Eastern Mysticism and Christianity are Incompatible

The Omega Letter Intelligence Digest ^ | 06.02.05 | Jan Markell

[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.)

[muir_redwoods]

And if you read Leviticus you'll discover that bats are birds, and if you read Joshua, you'll discover that the sun revolves around the earth.

Why is simple metaphor such a mystery for some people?

[little jeremiah]

Very interesting thread.


I'd like to add a couple of points, from the POV of a pracitioner and student of Vedic religion. I don't read Sanskrit, but am familiar with many Sanskrit terms due to many years of study. Also have practiced Hatha Yoga for years, as well as Bhakti Yoga. And the two have little in common, except regarding some basic understandings of spiritual identity.

Some points for your consideration:

1. Hinduism is essentially monotheistic. There are two branches (naturally many sub-branches, but two main branches) - monism and dualism. Monism (called Mayavada) holds that there is no eternal God who is a Person, that God is an formless void of light, and therefore each individual is also not an eternal soul, but a particle of the formless God. This branch has historically, until recent times, been the minor branch. The other branch, dualism (or Vaishnavism), holds that God is one, the Supreme Person, and that all creatures are in actual essence eternal, individual souls, part of God the way children are part of the parent, but eternally individual.

2. The Vedic scriptures state unequivocally that God is one, that the devas or demigods are not Godhead, but merely empowered servants for maintaining the functions of the manifested created universe. God has His Kingdom beyond the materially created universes. If you read the Puranas, you will see that even Shiva and Brahma - two of the most powerful devas - worship God Himself, and consider themselves His servants. So Hinduism in essence is not polytheistic. Many Hindus are not clear about this, just as many who call themselves Christian are not clear about their foundational teachings.

3. The Vedas predate not only Christianity but also Greek, Roman, and Egyptian civilizations. When the British conquered India, various British and European Indologists did their best to convince themselves and others that the Vedas were of recent origin. Some of this was done as a conscious subtrefuge. But the Vedas themselves state that their written origin was 5,000 years ago; and in fact, Buddha's appearance as well as Jesus Christ's are predicted in at least two Puranas that I know of.

Personallly speaking, real prayer is meditative, and real meditation is prayerful.

[little jeremiah]

I should also add that in the Vedas, God is considered to have unlimited names. The Mahabharata has a chapter (or section) entitled "The Thousand Names of Vishnu" - "Vishnu Sahasranama". And those names are not considered all-inclusive by any means.

Meditation on the holy names of God - including meditation silently, out loud, with beads, as part of prayers, or even with singing - are all traditional methods of Hindu meditation.

Interestingly, there are 81 references in Psalms to the holy name of God that I have found, and the name's potency to give protection.

[DarkSavant]

Throw "The Cloud of Unknowing" in there as well as Teresa of Avila.

It's hilarious when people act like meditation is so exetic and eastern. It's been around the West just about as long, heck, probably since the dawn of man.

[The_Reader_David]

You will, I hope observe, that nowhere did I indict Hinduism for polytheism. As an Orthodox Christian, I view the fundamental defect of paganism as the confounding of the created with the Uncreated.

I am fond of pointing out to atheists that theism is not one-god-paganism, by which I mean that the radically transcendant God is in no way like any created thing, whereas the gods of paganism (and even God as misconceived by some materialistically-minded Christians) are very much like created things.

Since you are a devote of Vedic religion, we must simply agree to disagree, but doubtless just as I find something defective in the temporal eternity of cyclic Hindu cosmology, you see something wrong with the atemporal eternity Christians attribute to the Uncreated God.

[little jeremiah]

Hmmm - I'm not sure what your disagreement is with the Hindu cyclical creation of the material universes. The Vedas state clearly that beyond the creation there is the eternal Kingdom of God - one name in Sanskrit is Para Vyoma, the Supreme Sky. It is stated that the eternal sky, or eternal Kingdom of God, is changeless, is never created, never destroyed, and is actually the reality, of which this world is just like a shadow.

This world exists, but it is temporary, and its purpose is like a reformatory. This realm only is subject to repeated creation and destruction, but the time scale is exceedingly long. The creation and destruction of the material universes have nothing to do with the eternal existence of God's Kingdom, which is in no way affected.

I think we may agree more than you might guess. Atemporarl eternity sounds exactly correct, and God is described as being uncreated, the source of everything, eternally existant.

[cyborg]

ping and mark to read later

[jsm30625]

And if you read Leviticus you'll discover that bats are birds, and if you read Joshua, you'll discover that the sun revolves around the earth.

Why is simple metaphor such a mystery for some people?

Here you go, remember don't apply modern taxonomy to the Bible:
http://www.carm.org/diff/Lev_11_19.htm

[jsm30625]

"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."

Can you provide proof that we have a common ancestor with monkeys?

(Crickets chirping)

Just because some saints interpret the Bible wrongly does not convince me that the Bible is just one big metaphor and can be interpreted to whatever strikes your fancy. (I am not denying that there aren't metaphors in the Bible e.g. Revelation, what I am saying is that the Bible is not one big metaphor.)

[kalee]

for later

[ARA]

Is this a joke... Is this from the Onion... This can't be serious...

[ARA]

You forgot to say "Sarcasm off"

[Coleus]

This can't be serious... >>

It can't?

[DouglasKC]

Jan should have been around a few thousand years ago when Greek and Roman culture really altered Christianity.