The other day I stood before the “New Spirituality” section of a local bookstore, and my eyes fell on a new title by Michael Horton, an Oxford-educated Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California. His latest book is entitled Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church. While I am unfamiliar with this author, I began perusing the chapters and decided to buy the book. The inside flap reads: “Horton argues that while we haven’t yet arrived at Christless Christianity, we are well on our way. Though we invoke the name of Christ, too often Christ and the Christ-centered gospel are pushed aside. The result is a message and a faith that are, in Horton’s words, ‘trivial, sentimental, affirming, and irrelevant.’”

 

As I looked up to scan other new titles, my eyes fell on a new book a few inches away from Horton’s: Deepak Chopra’s latest work, Jesus: A Story of Enlightenment. Chopra may be America’s favorite new-age spirituality guru, and certainly he is a darling of the media. The book is a novel imagining the thoughts and motivations of Jesus. While I have enjoyed novels about the life of Jesus in the past (most recently Anne Rice’s Christ the Lord series), this is what I found jarring holding Chopra’s book. The front flap had this quotation from the author: “The Jesus who is left out of the New Testament turns out to be in many ways the most important Jesus for modern times. His aspiration to find salvation vibrates in every heart.”

 

What we are not told about Jesus (the one “left out”) in the New Testament is more important than the content of what we are told? Jesus was hoping to find salvation more than to bring it? To be fair, I have not read the novel. But I noted the sadly ironic comparison to Horton’s stated argument about today’s sentimental spirituality that invokes Christ without centering him in the gospel. Many of today’s spiritual seekers (perhaps including many in our churches) are more interested in a Jesus we do not actually find in the Bible than the one we do. I also have a pretty good idea whose book will sell more copies.