced relief, and the troubling spirit departed from him.
Scripture doesn’t call this “sound healing.” That is modern terminology.
But we shouldn’t ignore the phenomenon simply because the ancient writer didn’t have our modern terminology.
Music affects Saul.
It brings relief.
And the biblical writer connects the music with the departure of spiritual oppression.
Thousands of years before anyone used the modern phrase “sound healing,” Scripture described music bringing profound relief to a suffering person.
Perhaps the modern label isn’t nearly as important as what is actually happening.
Dreams and Visions Are Everywhere in the Bible
Imagine removing every supernatural dream and vision from the Bible because someone considered them too strange, mystical, or occult.
We would lose enormous portions of Scripture.
Jacob dreams of a ladder connecting Heaven and Earth.
Joseph receives prophetic dreams.
Daniel receives dreams and visions.
Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus, is repeatedly guided through dreams.
The Magi are warned in a dream not to return to Herod.
Peter receives a vision that profoundly changes his understanding of whom God welcomes.
Paul receives visions.
And the book of Revelation is itself visionary literature.
Christianity doesn’t teach that every dream comes from God.
Neither do I.
But Scripture also doesn’t teach that God stopped communicating through dreams because dreams can be misunderstood.
Once again, the answer is discernment.
Not automatic acceptance.
Not automatic rejection.
Discernment.
Prophecy: A Gift of the Holy Spirit
Prophecy may be one of the clearest examples.
It isn’t hidden somewhere on the edges of Scripture.
It is woven throughout it.
The Hebrew Bible is filled with prophets—people who believed they were receiving messages, warnings, visions, and guidance from God.
Joel proclaims that sons and daughters will prophesy, young people will see visions, and old people will dream dreams.
Then something remarkable happens in the New Testament.
At Pentecost, Peter quotes that very prophecy to explain what is happening as the Holy Spirit is poured out.
But prophecy isn’t presented only as something that belonged to the ancient prophets.
Paul specifically names prophecy among the spiritual gifts given through the Spirit.
In 1 Corinthians 12:7–11, Paul describes different manifestations of the Spirit, including wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment of spirits, tongues, and interpretation of tongues.
And he emphasizes that these gifts come from the same Spirit.
Then, in 1 Corinthians 14:1, Paul tells Christians:
“Pursue love and strive for the spiritual gifts, and especially that you may prophesy.”
That matters.
Prophecy isn’t presented here as something inherently dark, occult, dangerous, or opposed to the Holy Spirit.
It is explicitly named among the gifts of the Spirit.
But Paul also doesn’t tell Christians to believe everything simply because someone says, “God told me.”
He teaches discernment.
In 1 Thessalonians 5:19–21, Paul says:
“Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast to what is good.”
That word “test” matters.
The Greek word dokimazō carries the sense of examining, evaluating, discerning, or determining what is genuine.
In context, this isn’t a demand that a seer perform on command to prove a supernatural ability.
Look at the movement of Paul’s instruction:
Do not quench the Spirit.
Do not despise prophecy.
Discern what you receive.
Hold onto what is good.
In 1 Corinthians 14:29, Paul similarly instructs that prophets may speak while others discern or weigh what has been said.
And 1 John 4:1 instructs believers not to believe every spirit, but to “test the spirits.”
There is a pattern here.
The biblical response to the possibility of spiritual error isn’t necessarily the rejection of spiritual experience.
It is discernment.
That distinction matters.
There are two very different mistakes we can make:
“It is spiritual, therefore it must be from God.”
And:
“It is unfamiliar to my Christianity, therefore it must be demonic.”
Scripture allows neither.
Instead, we are told not to quench the Spirit, not to despise prophecy, and not to accept everything unquestioningly.
We are told to discern.
And perhaps that is one of the most important distinctions Christians can make when encountering spiritual gifts today.
Discernment asks questions.
Discernment considers the source.
Discernment considers the message.
Discernment looks at the fruit.
Discernment asks whether something leads us toward truth, love, humility, compassion, and God.
Fear simply shuts the door.
And when prophecy itself is explicitly named as a gift of the Holy Spirit, I don’t believe “anything prophetic is New Age” can be a serious biblical argument.
The question Scripture teaches us to ask isn’t simply:
“Is this spiritual?”
The question is:
“What spirit is behind it, what fruit does it bear, and where does it lead?”
And Yes, Angels Are Christian
This one is especially personal to me.
I have watched Christians come into my online community and tell people they are going to hell simply because they believe in angels.
Angels.
The messengers of God who appear throughout the Bible.
The Greek word angelos means “messenger.”
That is why my ministry is called Angel Messenger.
Angels are messengers.
They are not God.
They do not replace God.
They are not the source of the Light.
They point beyond themselves toward the Divine.
Gabriel carries a message to Mary.
Angels announce the birth of Jesus.
They minister to Jesus in the wilderness.
An angel leads Peter out of prison.
Angels appear throughout Revelation.
Christians can certainly disagree about how angels interact with humanity today.
They can discern a particular experience differently than I do.
We should practice discernment when anyone claims to have received a spiritual message.
But believing that angels exist is not a rejection of Christianity.
You have to remove an astonishing amount of the Bible before you can have Christianity without angels.
And you cannot remove angels from Christianity simply because modern spiritual communities also talk about them.
They were already there.
Christianity Has a Mystical Heart
This is what I discovered when I finally began looking beneath the labels.
I found prophets.
Dreamers.
Visionaries.
Mystics.
Healers.
Angels.
Sacred oil.
Incense.
Precious stones.
Stars and signs in the heavens.
Music that brought relief from spiritual torment.
Laying on of hands.
Fasting.
Meditation.
Contemplation.
Prophecy.
A Holy Spirit described through the language of breath and wind.
I was warned, directly and indirectly, that exploring some of these things could lead me away from Christianity.
Instead, I found a deeper Christianity there.
One that can be difficult to see when we remain only on the surface of the tradition.
I didn’t find less of God.
I found a faith far more mystical, ancient, and alive than the version of Christianity I had been taught I was allowed to inhabit.
Christianity has a mystical heart.
We don’t need to borrow that heart from something called “New Age.”
It was already there.
Christianity Did Not Develop in a Spiritual Vacuum
This matters historically, too.
Judaism existed within the ancient Near Eastern world.
Christianity emerged from Judaism and developed within Jewish, Greek, Roman, and surrounding cultures.
Human beings were seeking encounters with the Divine long before Christianity existed.
People prayed.
People fasted.
People burned incense.
People interpreted dreams.
People observed the heavens.
People used sacred oils.
People practiced ritual purification.
People sought healing.
People contemplated.
People used sacred stones.
Some practices Christianity inherited through Judaism.
Some were adapted or transformed.
Others were rejected.
And that last part matters.
Scripture does draw boundaries.
It condemns some practices and repeatedly warns against seeking spiritual power or guidance apart from God.
Those passages deserve to be taken seriously.
My point is not that Scripture approves of everything spiritual.
It doesn’t.
My point is that we have to discern what Scripture actually condemns rather than placing everything unfamiliar beneath the label “New Age.”
The fact that another religion used something before Christianity doesn’t automatically make that thing incompatible with Christianity.
If Christians applied that standard consistently, we would have to abandon a remarkable amount of Christianity itself.
“New Age” Is Not a Biblical Test of Good and Evil
None of this means everything placed beneath the modern New Age umbrella should automatically be accepted.
There are spiritual practices Scripture genuinely challenges.
There are manipulative spiritual teachers.
There are people who exploit vulnerability.
There are unhealthy beliefs.
There are spiritual experiences that deserve careful discernment.
Christianity does not require us to believe everything spiritual.
But Christianity doesn’t require us to fear everything spiritual either.
Many things Christians today reflexively label “New Age” are not New Age at all.
Stones.
Meditation.
Sacred music.
Dreams.
Visions.
Angels.
Anointing oils.
Incense.
Laying on of hands.
Prophecy.
Healing.
Contemplation.
These things appear within Scripture or ancient Christianity itself.
Therefore:
“That’s New Age” cannot, by itself, be a Christian argument that something is evil.
If we believe something is spiritually harmful, then we should be able to explain why.
What does Scripture actually say?
What is the person doing?
What is their intention?
Where are they placing spiritual authority?
What fruit does it bear?
Does it lead toward love, compassion, humility, healing, truth, service, and a deeper relationship with God?
Or does it produce fear, obsession, exploitation, superiority, control, or separation from God?
Those are questions of discernment.
Before You Call It Demonic
Before we call meditation demonic, perhaps we should remember that the Bible tells people to meditate.
Before we call every precious stone occult, perhaps we should remember the stones God instructed Moses to place upon the high priest.
Before we dismiss dreams and visions as dangerous, perhaps we should remember how often God uses them throughout Scripture.
Before we condemn someone for believing they have received spiritual guidance, perhaps we should remember that prophecy itself is named as a gift of the Holy Spirit.
And Paul did not tell Christians to quench it.
He told them to discern.
Before we tell someone that believing in angels will send them to hell, perhaps we should remember that angels announced the birth of Christ.
And before we call something evil simply because another religion practiced it first, perhaps we should remember that Christianity did not emerge in a spiritual vacuum.
Maybe the question we need to ask isn’t:
“Is that New Age?”
Maybe it is:
“What is this?”
“What does Scripture actually say about it?”
“What fruit does it bear?”
“Where does it lead?”
“Where is spiritual authority being placed?”
And:
“God, help me discern.”
Because fear is easy.
Labels are easy.
Condemnation is easy.
Discernment requires us to look more deeply.
And sometimes, when we are willing to go beneath the surface, what we find isn’t less Christianity.
We find a deeper Christianity waiting there.
One that sees.
One that listens.
One that recognizes suffering and refuses to look away.
One that leads us toward compassion instead of condemnation, love instead of fear, and mercy instead of judgment.
A Christianity concerned not merely with defending its boundaries, but with becoming more like the Christ whose name it carries.
Perhaps that is the Christianity I have been searching for all along.
Not something new.
Something ancient.
Something alive.
Something closer to the heart of it.
Something more like Jesus.
With Peace, Love & Grace,
Rev. Sheri
Christian Mystic & Founder of Angel Messenger
🌿 Beneath the Fear, Judgment & Religious Expectations
If you have spent years being told what you must believe, how you must worship, or who you must become in order to be worthy of God’s love, it can be difficult to hear the quieter truth underneath all of that.
You were loved before anyone told you the rules.
You were beloved before anyone gave you a label.
You belonged before anyone decided whether you were “Christian enough.”
That is the heart of Remembering You Are a Beloved Child of Heaven, my free 7-day journey.
It isn’t about giving you another set of religious expectations to follow.
It is an invitation to gently move beneath the fear, judgment, and voices that may have made God feel farther away—and begin remembering what was there all along:
You are loved.
You belong.
You are a beloved Child of Heaven.
