My Past with Crystals
When I was in the New Age, I was given crystals at various times. One large crystal was given to me with instructions to wash it in salt water (as I recall) and then let it sit in the sun for several hours. This was to “charge” it. Then I was to eventually hold it while meditating. Wearing it and holding it would bond it to me energetically so it could do its work.
For my birthday one year, a friend who called herself a clairvoyant (she had a business doing this) gave me several crystals to put around my home after I had gone through a traumatizing event. She had “charged” them with a certain energy that was supposed to have a calming effect on me.
A healer I knew at the time would lay crystals down the person’s back to line up with the chakras. This was and still is a common practice, especially in spas.
Assumptions about Healing
I have been asked about crystal healing, including the question of why they can’t be used for healing since crystals come from nature and God made nature.
First of all, the question assumes that crystals can heal. Secondly, the question implies that anything that God created can be used for healing. Those are two baseless assumptions.
Crystals are just stones with no verifiable healing powers. To believe they can heal is a popular New Age belief because New Agers and others think crystals possess “energy” from the earth because of being in the earth for so long. They believe that such energy is healing because of their view that nature is pure and sacred. But there is no evidence that even if crystals retained any kind of “energy” that this energy can heal.
Creation Through a Biblical Filter
It is pantheism (God is all) or panentheism (God is in all) that views nature as pure and having spiritual or healing energy. But that is not objective truth based on God’s creation, it is a pagan spiritual worldview.
God created the world and he created the laws that creation is based and runs on — gravity, electricity, biology, etc. These are all things we can measure, test, and quantify. That is called science, which is based on God’s creation and on his laws of creation. (Scientists can be wrong but there is a distinction between scientists and science).
Crystals fail the test of God’s laws. Although they are part of his creation, there is no credible data that they can heal. If they could heal, there would be a way to measure, quantify, and test it.
If anything is used for healing, it can be measured and tested. There is nothing in crystals to measure in terms of healing because there are no components that heal in crystals and there is no evidence that they heal.
The same principles apply to “vibrational” healing, energy healing, and many ideas behind the promotion of essential oils.
The belief in crystal healing aligns with a New Age worldview but is contrary to all we know about God’s creation and contrary to the objective facts we know and observe in God’s creation.
Sorcery & Animism
Furthermore, belief that crystals have powers and/or can heal aligns with occult beliefs found in sorcery and animism. Objects can supposedly be given power in sorcery through rituals, symbols that contain power (sigils), calling on spirits/gods/powers, and/or other such practices.
Animism is the belief that inanimate objects and nature (trees, plants, rivers) are or can be inhabited by spirits, gods, or divine/supernatural powers. This view is the opposite of a biblical worldview which teaches that God gave breath only to man and “living creatures” (animals). Plants, rocks, oceans, rivers, crystals, and so forth do not have the “breath of life.” If it does not have a brain, it is not a living creature or a human and there is no animating spirit, power, or knowledge in it.
The reasons why crystals cannot heal are the same for why they cannot attract love, money, bring clarity to thinking, bring peace, bring success, calm anxiety, or any other desired goal. An inanimate object has no power to do anything and there is no way to give it such power. There is no special energy in it and no way for a crystal to draw anything to it or to its owner. To believe crystals have powers like this is an occult and animistic belief about creation.
Burning Sage
Burning sage is used to allegedly purify negative energy in the New Age. There is no basis for belief in what is called negative energy and no basis for sage having any effect beyond physical ones, and some effects are not good. Smoke from burning sage in a closed area is actually harmful.
Sadly, these New Age ideas have invaded the church via alternative healing. It has become worse in the church with some Christians accepting the existence of chakras, energy healing, “vibrational medicine,” burning sage, and now even crystal healing.
Objective or Subjective Truth?
Objective truth exists. If it did not, or if one does not believe in objective truth, then anything could be true or false based on whatever one thinks is true or wants to be true. Welcome to the New Age worldview!
The New Age worldview of subjective experiences and feelings has entered the church through popular but invalid ideas and practices so that we have reached a point where many reject the facts. They prefer a falsehood because it makes them feel good, or it seems to “work,” or due to a misguided bias.
Jesus said he is the “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). So truth should be especially valued. Truth is objective and rests on facts. When facts expose a belief as false, the facts (objective truth) should win out over any feelings or experience about the belief.
There are consequences to rejecting objective truth, and down the road, it does matter. There are consequences from the widespread influences of alternative “healing,” contemplative spirituality, and the Enneagram, all three of which have undermined truth and sound thinking.
A related CANA article is The Religion of Life Force Energy.