"Should Christians Do Yoga?"

[00:00:05] Every few minutes I noticed another sign for a yoga center, as I wandered the narrow alleys in the sacred Hindu city I was exploring. Targeting tourists and Hindu pilgrims, the centers appealed to the worldwide popularity

[00:00:20] of yoga, as both a form of exercise and a form of spiritual discipline. In none of these centers would one find a yoga that resembled the yoga of the West. It's nothing in this city, this country or the Hindu religion is completely separated from the sacred.

[00:00:38] Yet when I am home in the United States every free street I drive in larger cities, I see similar signs calling for people to attend yoga studios. In these studios however, there will rarely be Hindu offerings made nor ancient Vedic

[00:00:55] mantras but it is impossible to die, even the most sanitized yoga found in the West. Finds its roots in the sacred yoga of the East. That's an excerpt from blogger called that I wrote for all things all people website linked in the description here.

[00:01:16] Titled is it okay for Christians Do Yoga which of course is the same title for this podcast and if you're new to all things all people, welcome to Base Camp. This is the podcast Ministry of All Things All People and Organization that exists

[00:01:32] to explore the darkest places in the world views and equip Christians to engage them with the gospel. In my name is Jeremy Jenkins I'm the Executive Director of All Things All People. Here on Base Camp what we seek out to do is answer the questions that Christians have.

[00:01:50] There are the questions that cause them to not engage with people of other religions or cause them to do it poorly and there's a whole world of religious faith, of cults, of spiritual and non-spiritual movements that I firmly believe from my own experiences and travels.

[00:02:17] My own research studying religion in academia and teaching it at the college level. There's a whole world that for some reason Christians have always neglected to learn about partially because they're scared or they're weirded out by it.

[00:02:32] So now what we have actually is a whole subset of culture that proclaims as Christians do that we are striving to reach the world, that we are trying to reach all people as Christ

[00:02:46] commanded us but we don't understand really any of them and part of the reason for that is because we close our eyes when we cover our ears and we put our head in the sand and we never asked

[00:02:56] the hard questions. And then when we do I was a student pastor for a long time and I feel like probably one of the few things that I did somewhat well is that I invited students to ask hard

[00:03:09] questions and I found that there was a lot of fruit in that because we all have questions that we wanted to ask in Sunday school or youth group or in college and too often the evangelical

[00:03:21] church here in the United States shies away from not only providing an answer for them but even encouraging the question to be asked. And so what we have now is we have generations of Christians

[00:03:32] who not only don't know the answers but they don't feel comfortable asking the questions. So here with Basecamp part of what we do is we want to address those questions and from time to time have some folks on who can encourage us and challenge us. And so today

[00:03:50] jumping in with a question that honestly I probably have gotten more than almost any question that I've gotten my studies in studying what we call world religions. I prefer calling the world's religions. I have focused quite a bit of time on Hinduism and South Asian religions like Buddhism,

[00:04:13] Sikhism and so what this has led me to is that oftentimes I get asked this question where should the Christian stand on the issue of yoga and just being honest with you. I've always avoided this question like the plague because it seems like you really can't please anybody.

[00:04:34] You know some people ask this question and I've come to realize that this question and where they stand on it and where I stand on it is a bit of a golden calf. They already know their answer. And here in the United States especially, you know among millennials

[00:04:50] and younger we have a lot of people who who have spent quite a bit of time doing yoga and they even benefited quite a bit physically from it. And so any notion that there's a concern or that

[00:05:02] this question is even we're asking is quickly put away by them and then on the other side you have probably a whole segment of people who very quickly come to the conclusion that yoga's evil

[00:05:18] yoga's bad that we can't touch it, we can't do it. And even if by the end of this episode you come to that conclusion which you'll see that there's probably I'm probably lean more that way

[00:05:31] than the alternative but the reality is this is that I've always believed that what's going to set all things all people apart in the ministry world is that we don't settle to just say those

[00:05:43] things because we've heard other people say those things and I'll be honest I firmly believe that a lot of people are our t-todolers on things like yoga and they don't know why. They've never dealt with Hinduism. They've never dealt with South Asian religions.

[00:05:58] They just heard their pastor, they heard another podcast just say hey yoga's bad and they just took their word for it and you know that's airing on the side of caution which is great but at the

[00:06:09] end of the day Christians are called to be in the world but not of it and to be in the world means that we understand like there's no reason the Christian shouldn't be the most well informed person in

[00:06:20] the room and so we in answering this question and in providing some hopefully thoughtful interaction with the question the first thing we have to do is we have to engage with what actually

[00:06:35] is yoga from the South Asian from the Hindu perspective and so the first thing you need to know is what what does yoga mean? What does that word mean? The word yoga is an ancient word that comes

[00:06:45] from Sanskrit which is an ancient language and ancient alphabet that makes up much of a Vedic Hinduism classic Hinduism and the word yoga in Sanskrit means union and within Hinduism it's always

[00:07:02] meant far more than just the physical active yoga that many in the West are familiar with today. The concept of yoga or union is actually found in many of Hinduism's most important sacred texts

[00:07:15] most notably the Bhagavad-gita which is the most most famous and most important Hindu text that there is and in the Bhagavad-gita where Krishna teaches the four types of yoga, bhakti or devotion. First thing you need to understand before we even go into the four different types of yoga

[00:07:33] to a Hindu does not always mean physical exercise. Yoga is a word that essentially means worship or way in which somebody would worship. It's a discipline and so in the Bhagavad-gita Krishna dispels out

[00:07:50] the four different types of yoga, the four different types of religious devotion and not all of them are stretches and poses. The first one bhakti is devotion which if you go into any Hindu temple

[00:08:06] people pouring out offerings giving offerings to Ganesh is bhakti yoga that's devotion and so that's a type of yoga. Jhana yoga or knowledge this is the study this is especially found amongst

[00:08:24] the higher caste Hindus this is the pursuit of sacred knowledge in the studies of the Hindu scriptures karma yoga, karma yoga or action is what you probably imagine it to be. Somebody who says that

[00:08:40] they practice karma yoga their way of devotion is establishing good karma and I would actually say this is most likely the most common because wrapped within the woven within the fabric of Hinduism

[00:08:57] is the fact that just by every Hindu in some form of fashion is trying to establish good karma for themselves because they believe in what's called samsara which is the cycle of rebirth reincarnation

[00:09:08] and so the pursuit of good karma is a type of yoga and then the yana or concentration often referred to as raji yoga and this the hanyoga is the one that we would likely be most familiar with. The practice

[00:09:29] of yoga as a physical exercise becoming hugely popular in the West is most similar to dhany yoga. The ritual movements and poses that make up the asana or postures have always been a means

[00:09:45] to an end within yoga which is often to promote union remember that the word yoga means union and that union within dhanyoga whether with ones self or atmond or with with the transcendent unknowable god that one becomes unified with after being released from the cycle of reincarnation.

[00:10:08] So even if you don't understand much of the Hindu worldview understand that the the end goal within Hinduism is to be released from the cycle of samsara or rebirth reincarnation this is called moksha

[00:10:23] and all of these various yoga's bhakti yoga karma yoga janyoga dhanyoga are our ways to go about one's life in a hope that this life they would establish good karma and that in the next life they would be closer to moksha. And so Hinduism being such a vastly

[00:10:53] like everywhere you go Hinduism looks in sounds different there's various and vastly different beliefs across all of Hinduism on these topics but at the end of the day all of this is a journey towards

[00:11:08] moksha and for thousands and thousands of years yoga dhanyoga the physical act of yoga has been a way to achieve union and some Hindus would say that it's union with ones self and when a Hindu

[00:11:26] says self when a South Asian says self they don't just mean soul they may mean the innermost part of you like this is the thing that goes from life to life you discard the physical body

[00:11:39] but this ottman the self goes from life to life so some so some perform the physical acts of yoga to achieve union with that self and then some perform the physical acts of yoga to achieve

[00:11:51] oneness or union with a god that is in any way, any other way unknowable and so to begin the question of what exactly is yoga from the South Asian or Hindu perspective you have to

[00:12:04] to believe you have to realize quickly that it's sacred it is not something that can be separated from the sacred act and sacred ritual in fact there's a famous yoga guru and I'm going to

[00:12:18] butcher this name K. Patabi Joyce he once said the essence of yoga is to reach oneness with god at that at the notion that yoga could be seen as simply a form of exercise,

[00:12:31] Joyce said using it for physical practices no good of no use just a lot of sweating, pushing and heavy breathing for nothing the spiritual aspect which is beyond the physical is the purpose of yoga when the nervous system is purified when your mind rests in the

[00:12:46] ottoman or the self then you can experience the true greatness of yoga and so we see that this yoga guru is saying hey it makes absolutely no sense to separate yoga from the spiritual discipline

[00:13:01] that it has always been in fact the Hindu American Foundation and advocacy and education group dedicated to promoting Hinduism in the in the US strongly rejects the notion that yoga can be separated from Hinduism and they actually launched the quote take back yoga campaign as a reaction

[00:13:20] to instances of yoga being stripped of its Hindu roots in favor of simply focusing on the Asana postures that make up much of Western yoga and then in dealing with Hindu scriptures we have

[00:13:32] the sutra, the yoga sutra which is a document from around 200 BC to 280 we don't exactly know but it's largely responsible for shaping Hindu thought regarding yoga and it explains that quote yoga is a complete suppression of the tendency of the quote of the thinking principle to transform

[00:13:52] itself into objects thoughts etc. in much of Hindu thought that phrase thinking principle is that which distracts one from focusing on the self thereby keeping one ignorant of the true reality around them the sutra continues all misery arises from allowing the thinking principle

[00:14:10] to cover or take the place of this immutable source of bliss and knowledge all of this to say so you might have a hard time following this historical information in this scripture and all of that but all of this is say that the sutra and Hindus themselves

[00:14:27] all make the indisputable case that it is exclusively a spiritual discipline that is impossible to separate from ancient practices found within the Hindu religion of the Indian subcontinent so understand that the history, that the theological meaning of yoga

[00:14:49] you cannot bifurcate that you cannot divide that and in fact many Indians many many Hindus are making the case that to do that is actually quite offensive to them and so we come then to the question

[00:15:04] okay oh what then should the Christian do? what then how do things like Christian freedom come into this you hear that phrase all the time well Christians have freedom um you'll hear things

[00:15:16] like well I want to redeem yoga and and I'll start by saying this I believe that there's room for this conversation I believe that we can't we can't throw out the fact that Christians are free

[00:15:29] that Christians are to redeem practices that otherwise come from anywhere but you know the church or biblical teaching it is okay to do secular things it is okay to do things that are quote

[00:15:46] unquote non-Christian but to redeem them to cast a new light on them but the question is can we do this with yoga and so despite this long history in the West yoga has become mostly devoid of any

[00:15:58] spiritual meaning now it's one of the most popular forms of low impact exercise and even many Christians have sought it out not only as a means to exercise but to slow down meditate and even pray

[00:16:10] I've seen many churches who have yoga classes um I've had many Christians talk to me about this topic and make advocacy to me for the use of yoga within Christianity because it causes them it gives

[00:16:25] them time to stop and pray and so because of this some Christians walk at the notion that this conversation is even worth having instead preferring to simply refer to the concept of Christian freedom

[00:16:39] which would seem to indicate that followers of Christ can participate in any practice they like with no repercussions at all and so while personally I do believe there is room for Christians to

[00:16:50] utilize some of the postures and stretches found in yoga because the the notion by the way that an entire religious group should have ownership over physical acts that serve our health and well

[00:17:00] being as ridiculous but that being said Christians should be thoughtful and prayerful in how they seek out this quote redemption of a practice that is anything but secular and devoid of spirituality

[00:17:12] as some have led to bleak Christian freedom does not mean that you can do whatever you want with with no repercussions your freedom does not mean you can be foolish and all of Paul's

[00:17:27] teachings Paul is pretty much where we get most of our understanding of what we call Christian freedom Paul's teachings on the subject of Christian freedom are all written in the context of how to

[00:17:38] navigate a world where your faith does not make sense and it does not fit and so he is first and foremost in his teaching on Christian freedom communicating to the early church you have to navigate

[00:17:54] wisely in this world that that is completely devoid of truth and that these pagan practices that he was surrounded by that it does in fact matter how you interact with them and so you have

[00:18:08] to be thoughtful if you're if you're the person who's constantly saying all Christians have freedom Christians have freedom okay good are you the most thoughtful person in that conversation like are you actually asking where does this come from if it's if it's the Hindu practice of yoga

[00:18:25] so what is yoga um if you're gonna say something is needs to be redeemed do you understand why it needs to be redeemed do you need do you understand what it's being redeemed from or are you simply

[00:18:36] using your Christian freedom this idea that we can redeem non-Christian practices as an excuse to just do whatever you want and I believe that unfortunately in the western church here in the 21st century

[00:18:49] that there's a lot of that going around that there's a lot of people who use phrases like Christian freedom because they just they just want freedom and so they don't understand that actually what

[00:19:01] they do might be hurting themselves and this goes back to Paul's teachings what you're doing might be hurting others and it should be no surprise to us that Paul's teachings directly

[00:19:12] to church seem to be consumed with hey being a gospel believer being a Jesus person is to be a person who thinks about how what I do impacts others and especially non-believers and so

[00:19:26] the entire conversation of Christian freedom and even this one on the subject of yoga has to be consumed by the same things for us to be able to say hey I'm a Christian I have freedom

[00:19:37] are we viewing this the same way Paul wanted us to so the first thing that we need to understand Christians cannot simply redefine the term yoga to mean whatever they want it to mean

[00:19:53] man we are we're good at this like we are good at repurposing words and saying oh that's not what it means to me for for the for the Western Christian to use the word yoga and use it in a way that

[00:20:07] just means the purely physical act of what we would call a son yoga is is very arrogant I mean you're using a word that for over a billion people on planet earth means

[00:20:22] in some form fashion religious devotion and you're pretending that you can just turn it into a physical act of exercise and so understand that you can't you can't do that it's a term steeped and religious understanding and

[00:20:36] significance and it is dangerous arrogant ultimately a poor witness for the Christian to assume that they can blindly secularize a topic and practice that for one seventh of the world's population is purely religious

[00:20:50] adding to this concern is the growing use of yoga among the new age the neopagin and the occult if you're if you're unaware which if you're listening to an atat podcast I assume that you're at least

[00:21:00] somewhat aware that the the occult the new age the neopagin here in the US is growing rapidly and yoga as a spiritual discipline as a physical act of exercise but also a spiritual discipline is growing in popularity amongst that group so for a Christian to approach this topic

[00:21:19] carelessly in the name of Christian freedom is to neglect what like like I've said the true heart of Paul's teaching on that issue in his letter to the church at Corinth in 1st Corinthians 10

[00:21:29] he addressed the issue of Christians participating in pagan rituals by saying quote what do I imply then that food offer to idols is anything or that an idol is anything no I imply that what pagan

[00:21:41] 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

[00:21:52] 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

[00:22:05] let no one seek his own good but the good of his neighbor first Corinthians 10 is especially helpful to us in this particular conversation Paul's instructions here show us that we are not

[00:22:18] to approach issues of pagan ritual which that is what yoga is we are to not approach issues of pagan ritual and practice with a freedom that leads to reckless abandonment but instead one

[00:22:31] that leads to spirit led care for our neighbor and concern for how our freedom impacts them this is why an understanding of the roots of yoga is necessary for the Christian who a desire to quote

[00:22:43] redeem it so just as eating the meat of the eating of meat sacrificed to idols was not inherently sinful right Paul's making the case okay eating the meat that sacrificed to idols is not inherently

[00:22:59] right there's nothing about that meat that's that's gonna curse you the poses and stretches of yoga are not sinful on their own like I've said I do think I mean to to argue that the stretches

[00:23:12] in poses of yoga don't benefit the the physique and don't benefit our physical health or that's obviously stupid I mean right the studies have been proven that what Hindus have been doing for

[00:23:23] years and years and years and years is actually quite an ingenious form of exercise but it's the concern for our witness that should bring about hesitation thoughtfulness and prayer for the for the Christian participating in yoga it's not just that you should be concerned with your physical

[00:23:40] well being or your mental well being those calling for yoga to be a redeemable practice for Christians cannot also be the people too lazy to learn why it needs redemption in the first place

[00:23:52] it must be redeemed because at its root it belongs to a tradition set on the idolization of false gods and the self and yoga often stands at the center of how that tradition is practice when you say

[00:24:04] something has to be redeemed then ultimately that means that at some point it is wicked it is it is in need of redemption and you don't just get to define the terms of how that redemption happens so

[00:24:17] is it permissible for the Christian to participate in the ancient Hindu practice of yoga as it has been historically understood and taught within Hinduism it resounding no and we must not we must stop insisting that words like freedom and grace permit us to participate in things directly oppose

[00:24:35] to the worship of the one true God but is it permissible for the Christian to glean from those practices what can be utilized for physical and mental well being while outright rejecting the spiritual

[00:24:47] practices that have historically come with it yes but it should come with some biblical considerations and here here are three things that if you are seeking out the redemption of yoga whether that be hate for your own personal practices or for the you know the teaching of others

[00:25:05] here's some consideration that you have to you it's not just me saying this right this comes from the New Testament this comes from a world that's really not that dissimilar from ours which is to say

[00:25:16] that Paul and the apostles were surrounded by practices and traditions that the early Christians said hey do we have to stop doing this right do do does this fit and the apostles were saying hey

[00:25:32] anything that is the worship or idolization of a false God or the self is out right but they leave room for the fact that hey we are free right so there's a tension our freedom

[00:25:46] brings about attention in our lives and for the Christian to be about Christian freedom grace and redemption of practices they have to be willing to go through these considerations so here's

[00:25:56] the first one i want you to ask am i blindly following the practice of yoga in the company of those who are in fact using it for pagan spiritual practices whether they realize it or not

[00:26:06] there are yoga studios here in the west which whether they realize it or not are doing the things that when you're in varinasi india the whole ace place in all of Hinduism that are happening in the yoga studios there and those are part of Hindu spiritual practices

[00:26:27] and so things like a bit from yoga which I believe is like hot yoga um yeah if you go into a hot yoga studio especially like a bickrum studio yeah is it is it sanitized is it westernized certainly but many of the words many of

[00:26:45] things like vinyasa and the the the the words for the poses and the terms that are used these are actually terms that if a Hindu were to walk in there those terms will be purely spiritual to them

[00:26:57] and so are are you following the practice of yoga in the company of places and people's like that that's important if i continue here's a second one if i continue to utilize the physical poses in

[00:27:09] yoga for physical well being right so as i've said you i mean it's not just me determining this this is common sense this is right you can use those poses you can you can stretch those ways

[00:27:20] it's not like you you do down or facing dog and in all of a sudden you your possessed by a demon right that's foolish and that's where the the overreaction sometimes comes from Christians which is

[00:27:32] to say hey if you do that pose uh you're you're dining with demons right um no that's not the case right but if i am doing that should i at least consider not using Hindu terms like yoga

[00:27:44] which once again yoga is a Hindu term no matter how many times we try and redefine it so as to not confuse those around me that might be from a Hindu or a neopagant persuasion what effect

[00:27:56] does it have on the people around you that you are even just saying that you do yoga think about that if if you have a Hindu friend or you let's broaden our horizons here let's pretend that that you

[00:28:08] actually move to Asia right to be a missionary or to for work or something like that and you say yeah I love yoga I do yoga can you stop for a minute and do what unfortunately most Christians here in

[00:28:20] the West are unable or unwilling to do which is this think about what they hear when you say that right that word is purely spiritual within the Hindu faith and so what they're hearing you say is that

[00:28:33] you are identifying in some form or fashion with their world view with how they see reality how they determined truth to be and then last am i stubbornly insisting that i am free to do whatever i want

[00:28:49] because of my Christian freedom with no regard to how my actions might be impacting those around me that question right should step on our toes in more ways than just yoga um that question goes into

[00:28:59] issues like drinking that goes into issues like recreational drug use that goes into issues of our speech of our language of of of all behaviors right are you stubbornly insisting that because

[00:29:12] grace covers a multitude of sins that you're free to do it every want because Paul also said why sin so that grace should abound certainly not and you know like most of the questions that

[00:29:24] come up when discussing other faith and how Christians interact with them this question does require complex discussion in deep thought rooted in the word of God but maybe what we should all

[00:29:35] realize is that the world that the new testament was written in is really not that different from the world we we we we are living in now which is that we are surrounded by practices we are surrounded

[00:29:48] by things that require deep thought and reflection on what the word says and that's not a bad thing right and in fact unfortunately many Christians have lost the ability or the willingness

[00:30:05] to do that very thing and so for you some of you might be horribly offended at what I said and lovingly I say I don't mind that and in feel free you know reach out engage with this

[00:30:20] question on Instagram you can follow me at all things dot all people you can reach out to me Jeremy at all things all people dot org this is just one of many questions that a tap is going to tackle

[00:30:34] in our pursuit to do what I think more Christians need to do which is thoughtfully interact with a source material interact with what does this group actually say what do they actually believe

[00:30:47] and if that means we have to reference the yoga sutra to to answer the question on yoga then that we're going to do that because as I've already mentioned a tap exists to explore the darkest places

[00:30:57] in worldviews to equip Christians to engage them with the gospel and so this is just one small part of that and so hopefully you benefited from that conversation feel free to share this podcast

[00:31:10] with somebody who might need it, who might be encouraged by it, who might be offended by it. Those actually might be the best people to share it with and like subscribe share follow on Spotify

[00:31:22] on Apple podcasts and all those other things and until next time like I said my name is Jeremy Jenkins the Executive Director of all things all people and we'll do it again soon.

[00:31:32] Thank you for listening to this episode of Basecamp. If you want more help engaging the least reach people in the darkest places with the gospel I want to invite you to join the all things all people engage network by joining the engage network you will receive training in

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[00:32:10] all people dot org and click on Engage Network. Thanks for listening I hope you love the show.