Astrology: Gospel of the stars is quite popular today. I found a good article by Martin Graebner on this that I would like to share with you.
Nothing would seem more out of step with our scientific age than astrology. Yet that age-old art of judging the influence of the stars on human affairs is a booming big business today. Why? Do people have emotional needs that rational modern living cannot satisfy?
Daily living has too often lost a sense of purpose, and astrology is the instrument that many have chosen to use for regaining meaning in their lives. To them the stars in their courses write the history of life, and the man who knows their language can read there the riddle of his existence.
The logic of its mechanism is not very obvious to those of us who do not believe in astrology. But with belief, the role of the stars is decisive in the complex decision-making of our time.
What is the Christian view of all this? Can belief in astrology and Christian faith exist together in the same person? Or is there a damaging interaction between the two? Must all our emotional security derive from Christianity, or can we enjoy the additional satisfaction of the revelation of the stars?
We can of course laugh astrology off as a trivial matter, regarding it as one of those harmless if illogical processes of human culture that has persisted for thousands of years -- a kind of game people play to release the tension of facing an uncertain future.
But that very minor role it plays in many people's lives scarcely covers the exotic growth of astrology in our time. All too often we see it filling the gap that is left when faith in the Christian destiny of man has been eroded or lost.
The vague religiosity of the horoscope can all too easily become a substitute for faith in God. Its subtle influence can very definitely shape a personality in which love, commitment, and action are secondary to a selfish concern with tomorrow.
Astrology has become one of those pseudoreligions characteristic of a society that is in the midst of great change and that is undergoing the breakdown of older standards. Its arguments that the deepest secrets of life are revealed only by the stars do not bring solutions to the real spiritual problems facing man. Man's hunger for the truth about himself and about God's plan for him cannot be satisfied by stargazing.
That is why astrology remains a challenge to our Christian witness. The pathetic faith in the gospel of the stars proves how men strive for a revelation to guide them in life's perplexities. We can offer a far better Gospel. The position of the stars at a crucial moment in anyone's life is not important. The place that God should have in our lives is important. God has revealed Himself, His love and concern for us, through His Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ lived, died, and rose again to forgive us and to give us new direction, a direction that is sure and filled with His love. And the love of God is more relevant to our future than the lore of the stars.
