THEY'VE done homes, gardens, clothes and body makeovers. Now the reality shows are tackling God. A British reality show, Spirituality Shopper, attempts to give extreme makeovers to the spiritually undernourished. The premise is a bit like promoting fast-food faith.

The show shows the exploration of spiritual seekers who, with the help of "Christian athlete" Jonathan Edwards, are able to sample four practices from different religions.

They end up with a doggie bag full of beliefs.

The only problem is that the instant fix via spiritual potpourri doesn't usually last. You can't find the truth by dabbling here and there and adopting a bunch of half-truths.

It's a bit like an episode of Seinfeld in which George falls for a woman who will date only fellow members of the Latvian Orthodox church. He visits an orthodox priest to arrange to convert and, when asked what appeals to him about the faith, he confidently says: "The hats."

Interestingly, one of the makeover subjects on the Spirituality Shopper show said one of the biggest obstacles she faced in the experiment was opening herself up to love.

"The words religion and love were things I would have avoided before," she said.

So perhaps it isn't all that bad. She learned something. And God only knows whether a show such as that could inspire real positive change in people.

The program does address the idea that while our attachments to formal religions may be waning, our yearning for spiritual fulfilment is growing.

It has not become harder to know God, but so much consumer choice may deceive us into feeling it is easy.

A turn to the sacred is welcome, but there is something troubling about spirituality fed to satisfy the individual consumer appetite. The danger of mix-and-match spirituality is that it may miss the real issues.

The truth is that many of us do not take the road less travelled, the one that requires discipline. We sometimes only think we do.

Religion has been transformed into esoteric self-help -- a fashion accessory for people living in high-pressure societies.

This is not the way, for example, to understand the emergence of a new personal identity modelled on that of Christ, Mohammed or Buddha.

Religious academic Carl Raschke said New Age philosophy was a form of mass hypnosis that was leading to mass acceptance of the irrational.

He said we lived in a culture that valued diversity so much it could not draw distinctions.

We still cling to the 1960s idea that behaviour once considered antisocial is instead revolutionary and liberating. And so, if one takes a stand against evil, one is paranoid, moralistic, uptight or irrational. We don't recognise evil as evil, can't say dark is dark. We still think we are living in a New Age utopia. But that utopia is an illusion.

The essential difference between New Age thinking and Christian thinking is that Christians say, "Of myself I can do nothing".

New Age generally teaches there is a personal power within us that, if properly tapped, will permit us to do anything. There is no reality outside what we determine.

Salvation is seen as cosmic enlightenment rather than as a personal relationship with the living God.

Finnish sceptic Ilpo Salmi said: "Before we had faith, hope and love, and the most important of them was love. Now we have radiation, vibrations and energy, and the most important of them is energy."

Quaker philosopher Elton Trueblood's prophecy of last century has come to pass. We live in a cut-flower civilisation.

Beautiful as cut flowers might be, Trueblood said, they died because they were severed from their sustaining roots.

True spirituality is about deep personal and social change, not merely a quick life-lift. It is about the mind and will as well as the heart and emotions.

London rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks, in his book To Heal a Fractured World, said he feared the social dimension of religion was being eclipsed by New Age spirituality.

"Faith is protest, religion is a form of social action, and embracing faith means exerting oneself to help others in a concrete fashion," he said. "Religion that is all about pursuing personal enlightenment and which does not result in positive activity to help others is an arid faith."