{"id":23847,"date":"2018-11-13T14:31:07","date_gmt":"2018-11-13T20:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=23847"},"modified":"2021-07-29T05:21:33","modified_gmt":"2021-07-29T10:21:33","slug":"pastor-exposes-modern-ignorance-gets-rebuked-by-the-ignorant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2018\/11\/13\/pastor-exposes-modern-ignorance-gets-rebuked-by-the-ignorant\/","title":{"rendered":"Pastor Exposes Modern Ignorance, Gets Rebuked By The Ignorant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A pastor at one of the local megachurches, which I assume is generally heavy on the Gospel, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.news-leader.com\/story\/news\/local\/ozarks\/2018\/11\/12\/james-river-pastor-yoga-has-demonic-roots-springfield-yogis\/1897249002\/\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener\">lays down a little law and gets lambasted for it<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A pastor of an Assemblies of God megachurch recently took aim at yoga, saying it has &#8220;demonic roots&#8221; and warning Christians to avoid the popular activity.<\/p>\n<p>Pastor John Lindell told the attendees of James River Church in Ozark \u2014 which has a congregation of about 10,500, according to a 2016 report \u2014 that the positions in yoga were &#8220;created with demonic intent to open you up to demonic power because Hinduism is demonic.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Members of Springfield&#8217;s yoga community are now speaking out.<\/p>\n<p>A Christian yogi says his practice has brought him closer to God and wants others to know that it&#8217;s possible to do sun salutations while following Christ. One owner of a yoga studio said she&#8217;s worried that small local businesses are being hurt. An instructor, feeling on edge after a Florida yoga studio was shot up last week, can&#8217;t shake a fear that someone might take the church&#8217;s anti-yoga message too far.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I am pretty sure that there&#8217;s a whole commandment about not following other religions somewhere, and I didn&#8217;t see any footnotes in it about it being okay to follow other religions&#8217; practices with your fingers crossed or not believing in the actual ontology behind the practices.  It doesn&#8217;t matter if Asherah poles help with television reception.  They&#8217;re still the practices of another religion, and a lot of bad things happen in the old testament when Israel does something similar.<\/p>\n<p>To quote Mohatma Gandhi, &#8220;B*tch, you do realize this is my actual religion, right?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hBMc9s8oDWE\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Now, you know, gentle reader, I read a lot of books about Eastern religions and philosophy here at MfBJN (such as <em><a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2017\/05\/08\/book-report-the-upanishads-translated-by-vernon-katz-and-thomas-egenes-2015\/\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener\">The Upanishads<\/a><\/em>), so I&#8217;m not exactly a firebreathing fundamentalist Christian out to whip believers into a frenzy.<\/p>\n<p>But practicing yoga while undereducated does put yoga practitioners in a bad spot. Either they have to acknowledge the ontology and origins of yoga and its conflict with Christian teachings, or they have to say that they&#8217;re just a fitness program with a veneer of Otherness for flavor.  Or defend not knowing where this stuff comes from and what it might mean.  This is the standard procedure, but defending it or acknowledging one&#8217;s cognitive dissonance is not.<\/p>\n<p>Because part of being Christian, unlike part of being Buddhist and many other non-monotheistic religions, means you can&#8217;t pick and choose spirituality from a variety of sources and traditions to blend together to make your own special salad.  That&#8217;s my understanding of it, anyway.<\/p>\n<p>This pastor is just trying to remind members of his congregation about it.<\/p>\n<p>Now, about those essential oils&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A pastor at one of the local megachurches, which I assume is generally heavy on the Gospel, lays down a little law and gets lambasted for it: A pastor of an Assemblies of God megachurch recently took aim at yoga, saying it has &#8220;demonic roots&#8221; and warning Christians to avoid the popular activity. Pastor John [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23847"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28694,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23847\/revisions\/28694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}