The other day I had an interesting talk with a guy at work regarding yoga. This guy stated that yoga isn't a religious thing and calling it spiritual is a matter of opinion.
Here's an interesting debate on CNN that covers the issue.
My readiness to jump onto the side of John MacArthur was tempered after a conversation with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Ben and Liza. Ben had a good point that there is some middle ground between fundamentalist truth claims and ultra-permissive lovey-doveyness. One of the important things to keep in mind here is not to condemn people who do yoga as automatically anti-Christian. I think MacArthur touches on that a little when he says that as a purely physical activity it's fine.
All that being said, this does show the hypocrisy of the New Age movement. The same people who criticize the church for it's focus on meaningless rituals are contorting their body into poses in the hope of gaining inner peace. The emergent church is founded on not being traditional or religious and yet they promote yoga, which is just as ritualistic as chanting, responsive reading or liturgical worship.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
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8 comments:
Sorry, but I think MacArthur is flat out wrong. He doesn't say it's fine as a physical activity, he tells Christians to watch out, because doing yoga opens you up to the spiritual legacy of the exercise. Wasn't it Paul who said Christians can go ahead and eat meat that was sacrificed to idols? That's a direct connection, the meat you eat was offered as a sacrifice, it's not like the very tenuous relationship contemporary, American yoga has to its spiritual roots.
What bothers me about this is that it's another example of Christian leaders warning people against something in the culture that, for whatever arbitrary reason, they themselves are afraid of. Whether it's yoga, Dungeons and Dragons, certain types of music, comics, video games, political affiliations, science in general, etc. etc.; everyday there's some new reason to fear so-called secular society. I think it's a tool used by these pastors to erect an us-versus-them paradigm that keeps Christians from dialoging meaningfully with those outside their insular world.
Lastly, there is genocide occurring in Sudan, Americans are committing torture in the name of Freedom (AKA, commercial interests), people have been killed in natural disasters in China and Burma, not to mention the thousands who've lost their homes in the Midwest; and MacArthur has taken it upon himself to speak out against the evils, no, the POTENTIAL evils of yoga? Insert sarcastic applause here. Great use of your on-air time, MacArthur. Bravo.
I completely agree about "us vs. them" Christianity. It's not done in love but rather it seems to be focused on how we have it all figured out and you just need to come to our side. In terms of modern evangelism, that just doesn't work.
All that being said, Yoga is different than the other things you listed because it is inherently spiritual whereas games, music, comics, video games, etc. generally aren't meant to bring you closer to God, gods, or your center.
To me it's a little bit of a slap in God's face because it's saying "prayer and contemplating on your Word aren't doing it for me so I need to try something else."
Again, though, if something like meat sacrificed to idols isn’t inherently tainted by evil, how could yoga stretches be? Like Jesus says in Matthew, “What goes into a man's mouth does not make him 'unclean,' but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him 'unclean.'” Evil is a matter of action and intention. And as for relative spiritualness of the items I listed off, everything has a spiritual component, because everything is a creation of God’s. In that same section of the Bible I alluded to earlier, 1 Corinthians 8, Paul also says "We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one... for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live." You can use both the sacrificed meat and yoga in a spiritually dubious or spiritually positive way, it just depends on your heart.
Remember, you’re dealing with personal relationships with Christ, here. If it’s not condemned by God, then you’re on dangerous ground condemning it yourself. Remember what David told Saul’s daughter Michal when she got on his case for dancing naked: "It was before the Lord, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when he appointed me ruler over the Lord’s people Israel—I will celebrate before the Lord. I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes.” And Michal, not David, ended up getting punished, Mark. BARREN. FOR LIFE. You don’t wanna end up barren, right? Then allow that some methods of worship, contemplation, and prayer may be unusual to you, but that doesn’t make them wrong or evil or sinful.
Finally, yoga today, as it is preformed in America, is mostly done as an exercise. No meditation involved. Just a bunch of stretches. One may as well start condemning people who touch their toes before running.
This comment brought to you in part by the good people at BibleGateway.com. BibleGateway: When you want to prove a point but don't want to memorize the entire Bible, BibleGateway.com is there!
First you say it's a method of worship and then you say it's just a bunch of stretches.
To me, it's fine as exercise just as the meat that was eaten was fine for nourishment the early church members.
I think we agree on the point that it's the intention of doing yoga but I'll err on the side of caution.
One other thing, you can't speak for all yoga classes in the United States by saying that American yoga is just exercise. Maybe it is less hinduistic than the original form but why even call it yoga if it's only stretching?
Sorry, I should have been more obvious with my transitions. Somewhere between my first Bible quote and the second paragraph should have been a sentence like, "And even if a Christian did want to use it as a method of worship, that's not necessarily an evil thing either," and go on from there. I was responding to your statement about prayer and contemplation in your first comment.
My overall point, though, was that Christians have for years used extrabiblical means of focusing their thoughts on God (such as Orthodox icons) or clearing their heads in order to hear the Holy Spirit (such as the quiet meditation of the Quakers). Using yoga as a means to clear ones head and calm ones self, if it is used as a tool to enable focus on God, shouldn't be an issue for the Christian doing it, and certainly not for those Christians watchings others do it (unless the spectators aren't strong enough in their faith to not let another Christian doing yoga be an issue, say, a recent convert from Hinduism).
And I'm totally fine with people erring on the safe side in their personal lives, but I'm a committed Christian that has been a fan of Dungeons and Dragons, certain types of "iffy" music, comics, video games, the Democratic party, existentialism, art, etc.; and have, by various people in my life, told that by enjoying these things I'm letting Satan into my heart/not a real Christian/slipping into sin/etc. So, I'm not really a proponent of people like MacArthur telling others that that thing they do that the Bible never actually condemns is sinful and evil.
Also, teachers of actual yoga would agree with your last point, apparently. Dan Talstra knows a guy in New York that taught actual yoga and complained all the time about people not understanding what true yoga is. For the record, yes, this man had a ponytail.
Good stuff Zack.
I'm hoping I can get into some discussions like this at school but I fear it may be slightly (how do I put this nicely?) theologically homogenous. But maybe I'll be surprised.
Thanks for the comments.
Anytime!
I haven't done yoga, but would like to be more flexible. In any case, it seems about as "spiritual" to be as... sorry to say, a liturgy or a special music. Not at all. But, if doing Yoga makes one person feel closer to god, and another person feels closer to god by following the religious beliefs and customs that they grew up with at home, each to his own, I think this should b respected. Different things have different meanings to different people.
To say one tradition or set if customs is fundamentally better than another is, pretty clearly, ludicrous. Values are what counts; People who love each other and take care of each other, regardless of the colour of a person's skin, the religion they grew up with (and chooses to continue to practicing, or not to practice), a person’s sexual orientation, gender or country of origin, are probably those closest to god. If your religious practice makes you more loving and more kind, it is probably a good thing. And if your religion makes you more hateful, more divisive and more judgmental, it would probably be best that you didn’t practice it... that goes for any religion, from Islam to Christianity to “Yoga”. (Although I never heard of any Yoga masters blowing themselves up for god or going on a cruisade).
Norman
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