SHOULD I NOT DO YOGA, ACUPUNCTURE, AND OTHER PRACTICES THAT ARE ASSOCIATED WITH NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS?

We enjoy an amazing degree of freedom in Christ. For example, Paul wrote that we could even eat at a pagan temple, as long as it doesn’t lead a brother to defile his conscience:

·       For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, will he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols? And so by your knowledge this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. (1 Corinthians 8:10-11)

Although we have this freedom along with the freedom to eat all foods, even if they happen to be offered to idols, we should not allow this freedom to lead our brethren into anything that might wound their conscience.

Later, Paul wrote that any objects could not defile us. Nothing that impacts us on the outside can tarnish our relationship with our Lord (Titus 1:15):

·       “All things are lawful,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up. Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor. Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience. For “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.” (1 Corinthians 10:23-26; 6:12; Luke 11:39-41)

Things themselves cannot defile in God’s sight. Why? Because all things come from the Lord! However, we use things wrongly if they are not used in love.

Jesus further explained that we are not made unholy by things that impact us from the outside or go into our stomachs:

·       And he said, “Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.” (Matthew 15:16-20)

What does make us unholy are the sinful temptations that arise from our hearts and minds – those temptations that we embrace. They will then grow into words and actions.

Of course, this teaching is opposed to those found in the laws of Moses. These taught that contact with the dead, disease, or eating non-kosher foods would defile us. Why the opposition between Moses’ laws and the teachings of the New Testament? Paul explained that certain laws were merely “shadows” or representations, which had been fulfilled by Christ:

·       Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. (Colossians 2:16-17)

As signs, shadows, or representations of Christ, they had been fulfilled at the Cross. What remains is the substance, the reality, what is of Christ. Thou shall not murder, steal, and commit adultery remain because they are the substance of Christ Himself, His righteous nature.

And so we are free to eat all foods as long as we conduct ourselves in love. We are also free to perform yoga stretches and even to submit to acupuncture. These are things that do not come from our heart and will not defile us.

Instead, there is a danger that these practices might serve as a gateway drug, like marijuana leading to heavier drug use. It is possible that these and similar practices might expose us to the temptations of Eastern philosophy, which might affect our beliefs. It is these that guard our heart and mind.

Similar questions arise regarding circumcision, since Paul seemed to teach that if we get circumcised, our life in Christ might be jeopardized:

·       Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. (Galatians 5:2-4)

How is it that an external surgical procedure could put our relationship with Christ in jeopardy? It can’t! Instead, it is matter of what we believe about circumcision and not the physical act.

Paul had been concerned that believers might be lured into placing their faith in circumcision to become a Jew and, to some extent, believe that they needed to earn God’s “free” gift by following the law. Clearly, Paul wasn’t concerned about the physical act of circumcision. He even had Timothy circumcised (Acts 16:3). However, Paul had him circumcised, not to save him, but to enable him to minister among the Jews. Had Timothy not been circumcised, the Jews would have rejected him.

There is a similar confusion about eating foods offered to idols. As many verses indicate, we are free to eat any foods (Romans 14:14, 17), whether they have been offered to idols or not (1 Cor. 10:25-26; 8:8). However, it might seem that other verses contradict this freedom:

·       But I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality. (Revelation 2:14, 20; 1 Cor. 10:21)

However, this is different from just casually eating food that had been offered to idols. Instead, these false teachers were teaching the church to proactively seek to eat these foods, presumably for spiritual benefit. This represents a form of spiritual adultery, a compromise of the faith and hope we have invested in Christ.

This is my problem with mystical practices to achieve an experience of God. While there is nothing the matter with closing our eyes and allowing our minds to drift to beautiful and relaxing scenes, it is another matter to imagine these relaxing scenes in faith that this practice will open for us a path to God.

Likewise, there is nothing the matter with jogging in order to relax our minds. However, if we believe that physical exertion will open for us a highway to the presence of God, then we are ignoring the priorities that God has clearly set forth for us – faith, obedience, confession, Scripture meditation, and prayer. Instead, faith in physical manipulations represents a lack of faith in the teachings of the Word of God. Rather, He claims:

·       Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. (1 Timothy 4:7-8)

Misguided Christians have also placed their faith in asceticism – various forms of self-depravation – thinking that these would make them more spiritual, worthy, or more able to hear the “voice of God.” However, Scripture warns against such a hope:

·       These [“human precepts and teachings,” verse 22] have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. (Colossians 2:23)

Paul, therefore, had warned against submitting to such “regulations” (verse 21). It is a matter of placing our hope in the wrong thing instead of in Christ. However, to trust in depriving yourself of dessert in order to lose weight does not violate our faith in Christ.

However, some “Christians” are attempting to bring bodily practices into the church, not only for health reasons, but for spiritual reasons. Brooke Boon has claimed that yoga brings “mind and body” together so that:

·       “we become more authentic people, able to hear God and experience Him in previously impossible ways.” (Christian Research Journal, Vol.3, #4, 2008).

The same article reports that Susan Bordenkircher claimed that:

·       “Ultimately…the pain and discomfort you may feel in your skin can be the cause of division between you and God.”

If “pain and discomfort” can cause a “division between you and God,” we should live insulated lives. However, this isn’t the message of Scripture. Instead, we are assured that we overflowing with the riches in Christ:

·       See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. (Colossians 2:8-10)

How can we guard against being taken captive by alien philosophies? By praying and meditating on Scripture day and night (Psalm 1).

Myths of the Sacred

If you reject truth, you create a black hole – a vacuum - and it must be filled. Myth is always a ready candidate:

• Now having rejected the Bible, the West is trying to find meaning through myths. It is following Joseph Campbell, George Lucas, and James Cameron and inventing and selling myths, as Greece did after it realized that a finite mind cannot know universal truth. Britain gave universities to India to set us free. The West is now giving its youth myths that can only enslave them. (Vishal Mangalwadi, The Book that Made your World, 219

Perhaps Mangalwadi is defining myth too narrowly. There are many other forms of myths – God substitutes, vacuum fillers. The Humanist Manifesto II reads:

• “Using technology wisely, we can control our environment, conquer poverty, markedly reduce disease, extend our life-span, significantly modify our behavior, alter the course of human evolution and cultural development, unlock vast new powers, and provide humankind with unparalleled opportunity for achieving an abundant and meaningful life.”

It is hard to understand how “technology” and “human evolution and cultural development can provide “an abundant and meaningful life.” If anything, technology seems to deprive us from traditional sources of meaning – family, community and shared values. However, once God is rejected, another source of meaning must be created, however fanciful.

New Age guru David Spangler presents a very different kind of myth:

• The New Age approach is to look at the object, people and the events of our lives and to say ‘you are sacred. In you and with you I can find the sacramental passages that reconnect me to the wholeness of creation.’ It is then to ask ourselves what kind of culture, what kind of institutions – be they political, economic, artistic, educational, or scientific – we need that can honor that universal sacredness.”

However, once you have killed the Transcendent, you are left with nothing more than the physical. What then can be the basis of “universal sacredness?” If nature is sacred, then so too are swine flu and canker sores. It requires a great act of myth-making to find “the sacramental” in pimples, cankers and hives.

According to another master-myth-maker:

• One should  beware of evaluating the force of an ideal too little (5)…the Eternal Will…dominates this universe to promote the victory of the better and stronger, and to demand the submission of the worse and the weaker. Thus in principle it favors the…thought of nature and believes in the validity of this law down to the last individual…In its opinion, out of the masses emerges the importance of the person…It believes in the necessity of idealizing mankind, as, in turn it sees in this the only presumption for the existence of mankind.(6)…The new age of today is at work on a new human type. Men and women are to be more healthy, stronger: there is a new feeling of life, a new joy in life. Never was humanity in its external appearance and in its frame of mind nearer to the ancient world [the Greeks and Romans] than it is today. (Adolph Hitler’s speeches, Nazi Culture, George Mosse, 15)

Why myth-making? Well, we need it – anything to provide definition and meaning to our lives! Once we kill God, we have to invent numerous substitutes. Why numerous? Because God fulfills many needs! Here are several:

THE NEED FOR PURPOSE.  We need to know that we are serving truth and not pleasure. The pursuit of mere pleasure is counterproductive. Pleasure becomes elusive when pursued for its own sake. In itself, it is a drug that cannot ever reduplicate its original “high.” Instead, personal fulfillment has long been seen as a by-product of living in harmony with a higher purpose. Even the atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that “He who has a why [a purpose or rationale] to live for can bear almost any how.” 

However, Nietzsche and other existentialists thought that they had the mental capacity to produce their own purpose. However, such an arbitrary mental creation is no more satisfying than mentally creating the fantasy of having a family when we’re lonely.

THE NEED FOR OBJECTIVE AND ABSOLUTE MORAL TRUTH. Without this, meaning and purpose are impossible. Instead, life is narrowed upon self in the form of moral relativism. Nothing is real apart from our own subjective feelings. Nothing is higher than our own experiences. Instead, of meditating upon a gloriously designed creation, we are self-condemned to obsess about our feelings and evolutionary accidents.

Many plead pragmatism – moral decision-making based upon what works. However, “what works for society” inevitably deteriorates into “what works for me!” Pragmatism degenerates into our own selfish concerns. And why shouldn’t it, if there are no absolute moral standards to keep us to the straight-and-narrow!

We then have to sanctify our feelings to the level of the sacred, because, with the death of the Transcendent, our feelings are left to occupy the vacant throne of our lives and decision-making. Introspection then becomes a sacred duty – a form of worship.

THE NEED FOR VALUES. Without shared values, there can be no community – no sharing. Without God, values become the inevitable creation of culture and history. Why do our laws protect humans? Why instead is not the king or the cow holy? Simply because the West still retains some of its biblical influences! Why do we still cherish the idea of the “sanctity of all human life” or “equality (when by any materialistic assessment we are not equal)?” Why don’t we turn other peoples into slaves or even exterminate them? Because the Bible tells us we can’t.

THE NEED FOR AN ETERNAL HOPE. Without any assurance of an afterlife, King Solomon understandably lamented:

• The wise man has eyes in his head, while the fool walks in the darkness; but I came to realize that the same fate overtakes them both. Then I thought in my heart, "The fate of the fool will overtake me also. What then do I gain by being wise?" I said in my heart, "This too is meaningless." For the wise man, like the fool, will not be long remembered; in days to come both will be forgotten. Like the fool, the wise man too must die! So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me. (Eccles. 2:14-18)

Without the assurance of a final reward, in which our Lord will wipe away all our tears (Rev. 21:4), we too will inevitably “hate life.” Also without this assurance, it is hard to imagine that we would leave the administration of ultimate justice to God. Instead, revenge will become the norm.

   

THE NEED FOR SECURITY. Without the hope in our Savior, His deliverance and His promise to working all of our circumstances for good, we will inevitably take more upon ourselves than we can bear. We then become our own saviors. In order to convince ourselves that we can bear the burdens, we have to develop a grandiose, almost god-like self-esteem to compensate for the loss. This also requires denial of those personal factors that contradict our grandiosity.

Consequently, the objective nature of sin and guilt are denied. Instead of finding forgiveness in God, the therapeutic community teaches the God-myth-substitute – self-forgiveness, a form of masturbation and not the real thing.

THE NEED FOR A SELF-CONCEPT. We all need to define ourselves and to think that we are significant. We can either derive this thinking from ourselves, others or the Lord. However, when we derive it from ourselves, it inevitably entails denial, self-delusion, and self-preoccupation. We can never feel at peace with our self-constructed self-myth, and therefore, we are always trying to prove ourselves and to put on a front for others.

When we try to derive our self-concept from others, we can either become co-dependent or resentful, when they fail to affirm our self-selected self-concept. Besides, in either of these two cases, we place our lives on unstable ground. Failures or rejections become unbearable.

However, when our self-concept is derived from our loving, faithful, unchanging and forgiving Savior, we have a firm, unchanging, trustworthy foundation. We are no longer devastated by failures, rejections or inadequacies because we are assured that He is now our identity (Gal. 2:20).

THE NEED FOR RATIONALITY. Although the secularist can act rationally, he lacks an explanation for it. If the physical world is merely molecules-in-motion, there is no reason to believe that logic and reason should be any different - an unchanging standard or measurement. Likewise, there is no reason to expect that our scientific formulas will still apply to tomorrow. The Marxist Frederick Engels wrote:

• But if the question is raised: what then are thought and consciousness, and whence they come, it becomes apparent that they are products of the human brain and that man himself is a product of nature, which has been developed in and along with its environment.

According to Engels, the brain has evolved along with the rationality by which the brain functions. This means that rationality and logic should also be evolving along with its source – the brain. It’s therefore a captive trapped within the blood and fibers of our brains. This would suggest that the “rational” laws of science – and their corresponding formulas – are also in flux, inextricably attached to our evolving brains. However, this is not the case. The laws are clearly independent of our brains.

THE NEED FOR BEAUTY. The secularist can enjoy beauty but only superficially. As a secularist, I had seen Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities and was moved by Sidney Carton’s act of self-sacrifice. In my heart, I responded to his sacrifice, but in my mind I though him an idiot for surrendering his life because of a transient electro-chemical mental state.

For me life had become narrowed down to a meaningless series of electro-chemical mental states. Such a world has little room for beauty, integrity, courage, dignity and anything beyond animalistic satisfaction. After all, everything else is illusion. Consequently, there were no higher ideals to move or enlighten me, no beauty to illuminate me. This made life drab and insipid.

In contrast to this, God breathes layers of truth into the fabric of His reality. My wife and I saw War Horse tonight, and I was moved when the young man Albert, who pursued his beloved horse Joey through the no-man’s-land of the First World War, was finally reunited with his beloved Joey against all odds.

I asked myself what about God’s reality made me react as I had? What divine truth had I plugged into? Does it represent our eventual reunion with our cosmic Lover? I won’t try to explain it here. However, for the Christian, truth is multi-dimensional, interconnected and living.

Consequently, when you kill God, you also kill the person you have been created to be and are self-condemned to desperately pursue myths, leaving your life bereft of meaning and fullness.