Thoughts...

While I have not been reading much lately, I received a book highlighting the architecture of Frank Loyd Wright for Christmas. A genius architect, to say the least, but a staunch supporter of the transcendentalism worldview. The transcendentalist movement believed in transcending themselves through perfection. In less technic terms, they could become all the God they needed by perfecting themselves. They also believed strongly in a capital "N" Nature, as a force with which they could attune themselves as they sought transcendence. Many poets and writers were transcendentalists, among them Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott and Walt Whitman. 
I recently took an American Literature class, which covered the literature from the early colonists up till right before the Civil War. A good deal of what we read was this transcendentalism. On first glance it can seem quite true to Christianity, but a closer look reveals its virtual denial of God and its basis in the perfection of ourselves here on this earth, both of which are strictly in opposition to what we as Christians believe. It is important to know the lies of the enemy, so that we can act against them, and know them for what they are. As 1 John 4:1 says, "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world."