I
was rather bemused, a
few weeks ago,
by the rumpus surrounding the decision of a priest in
the UK to
refuse permission for yoga classes in his church. Gospel churches
have been resisting requests to host such classes for years, and
mostly the reasons are well understood and not thought newsworthy.
It
is no accident that the Sanskrit word “yoga” is linked to our
word “yoke”. We have the right to ask of everyone who promotes
yoga, “What exactly are you expecting us to yoke ourselves to?”
A
lady who was brought on to the radio as a spokesperson for yoga had
to admit that there was a religious dimension to the practice. While
superficially yoga may
simply be
a set of
physical exercises
to bring about inner
peace and calm, there are overtones of an Eastern spirituality that
is foreign to what Christianity teaches. Put bluntly, the underlying
philosophy goes like this: spirit - good, body - bad, and you must
overcome the downward pull of the body by the exercise of mind over
matter.
Now
certainly, there is a
place
in Christianity for
training the mind to
stand up to the promptings of the flesh, whether those lead you to
laziness or to unwholesome thoughts.
“To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the
Spirit is life and peace” (Romans
8:6 ESV). “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the
things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of
God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are
on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in
God” (Colossians 3:1-3).
Yet
at the same time Christianity
views our bodies as
important –
too important to be suppressed or yoked to an oriental philosophy.
Jesus
Christ was raised bodily from the dead. It wasn’t simply a
disembodied ghost that left Jesus’
tomb on resurrection day. And because we follow where Jesus leads, we
who trust in Him
can look forward to a bodily resurrection as well. Quite how this
works out, I don’t know. It is
beyond
anything in our experience.
As
dear suffering Job exclaims, “... after my skin has been thus
destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God”, the God who in Christ
has mercifully chosen me to be His own while still in the flesh,
loved me, saved me from sin and takes me to live with Him forever.
This is quite different from the
way things are in
many
Eastern
philosophies.
These may talk of reincarnation, which holds that you may come back
to
life as
someone or something completely different, depending on what you have
done in this life. Or
they may talk of the human spirit being so liberated from all care
that it is totally unburdened and absorbed into the greater spirit,
thereby arguably losing any sense of identity.
No
doubt many yoga teachers present themselves as well-meaning,
public-spirited people putting on a service to the community. As a
leader of a gospel church, I would still wish to insist politely that
their yoga with its dubious yoke belongs in buildings other than
ours. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free; stand firm
therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians
5:1).
