The Episode Concept

Both hosts grew up with Turmoil in the Toy Box — the 1980s Christian book that accused Care Bears and Ninja Turtles of smuggling Satanism into American homes. The book captured a real impulse (spiritual vigilance) but overcorrected badly. The pendulum swung hard toward dismissal. Their argument: it’s swung too far the other way now.

THE DATA

• Wicca is growing at ~30% annually (American Religious Identification Survey)

• 30% of Americans consult astrology, tarot, or a fortune teller at least once a year (Pew, 2024)

• $2–3 billion spent annually on psychic services in the U.S.

• “Spiritual But Not Religious” (SBNR) is a growing segment:

  • 89% believe in a soul or spirit

  • 88% believe in something beyond the natural world

  • Only 20% believe in the God of the Bible

  • Only 21% pray

THE THESIS

The turn toward mysticism isn’t random — it’s a reaction to philosophical materialism (”you’re just atoms, nothing is sacred”). Something in people resists that. Ben frames it theologically: humans are image bearers, made for transcendence. The problem isn’t the longing — it’s where people take it when God is off the table.

EDITED TRANSCRIPT

Ricky Alcantar & Benjamin Kreps

The Setup: Turmoil in the Toy Box

Ricky: Today we’re talking about mysticism. We’re going to argue that the new wave of mysticism, paganism — all those “isms” in America and the West — is actually a longing for transcendence, and that longing has only one real solution: God himself. But we’re going to start with a book that nearly ruined both of our childhoods. Ben, tell us about it.

Ben: Turns out we both had access to Turmoil in the Toy Box.

Ricky: You have to describe the cover.

Ben: What was the cover? It was like…

Ricky: I remember it, because it showed up at my parents’ house and I thought, this is not good. It had Yoda, but he looked evil. The Care Bears, but they looked evil. The Ninja Turtles — basically everything I wanted to watch and play with. The message was: don’t let your kids near any of this stuff. I briefly thought about tossing it before my parents could read it. What was your experience?

Ben: I was the opposite. I would stay up late reading it because the scariness appealed to me. The book details how, back in the eighties, there was a lot of cultural focus on paganism, Satanism, the mystical world, and new ageism. In some ways it was over the top — Turmoil in the Toy Box identified every single children’s cartoon and action figure as a covert way to smuggle Satanism into your home. The Care Bears will definitely take your kids out spiritually. There are things to laugh at in that heightened sensitivity. But the reality is, attentiveness to the spiritual world apart from Christianity has fallen away to a point where some of us aren’t thinking as clearly as we should. I’m not saying bring back Turmoil in the Toy Box — but there are important things to consider when it comes to the pagan world.

Ricky: Right. The impulse was good — be attentive, have a category for “let’s not mess around with Satanism or new age mysticism.” But then it became too much. We were looking for things that weren’t there, and for many Christians, the category dropped away entirely.

Ben: The pendulum swung the whole other way.

Ricky: And our concern is that it’s swung back hard the other direction. We want to put it back as a category, because this is actually growing.

The Data

Ricky: A few data points:

• The American Religious Identification Survey found Wicca growing at an annual rate of roughly 30%.

• A 2024 Pew study found 30% of Americans consult astrology, tarot cards, or a fortune teller at least once a year. That shocked me.

• A related 2024 Pew study on the Spiritual But Not Religious (SBNR) movement found:

  • 89% believe people have a soul or spirit

  • 88% say there is something spiritual beyond the natural world

  • They hold high levels of belief in animal and nature spirituality

  • But only 20% believe in the God of the Bible

  • Only 21% pray

• Americans spend at least $2–3 billion annually on psychic services — admittedly from a psychic industry website, which I’m sure triggered some internet accountability flags from my pastoral team. Ricky’s looking at psychics.

Ben: Anecdotally, I took my wife on a getaway to a small town a few hours away and was shocked — beyond the rainbow flags on every corner and storefront, it seemed like there were palm readers and psychics on every corner too. It’s everywhere.

The Diagnosis: Reacting to Materialism

Ricky: As I’ve talked to people who identify as spiritual but not religious, I’ve found they’re largely reacting to philosophical materialism — the worldview that says this world is all there is, there’s nothing magical or mystical, you don’t really have a soul, you’re just a collection of cells. Something in our hearts pushes back against that.

There’s a dark sky zone near El Paso with no light pollution for miles. When you look up and see the Milky Way in its fullness — galaxies visible with the naked eye — something happens. You think: there has to be more to life than this. I think philosophical materialism is actually swinging the pendulum back, and people are saying, “I don’t know what it is, but I sense something beyond atoms and biological responses.”

What’s your read on that, Ben?

Ben: It’s interesting. In the nineties and 2000s there was a growing hard atheism, and many concluded we were headed toward a completely atheistic culture. Quite the opposite happened. That experiment failed to take hold broadly — and I think it’s because we were created by God as image bearers, for God. We were created with a longing for transcendence. The problem is that in our fallen, unregenerate state — before intervening grace — we look for transcendence anywhere and everywhere except in the God who made us for himself. We look for it in whatever is palatable, whatever agrees with how we want to live, whatever feeds our innate sinful longings. We’re moving toward transcendence, just not toward the God who created us.

Ricky: It’s very telling that in those statistics, people are far more open to believing something is out there than to believing it’s the God of the Bible. That tells us a lot about our own hearts.

Bonus Observations

Ricky: I’ve also noticed people who grew up in or around the church expressing fascination with — or converting to — Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. I think that’s part of the same cloth. They’re saying, “The sterile, just-follow-the-rules faith I grew up with isn’t enough. There has to be something more mystical, something spiritual.”

Ben: Smells and bells.

Ricky: And then there’s the Jesus and Spiritualism movement — Jesus is great, but I do Jesus and crystals, Jesus and Buddhism. People are often open to Jesus as long as he isn’t the Way, the Truth, and the Life — the exclusive Savior of the world.

Ben: Exactly.

The Answer: Acts 2

Ricky: For Christians, our world is expressing a longing — and we need to point that longing to the right place. Transcendence is only found in the transcendent God of the universe.

One of my favorite places to take people is Acts 2 — one of the more mystical moments in Scripture:

“When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place, and suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance…”

Peter stands up and says: this is what Joel prophesied — in the last days, I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh.

Here’s the thing: in the Old Testament, rushing wind and fire are symbols for the presence of the God of the Bible — the pillar of fire, the pillar of smoke, Mount Sinai. And notice where the fire is in Acts 2. It’s not on a mountain far away. It’s resting on each one of them. That picture — the presence of God resting on us — is where this longing is actually pointed. We don’t always have words for it, but we long to be connected with the transcendent God, to experience that.

When I hear someone say, “I went on a Buddhist prayer retreat and it helped me feel close to something“ — in my mind, I’m thinking: what you’re really longing for is Acts 2. What you’re longing for is the presence of God.

And I love that Peter doesn’t say: “Hey, just add Jesus to your existing Roman religion.” He basically says — and I’m reading from Acts 2:

“Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know — this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. But God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.”

They cry out: “What do we do to be saved?” And Peter says: “Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus.”

Peter doesn’t shy away. He says: you’ve been observing something and wondering what it is. It’s Jesus. He doesn’t say here’s a thing to add or consider — he says put everything else away, it’s Jesus. And, by the way, you killed him — which is the uncomfortable part. The disconnect between us and the transcendent God we were made for is our sin. Jesus came to deal with that, which is why we can be made whole.

So to anyone who says “I want to be spiritual but not Christian” — this is what you’re longing for. Peter tells you where to find it.

Ben: I love the connection to the death of Christ in all of that. In the death of Jesus, the curtain was torn in two — from top to bottom, from heaven to earth — and access for undeserving sinners to draw near to the one true and living God is given through repentance and faith in the risen Christ.

While many people hear the gospel and dismiss it as an old-fashioned relic or something overly exclusive and rigid, it is in fact the answer to our longing for transcendence. We can actually know God and live in his presence forever through the Son of God, crucified for our sins and risen from the dead. And then we receive the Holy Spirit — so God himself is literally dwelling in us.

Romans 8 makes this clear: a life empowered and dwelt by the Holy Spirit is not some special privilege for the spiritual elite. The Christian life is life in the Holy Spirit. There is no other kind.

A Word to Christians Feeling the Pull

Ricky: I want to speak to Christians who feel a pull toward Buddhism or mysticism — usually because their version of Christianity is essentially just a set of rules and doctrinal truths to confess. It’s not an active relationship with the God of the universe who made them. They’re missing it. Christianity, rightly understood, is a supernatural religion.

Ben: The Puritans talked about Christians living below their privileges. The Christian life is one in which we have the privilege to pursue God — to know him more, to experience his nearness and steadfast love experientially through the means of grace he’s given us. Some Christians think that if they read two Bible verses and go to church on Sunday, they should automatically experience God. But the way has been opened for us to pursue God, to go after him, to know what it’s like to live increasingly in his presence.

Ricky: Many people attracted to Eastern mysticism — practices of stillness, going out in nature — may not actually be having a quiet time. They want more experience, but the answer is: make time, sit with the Lord, read Scripture, pray, create space to engage with him if you’re going to experience the privileges that are ours in Christ.

Ben: Richard Wurmbrand’s Tortured for Christ comes to mind. He was a pastor imprisoned for years by the communists. In that prison cell — destitute, starving, tortured — he and the other prisoners prayed together. He describes experiencing the nearness and beauty of Jesus in that cell. No special location needed, no spiritual retreat required. Even in this moment, a believer can pause the podcast and reach out to the God who is near and experience fellowship with him.

The Evangelistic Opening

Ricky: Last thing: you probably have people in your life who are spiritual but not religious, maybe into some of this stuff. Evangelistically, it’s a great way in. “Hey, why do you do that? What do you experience?” They’re usually happy to talk about their practices.

Ben: It’s like Paul in Athens.

Ricky: Exactly. Paul walks through Athens and finds a statue to an unknown God. He says: “I observe that you’re very spiritual. You have gods everywhere — including this one you left blank, because you knew there was someone out there you hadn’t found yet.” And then he just goes for it: “I’m going to tell you who he is.”

You don’t have to beat around the bush. Ask honestly from their experience, then share openly and clearly about Jesus — just like Paul. You’ll have a lot of fruitful conversations.

And if you’re a parent — Ben and I are not endorsing Turmoil in the Toy Box for a new generation.

Ben: I thought you were working on the sequel.

Ricky: Back to the Toy Box. But stay frosty out there. Be aware that the pendulum has swung back. Don’t be sucked in — but also use it as an open door to point people toward a better connection to the transcendent God who made them. We’ll see you next time.

The Clash Podcast — Episode 6

ABOUT

Ricky Alcantar serves as Pastor at Cross of Grace Church in El Paso, Texas and the Editorial Director for Digital with Sovereign Grace Churches.

Ben Kreps serves as pastor at Living Hope Church in Middletown, Pennsylvania and also hosts the Mark Prater podcast.