Al Mohler has caught up to a controversy that’s been talked about for years in Christendom. In a post last week at his website ¹, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president — I’m sorry to say this — breathed new life into the issue.

Without outlining my own position just yet, here’s an overview of three Christian views on yoga.

1. Pagans came up with yoga for false-religious reasons. Its belief basis, meditations, ideas about the human body, poses and breathing methods do not honor God. Therefore Christians should shun everything about the practice, not wanting to worship idols.
2. While pagans may have come up with yoga for wrong reasons, I as a Christian should be able to do it, even the meditating and whatever, and I’m okay. What’s wrong with it?
3. Yoga began as a system of exercise based on anti-Christian beliefs. Wise Christians will employ Biblically based discernment to weed out the junk, not wanting to dishonor God (and waste their time!) with false religious beliefs. However, although almost any Thing in the world (such as food) may be invented or sold with anti-God motivations (definition: any motivation not sanctified by the Spirit!), a Christian may stretch or exercise in a way that yoga practitioners just happened to popularize first, and not dishonor God.

Mohler takes a stance

This past spring I joined an anti-yoga Facebook group and participated, not because I believed in the group-starter’s beliefs (ahem), but because I wanted to stretch my mind (ahem) and take part in an intellectual exercise and learn (ahem!). That didn’t go over too well with other group “members,” most of whom were anti-Christian activists, polite and otherwise, who had more-crucial issues to complain about. But I did get a column out of it (plus a short sequel).

Still I stand by my conclusions then, that yoga poses, stretches and even breathing techniques and the like are almost direct equivalents to the “meat offered to idols” the Apostle Paul talks about in Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8-10.

It seems Mohler doesn’t bring up that issue. To him, perhaps, not discerning yoga as a false religion is the main Problem in Christendom.

Do I agree this is likely Christians’ biggest problem? Yes.

Will I also ask rhetorically whether Mohler may be skipping over potential lesser problems? Yes.

He won’t know anyway, that I’m about to first, quote from his column:

[A] significant number of American Christians either experiment with yoga or become adherents of some yoga discipline. Most seem unaware that yoga cannot be neatly separated into physical and spiritual dimensions. The physical is the spiritual in yoga, and the exercises and disciplines of yoga are meant to connect with the divine.

… then rework it just a bit, like so:

[A] significant number of Corinthian Christians either taste-test meat offered to idols or become adherents of some pagan temple worship service. Most seem unaware that eating these meats cannot be neatly separated into physical and spiritual dimensions. The physical is the spiritual in idol-worship, and the exercises and disciplines of eating such meats are meant to connect with the divine.

This changes things somewhat — especially if we also remember that Paul did not say this or anything similar. Rather, the apostle said that while evil is real and we should not participate in actually worshiping demons, nothing is intrinsically wrong with the meats.

What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he?

“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.” If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. But if someone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you, and for the sake of conscience—I do not mean your conscience, but his. For why should my liberty be determined by someone else’s conscience? If I partake with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of that for which I give thanks?

1 Corinthians 10: 19-30

Spiritual freedom restrictions

A Christian’s only restrictions on doing something that could look evil but is not actually evil, are not based on the possibility that they’ll actually honor a demon by accident. Instead a Christian should avoid eating because another brother, with a conscientious objection, might be hurt.

That’s the catch. Freedom is what we have in Christ, Paul says. But as he himself gave up his freedom for His sake, we should take into account a Christian brother’s honest difficulties.

As I disclaimed in my first column on the issue:

[L]et us assume you are a newer Christian, or truly a more-sensitive sister. Such a person could have experience with an actual pagan-saturated practice of yoga, and want to avoid it. Why? For the same reason that a new Christian with an alcoholic past might avoid any restaurant with a bar: He might be tempted to fall back into that sinful habit that dishonors the Lord he loves.

So if you had a background in New Age practices, paganism or religion-saturated yoga, I would not be telling you like this that certain parts of yoga might be okay. Instead, I would encourage you to think about where the real sin comes from — as I’m doing now. But then I would back off and let God and you make your own decisions and whether it would be sinful for you.

Will the real compromise stand up?

Yet what about Mohler, and other Christians — such as a pastor friend of mine — who either merely bypass another potential problem of the yoga issue (blaming a neutral Thing for sin), or else directly state that you simply can’t have yoga’s physical part without its spiritual part?

For example, Mohler seems to acknowledge an inherent neutrality of yoga-esque positions:

There is nothing wrong with physical exercise, and yoga positions in themselves are not the main issue.

… yet then immediately adds:

But these positions are teaching postures with a spiritual purpose. Consider this — if you have to meditate intensely in order to achieve or to maintain a physical posture, it is no longer merely a physical posture.

Agreed with the meditation part: any connotation, in or outside of Christendom, of meditation without a preposition (we meditate on Christ, on His Word!) comes not from Scripture but from false religion, and has no place for a Christian. It’s also a tremendous waste of time.

But how can a position of the human body teach anything, especially if it is undertaken by a Christian who can and does separate it from its pagan origins?

Isn’t this equivalent to saying “even if you don’t eat meat in a temple as part of a false religious ceremony, the meat itself would teach you to worship idols”?

Furthering Mohler’s point, a pastor acquaintance of mine — whom I much respect — asked this:

There is a difference between accidentally striking a pose and deliberately learning and imitating yoga techniques. To think that we can separate the physical from the spiritual in this matter is to not understand eastern religion.

In response I asked: “But why should we assume that what Eastern religion believes is right?”

Put another way, let’s consider only two of the yoga positions, ruling out the second, which both no. 1 and no. 3 believe is wrong (i.e., Why can’t I practice everything about yoga, it’s okay, right? and I can meditate — without a preposition — and still love Jesus!).

1. We can’t separate the physical and spiritual components of yoga, so we need to avoid it all. Eastern religion says the physical and spiritual components of yoga can’t be divided.
2. We can indeed separate the physical and spiritual components of yoga, and perhaps assume a yoga-esque position, intentionally, for exercise, rejecting false beliefs.

Now I ask: which view here has actually bought into Eastern religious beliefs?

As for me, I say the Eastern-religious can’t-divide claim is hokum, just like the notion that meat offered to idols automatically gives credit to idols wherever it goes. And while I don’t believe Christians who take the Eastern-religious concepts at their word do so intentionally, I have also begun to wonder whether they’re not avoiding Things not out of concern for weaker brothers, but because the Bad Guys say they’ve “claimed” them and the Christians just go along with it.

What testimony are Christians giving to others about where we believe sin actually originates?

By the way, quasi-sabbatical over. Back to work, now writing three entries three times a week.

This week won’t bring longer, original columns to YeHaveHeard. I’m preparing for the American Christian Fiction Writers’ conference this weekend, which involves balancing several tasks:

• Trying to get actual sleep, and not lie awake thinking about Projects.
• Keeping up with two blogs, one for fiction and mostly taken care of by other writers, the other nonfiction-based.
• Keeping up with my day job as community journalist (these are not necessarily listed in order of priority!).
• Packing up actual, physical supplies for my pending trip: clothes, books, electronic chargers, papers, more books, etc.
• Revising a blurb and longer synopsis for my fiction work in progress.
• Anticipating meeting well-known authors, and fellow writers in “speculative” genres, and wondering how we’ll all get together.
• Praying to maintain a Biblical balance between humility and Godward ambition.

Meanwhile, fellow fiction-writer and blogger on Speculative Faith, Rebecca Miller, has been switching between fiction and nonfiction topics on her site, A Christian Worldview of Fiction. Recently she overviewed the very real, and frankly irrefutable, differences between Christian and Mormon understandings of vital doctrines, especially who Jesus Christ is.

It seems that while many people are hastening to say they love Jesus and don’t want to be labeled “Christians,” Mormons are chasing after the “Christian” label. We’re not that different from you evangelicals! I’m not sure whether that’s good or bad.

Rebecca summarizes Mormons’ teachings about God and Jesus and things, presenting their quotes for comparison. Then she notes:

Need I go on? There is more—much, much more. But here’s the point. When a Christian listens to what Glenn Beck says about his faith, it’s easy to be confused. Here’s what one pastor said about Beck:

I have listened and watched very carefully regarding clues to Glenn’s spiritual condition. I have interviewed several people who have been with him and have talked very specifically with him regarding his own personal salvation. Glenn has said unequivocally that that he relies on the atonement of Jesus on the cross for forgiveness for his sins, and those are almost the exact words. Few people use the term atonement. Glenn did.

I’m sure he did. The problem is, when he uses the word atonement, he doesn’t mean the same thing a Christian does any more than when he says Jesus Christ.

Perhaps the ensuing comments are most interesting, from Christians to be sure (including a professing former Mormon), but also from a man who, judging from his defense of Mormonism, seems to adhere to their beliefs. This commentator, named Seth, said that such claims about Mormonism’s differences are grounded in the (supposedly false) notion that one can be a Christian and not believe in salvation by grace alone.

Which seems to me to be rather sketchy on your part. It is quite obvious from the New Testament that Jesus required baptism at least, no matter how you are reading what Paul later said.

And given the work being done by Protestant scholars on the “New Perspective on Paul” – I think your biblical basis for declaring grace-alone is somewhat suspect as well.

I wonder what N.T. Wright would think if he knew his “new perspective” work was being used by Mormons to defend their views. Many maintain Wright’s ideas undermine the truth that our righteousness is Jesus alone, not our own works we offer Him.

Anyway, my replies are reproduced below, though it’s well worth heading over to A Christian Worldview of Fiction for the rest.

Seth, it doesn’t seem like you’re providing much direct Biblical support to back up your points. So far it’s not adding much to the discussion — nor does it seem to respect the words of Jesus, Who never made baptism a condition for salvation (?); or even the words of Joseph Smith, who couldn’t have been clearer when he started Mormonism that it was in opposition to Biblical Christianity.

[Referring to Rebecca's earlier summary of Christian essential beliefs:] Numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 are all tenants of Mormon doctrine and things we would have no disagreement with.

Number 1 posits that God, Christ and the Holy Spirit are all One and always existed. This is contrary to Mormonism, whose tenet is that Jesus is the brother of Lucifer, and as a human He is the result of physical union between God the Father and Mary (one of who-knows-how-many unions that have taken place in parallel universes). God is not eternal; He was once a man in a world like ours, and has a “Mrs. God,” and they birth spirit children.

Number 2 directly contradicts the Mormon notion that Jesus saves all the way, then people add works. This steals glory from God and taking it for ourselves, and detracting from His revealed glory and the horror of any sin in His sight.

That’s enough for now. I hope you will consider these, and not just wait for an emotional signal that this is true, but search the Scriptures.

#5 sets the uniquely Protestant notion of “grace-alone” as a requirement for being considered “Christian.”

Which seems to me to be rather sketchy on your part. It is quite obvious from the New Testament that Jesus required baptism at least, no matter how you are reading what Paul later said.

Please show from a Biblical text when Jesus said baptism was required for salvation, and not merely a sacrament that (like works) confirms one’s new life.

And given the work being done by Protestant scholars on the “New Perspective on Paul” – I think your biblical basis for declaring grace-alone is somewhat suspect as well.

Please also show from Scripture that the “old perspective” on Paul wasn’t Biblical.

Another point worth exploring is why Paul took the time to admonish the Galatians so severely if they actually were pretty close to the truth that once they were saved, they could take off with their own works and not worry so much about grace alone.

[...]

[I]f we want to move forward with this discussion, I wonder if perhaps we might focus on what Scripture says, and not necessarily whether a belief system has Internal Consistency.Hyper-Calvinism has Internal Consistency, but it’s not Biblical; and Mormonism may have Internal Consistency, but also be inconsistent with Scripture.

Therefore, I suggest that we test these things with Scripture and see if they are so. Game for that? It might be a more interesting discussion for certain, rather than some of the more-heated rhetoric on whatever that other blog is.

(For the record: some evangelicals seem confused about whether to work with Mormons, such as Glenn Beck, politically. Based on Scriptures such as Romans 13, I believe Christians can ally with those of other religions on political and even moral issues, but Christians should avoid giving the connotation that they and Mormons worship the same God or believe in the same Jesus and Gospel. So it seems Becky and myself share a similar view.)

My questions above, about if Jesus said baptism was a requirement for salvation or why Paul admonished the Galatians, seems a good place to start. …

He still hasn’t gotten back to me about when “Jesus required baptism” for salvation. Perhaps someone can explain the source of this claim?

By Monte E. Wilson ^{1 2}

(Continued from part 1 and part 2.)

The Spiritual Elite

One of the driving forces behind pietistic evangelical fundamentalism is its desire to be on the cutting edge of true spirituality. We will have none of that two-tiered Roman Catholic brand of Christianity where the priests are required to live holy lives on behalf of a people who get to be normal! No way! Every believer is a priest who is required to talk like an epistle and live like an apostle.

Do you go to church only on Sundays? You are clearly in need of some sort of Damascus Road experience. Have you failed to read all of Sproul’s or Swindoll’s or Tozer’s books? Slacker! You don’t pray for an hour every day and read your Bible through at least twice a year? And you really think you’re saved?

For the average serious evangelical, a church is not really a church unless it is filled with Green Berets for Jesus. We hold to the notion that the true church is the home of the Spirit-filled elite and the apostolic meat-eaters. And if not? Look out. Ministers will be brought into such ordinary congregations to exhort the people to be like a missionary society or a para-church organization. How can they prove their commitment? They must give more than a tithe. They must daily get up at 5 a.m. and pray for an hour. They must evangelize every unbeliever in their office before the next service where they will be expected to give their testimony of success. They must dress like Ozzie and Harriet, talk like Charlton Heston doing Moses, and eat like St. Francis of Assisi.

In the early days of the church, one of the major battles to be waged was against the infiltration of Gnosticism. Usually, these people believed that the truly spiritual were those who had received special knowledge, special revelation. Gnostics did not believe that created matter (e.g., the flesh, the earth, time) could ever attain to something like holiness. Matter was evil, spirit was holy. People who lived normal lives—who did things like get married, have children, work with their hands—were worse than dogs. Only those who sought to escape this world of matter and ordinariness to the perfect world from where they originated were holy.

So what happened when those who wished to be uncommon came into contact with the blacksmith who claimed to have been born-again—and remained a common blacksmith with a common wife and common children, who lived common lives and died commonly? “This cannot be! How can this laborer claim to have had the same spiritual experience that we have enjoyed?” This would not do. If the masses could accept the faith, then something more must be required. There had to be a higher plane, a deeper life: one where the meat-eater would not have to rub shoulders with milk-drinkers.

It was simply not acceptable to these Gnostic elite to be lumped together with such earthy people. What was the solution to their dilemma? Create another tier of spirituality—The Deeper Life Club, which alone could claim to be the truly, authentic, spiritual, holy, New Testament church!

(Tomorrow: What happens when Christians grow more enamored with spiritual elitism and Movements, rather than Christ and the Gospel?)

(Loosely continued from yesterday’s column, Law and love — did Jesus contradict God?)

How many steps is it from confused Christianity to non-Christianity? When it comes to the question of how Jesus Christ and His love relate to God’s Law, it’s only a few:

1. Biblical truth: Jesus came not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17).
2. Step down, still true, but less clear: Jesus came not to uphold the Law, but to fulfill it.
3. Step down, questionable: Jesus came not to uphold the Law, but to love.
4. Step down, more questionable: God now doesn’t uphold the Law, but only loves.
5. Step down, un-Biblical belief: God doesn’t punish breakers of the Law, but only loves.

In just one simple, four-step process, with slight modifications — perhaps over generations, perhaps over only a few years in one church — a Biblical position becomes un-Biblical. Thus a slight confusion about how Jesus relates to the Law turns into universalism.

And some Christians may act or think like Universalists even if they do not believe everyone in the world will somehow, someday, eventually be saved.

For example, nowadays there’s a derivative view out there that greatly resembles universalism. Proponents refer to this by other names, such as the wider mercy view. From what I’ve read, that refers to God’s mercy supposedly being wider than we often think, and in fact, the most extreme versions of this view claim that people can be saved without consciously repenting of their sins and professing faith in Jesus Christ.

Teaching vacuums

I can understand a few factors contributing to this view.

1. “God is love.” Evangelicals have long overcorrected for notions — which apparently arose from somewhere in the past — that God was a mean tyrant. But for years many of our best and brightest have been saying “God is love” without defining love, or the “rest of” God — including His character traits of holiness, justice and sovereignty.
2. “Make a decision.” Many have overdone the call for a response to the Gospel, as if God Himself is not powerful enough to save someone unless he/she “opens the door” to let Him do it. In response, some others may ask, even if only subconsciously, “why do we think God so powerless”? And to compensate for one extreme, some may lapse into yet another extreme idea: surely God is big enough to save people without their response.
3. “What about those who have never heard?” Though answers to this question can be tricky, Christian leaders and teachers should not shy away from it. A vacuum of teaching about God’s sovereignty and man’s sinfulness (which says: those who have never heard are still guilty for what they do know) leads to the wrong answers filling the space.

From some professing Christian universalists, or “wider mercy” proponents, I’ve heard the reasoning: oh no, this doesn’t mean we believe God is unjust, or fails to punish evil. One person once told me he believes God will punish evil, just not in the ways we assume, etc.

But our intent should not be to maintain a Theology System, whether or not it has all the reasonable facsimiles we’d like of all the moving parts. Rather: does a System follow Scripture?

Apparently enough evangelicals have expressed doubts about whether conscious repentance and belief in Jesus really is the only way to God, that author/pastor John Piper has written a book on the topic. Last week The Gospel Coalition posted a review, which I’ll excerpt here. Based on Scripture alone — not hopes, emotional appeals, or definitions of Biblical terms and themes based not on Scripture but outside sources — it’s wrong to claim anyone is saved without a conscious repentance and faith in Christ.

Is conscious faith in Christ necessary for salvation? According to Piper, it is. His argument comes in four parts. First (chapter four), Christ’s first coming triggered a shift in the history of salvation. The “mystery of Christ” has been revealed,  (Rom 16:25-27; Eph 3:4-10). The “times of ignorance” are past, and God now calls all peoples to turn to him (Acts 17:30-31). Jesus “is now openly installed and declared as Judge, and he alone can receive the appeals for acquittal” (76).

Second (chapter five), the case of Cornelius (Acts 10) shows that true God-seekers still need the gospel. Cornelius was not saved apart from the gospel. He was saved through it.

Third (chapter six), the apostolic message was that men are saved by Jesus’ name (Acts 4:12; Rom 9:30-10:21). Nowhere do we see men saved unaware. All are saved by an explicit confession of Christ. And this comes only through the preaching of Christ.

Fourth (chapter seven), the missionary vision of Paul and John called for repentance and faith of all. Their message was “Repent and believe, and you will be saved.” It was never, “Great news, you’ve already been saved!” They preached the necessity of explicit repentance and faith to both Gentiles (Acts 26:15-18) and Jews (Acts 13:38-52).

As if that Biblically based reasoning wasn’t enough to overthrow “wider mercy,” I’m also still trying to figure out why “wider mercy” proponents seem to deny man’s free will. Do they really believe in a God who won’t respect a person’s meaningful choice to go on hating Him?

No one is saved apart from conscious faith in Christ and the Gospel. Jesus died not to show us that God had moved on from all that Law stuff, but to fulfill the Law’s requirements and to make possible a person’s repentance and faith. To imply that all are saved, or will be saved, is a blatant lie, trying to be more “spiritual” than God — and it does not love others.