Commentary on the News
Thursday, June 02, 2005
Jan Markell
Posted on 06/04/2005 8:03:15 PM PDT by Coleus
Eastern Mysticism and Christianity are Incompatible
Commentary on the News
Thursday, June 02, 2005
Jan Markell
What do you say when a good friend who loves God, reads her Bible, and talks and walks her faith becomes a devotee of “Christian yoga”? You might brace yourself and prepare yourself, because “Christian yoga” is coming to a church near you. And to those who understand yoga’s Hindu roots and to all former New Agers, it will never be compatible with Evangelical Christianity.
A popular video called, “Outstretched in Worship” has fueled the yoga popularity among Christians, be they Mainline Protestants, Evangelicals, or Catholics. Just don’t throw the baby out with the bath water as proponents insist there are so many “benefits” of yoga. And now that it is “sanctified”, let’s have a brand of “Christian yoga.”
Daniel Akin, dean of the school of theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said Christians who are drawn to the physical benefits of yoga should avoid its spiritual and psychological underpinnings. “Yoga is rooted in Eastern mysticism and it is incompatible with Christianity,” he says.
Laurette Willis, a yoga veteran of 22 years and an Evangelical Christian, said the experience left her vulnerable to “psychic influences” she believes were demonic. “It opened the door to twenty years of involvement in the New Age movement.” Willis says that many yoga postures are based on ancient Hindu worship of the sun and moon as deities, and rejects the notion that they can be redeemed by putting a Christian spin on them. Willis concludes that yoga’s emphasis on cultivating divine energy within oneself conflicts with Christianity’s goal of finding salvation in Christ. Yoga means joining together. It’s the joining of the individual spirit with the universal spirit. Christians should be seeing red flags rather than exploring a trendy new “experience.”
The day has come when we need a “spiritual Better Business Bureau” to deal with fads, dangerous trends, and mysticism now entering the church. And while many are aware of the dangers, too often today church leaders are warmly receiving deceiving spirits. No matter what the supposed “health benefits” of yoga may be, it is not worth the risk to one’s spiritual health.
So what do you say to that friend who has embraced “Christian yoga?” You need to tell them that to believe that yoga complements all faiths and is harmless is to believe a lie and it is actually hazardous to your health. Hindu gods are responsible for enormous damage on a scale too vast to measure. With the death of discernment so prevalent in the 21st Century church, it could be welcomed into your church—and in the front door, not the back door. Remember that chasing after the “doctrine of demons” is one of the greatest “end-time” signs and the seduction of the East over the West is fueling it all.
(Jan Markell is founder/director of Olive Tree Ministries and a Contributing Editor to Omega Letter. To learn more about related issues, visit her Web site, www.olivetreeviews.org.)
There is one major problem with your argument. The early Church said that Christians were no longer subject to the law of the Old Testament because Christ was the fulfillment of the law. That is why Christians eat pork, cheeseburgers, and shrimp, whereas Orthodox Jews do not.
So? That's their religious outlook. What's the problem?
Odd title.
As an Orthodox Christian, I've always thought of Christianity as a form of Eastern mysticism.
:-)======
(That was an Athonite smiley, with a long monastic beard.)
If yogic practice is limited to stretching exercises, as it often is in North America, the idea that it is harmful to Christians is absurd. Ergonomically sound physical exercises are good for the body as meat is, so if they are of pagan origin, we may apply St. Paul's advice on meat offered to idols.
On the other hand, the full practice of yoga involves mental and spiritual exercises. Mantras given for meditation often involve names of pagan deities. Plainly these are to be avoided. But what of meditation itself?
The goal of yogic meditation is to empty oneself. Some may argue that the goal itself is harmful, but I would suggest that it is merely defective.
The fundamental error of paganism (the natural religious state of fallen man) is the confounding of the created (and its properties) with the Uncreated (with His properties). Paganism knows nothing of the Uncreated.
The goal of yogic self-emptying is defective because the emptiness is merely the created opposition to the created being. (Note that the spiritual objective of Hinduism, and the improved version Buddhism, is to escape from being.) The goal of a Christian is to empty self of the created that one might be filled with the Uncreated.
Yogic and Buddhist meditaiton may be seen as the nearest pagan approximation to the true Christian practice of hesychasm, which also uses physical exercises, breathing, postures, attention to the heart beat, but uses them to unite the person to Christ through the Jesus Prayer (sometimes just the name Jesus repeated on each breath, sometimes the prayer "Lord Jesus Christ Son of God, have mercy on me (a sinner)".) As the mere emptiness yoga seeks is at least not filled with passions or sins it might be considered somewhat beneficial, but as it stops short of being filled with the Holy Spirit, which St. Seraphim of Sarov tells us is the goal of the Christian life, it is harmful.
When I called Buddhism 'the improved version' I meant it. The Buddha got many things right which basic paganism (Hinduism included) gets wrong: he correctly discerned that the existence or non-existence of the sort of beings Hindus call 'gods' is irrelevant to human existence, that human beings do not have a fragment of divinity within them (the Hindu notion of 'soul' which he denied), and that ascetic discipline is necessary for spiritual growth. (Not bad for one without the light of divine revelation.)
Lao Tzu did even better--he failed to understand that the Absolute is personal, but did understand that the Absolute is self-less. Read the Tao Te Ching, thinking of the Tao as a person. There is only One who fits. Or better still, pick up Fr. Damascene's book "Christ the Eternal Tao", which delightfully coopts Taoism (at the philosophical level as found in the Tao Te Ching, without the pagan accretions from Chinese folk religion) to proclaim the Gospel.
Not very familiar with Eastern Christianity are you?
Orthodox Christians (and the member of the lesser Eastern Churches, as the Copts, Armenians, Chaldeans. . .) abstain from all products from vertebrates (meat, fish, dairy, eggs) on most Wednesdays and Fridays and during long fasting periods (all told just under half the year), in imitation of the diet permitted in Paradise. (I think the exception which allows eating invertebrates is due to John the Baptist, who at locusts and wild honey.)
Are you sure God gave us desires? Or are they a result of the Fall?
(The true answer is both, but it requires a bit of explanation.)
The problem is that you talk about following the law, and yet you don't. If you advocate following the Old Testament law, then follow it. Then means all of Leviticus too. Instead you pick and choose what is convenient for you and ignore the rest.
Why, pray tell, do you fancy that your reading of the Holy Scriptures at a remove of nearly two millenia (with its obvious modern bias toward literal textual interpretation) is superior to that given by the generation of Christians alive when the canon of Scripture was fixed, and living in the same linguistic and cultural milieu as the Holy Apostles a mere two and a half centuries earlier?
Neither St. Basil the Great nor St. Gregory of Nyssa nor St. John Chrysostom felt any compulsion to interpet Genesis literally. St. Basil wrote "It matters not whether you say 'day' or 'aeon' the thought is the same." St. Gregory of Nyssa described the first two chapters of Genesis as "doctrine in the guise of a narrative."
Medieval Jewish commentators similarly did not read the opening of Genesis literally, but interpreted it (in ways very similar to that given by the Christian Fathers just mentioned) on the basis of its odd structure in the Hebrew and the oddity of having it fixed first in the Torah, when it itself is not at a surface level an expression of the Law.
Incidentally, don't sound silly when discussing Darwinism: no one believes we are descendants of monkeys, though evolutionists believe they and we have common ancestors--and rather distantly.
Well, if and when The Temple is rebuilt....
Meanwhile, when were The Ten Commandments abrogated?
When was the last time you read Leviticus? There are many laws there about diet, rules of conduct, etc. that you don't follow. If you advocate following the law, then follow all of the law.
Well, if and when The Temple is rebuilt....
For the Church, Christ is the Temple. It's not a building. It is a Person.
Meanwhile, when were The Ten Commandments abrogated?
Again, it's not a matter of abrogation or abolition. The law is fullfilled in Christ and Christians are no longer subject to the Law. Following the law means following all of it and that is more that just the ten commandments. If you advocate following the law, then please do so, but don't just pick and choose what is convenient for you and ignore all the rest, and then claim that you follow the law.
Blasphemy to you, I guess. Though how do you know which Torah laws I keep and don't?
Wow!
The posture of meditation is a hatha yoga exercise.
The exercises in hatha yoga strengthens the joints and the vulnerable parts of your body, keeps the muscles and tendons pliable and limber especially those around the joints, improves your balance, keeps your eye single.
An appropriate way to treate the temple of God. 
Where did I say you had to be a Christian? The article posted is about Christianity. Do you not want to talk about Christianity? If there is some other religion you would like to talk about, I would be happy to accommodate you.
Blasphemy to you, I guess. Though how do you know which Torah laws I keep and don't?
Perhaps it would be a good idea for you to state clearly which Torah laws you do or don't keep, and then this discussion could proceed from there.
I essentially agree with Rabbi Hillel, "That which is harmful tou you, do not onto others. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."
Meditation is not Christian ?????????
What ?
I suggest reading John of the Cross or Imatation of Christ
I assume from that statement that you are implying that you are Jewish, although you don't state it explicitly. I think that all Christians would agree with Rabbi Hillel's statement and that it sums up very well what Christians also believe.
"Islam is destroying religion. And the plentiful Christians who sound as absurd and irrational as moslems are helping to destroy religion."
Well said. Islam is destroying respect for all religion.
Becareful what you advocate.
Hi Walkingfeather. I'm not advocating any means of prayer, just recognizing that different cultures pray differently. I know a few Christians who meditate and they are not thinking about Buddha. If you tell the world they must adopt a Hebrew culture that is alien to them to be a Christian, not many people would come to Christ. Europeans adopted Christianity en masse, and it is quite a different form than early Hebrew Christianity. For instance, we integrated many Pagan customs and holidays into the religion, but no one is suggesting (except Jehovah's Witnesses) that we are sinning by doing this.
To each his own, as long as the sole focus is on Christ and the Father. I have no problem with someone calling prayer meditation or sitting in a weird position (yoga) while praying.
"Meditation is not Christian ?????????
What ?
I suggest reading John of the Cross or Imatation of Christ"
I certainly will look into this and I stand corrected if I am wrong.
okay then we should define what yoga has been traditionally know as and meditation and TM. In traditional yoga TM is used to transend the body. When you are in that state you are spiritually vunerable. If you are talking about traditional prayer and meditation I have no problem with that.
My caution is for those that say... buddist, hindu, christianity can all bennefit from TM. That is the problem.
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