P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

Thanks, Connie. Yoga seems like a win-win activity—reducing stress and increasing fitness at the same time you enhance your spirituality. The word yoga in fact means yoked with the divine. And what could be wrong with that?

Plenty, actually. I’m concerned about the type of meditation associated with yoga. And I think you should be too.

Pastor Lonnie! Are you becoming a spiritual spoil-sport?

No, friend. I don’t enjoy waving yellow caution flags when people are speeding down the fast lane for spiritual fulfillment. But the fact is, yoga can get you more than you bargained for—even connecting you with supernatural forces of evil. Now that’s a strong statement, I know, but I’m prepared to back it up with the Bible. Before doing that, let me say what I like about yogamania.

People are committing to self improvement, stretching body, mind and soul. That’s great. Fitness is better than fatness, and most of us could do a better job handling stress. And certainly our neglected souls could use some attention. So far, so good.

But there’s a down side to the world of yoga, and I’m afraid it’s serious.

Come with me back to the beginning. Imagine yourself in the Garden of Eden where the devil seduced our first parents, Adam and Eve. Over here is the tree of temptation mentioned in Genesis 2 verse 9: The tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The devil, lurking there in the guise of a serpent, promises self-improvement and spiritual enlightenment. “When you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." Genesis 3:5. Satan blurs the distinction between good and evil—and also the difference between humanity and divinity.

Right here is one of my major concerns with the mindset of yoga. It denies the crucial distinction between sinful creatures and their holy, immortal Creator. God is downgraded into the essence of our own inner consciousness.

This is the Hindu and Buddhist view of divinity, cleverly adapted for Western culture. For Yoga practitioners, divinity is an impersonal god-force that supposedly exists naturally within us. God is something like cosmic electricity diffused everywhere, accessed through meditation practices.

The Bible teaches something much different mindset in meditation. God is a living, loving person who lives within those who believe in Jesus. We read in 1 John 4:15: “If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God.” Experiencing God is a shared experience through His Holy Spirit: “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.” Romans 8:16.

Do you see the difference between experiencing God in Christianity versus yoga? It all comes down to three basic things. Number one, we are not the divinity that created us. Number two, we worship a loving personal God, not some impersonal god-force. And third, only through believing in Jesus can we experience God. This is a shared experience through the Holy Spirit living within all believers, connecting us all with each other.

Obviously, the way we view God affects we way we meditate. We’re not clearing away clutter that inhibits our natural internal god-force. Instead of emptying the mind, we fill it with thoughts of Jesus. And that crowds out selfishness and sin.

It’s all about love. Loving the Lord our God with all our hearts and souls and minds. Matthew 22:37. That’s the first and great commandment—not just for meditation but for life. And what comes next? Loving our neighbor as ourselves. Verse 38. Living God’s love transforms families—your home family, your church family, and your workplace family. Even neighborhoods and whole communities can be transformed.

God intends Christian meditation to be a powerful force that revolutionizes our social relationships.

And what about ecological concerns? Christians have much more motivation to care about the planet than those who believe it evolved from gasses and chemicals. Creator God designed this earth for us and then entrusted it to us in love. After sin polluted the planet, He redeemed it through Jesus. And Jesus came not only to save sinners but even this planet polluted by sin. We read in Romans 8:21 that “the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” In other words, the deliverance already given to believers will be extended to this planet itself. Christ will recreate this earth, returning it to its pristine paradise beauty. You can read about it in the last two chapters of the Bible. When all is said and done, the meek will inherit the earth, just as Jesus promised.

Here is God’s message to our greedy, dysfunctional, polluting world: “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, and that he may send the Christ, who has been appointed for you-- even Jesus. He must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago.” Acts 3:19-21.

“Repent? Come on, Pastor Lonnie, don’t be such a killjoy! Go ahead and tell us about a loving, personal God. We can handle that. But don’t tell us He expects us to stop sinning and doing our own thing.”

Listen, brother, sister. I love you too much to lie to you. You know that. I’ve got to tell the truth, even when it hurts. And the truth is, yes—God loves us so much that He accepts us wherever we are and whatever we’re doing. But He loves us too much to leave us there! Now relax, God doesn’t expect us to repent by ourselves. In fact we’re incapable of changing our old habits. We can’t wrestle ourselves away from the Marlboro man or escape the allures of internet porn.

God knows that without Jesus, real goodness is out of reach. Why? The prophet Jeremiah explains in chapter 17, verse 9: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” The apostle Paul adds in Romans 3:10: "There is no one righteous, not even one.”

And that’s another problem with yoga. It connects us with our inner selves, but goodness within us isn’t good enough. Our guilt is not just a stressful feeling we can meditate away. So we need more than a guru teaching us how to think. We need a Savior to forgive our sin. And sin is more than ignorance needing enlightenment. Sin is separation from a holy and Almighty God that causes our own alienation from each other.

Well, what hope do we have? In a word, it’s Jesus. He sacrificed Himself to bring us back to God and to each other. That’s what happened when He died for our sins upon the cross. He came to humanity, the Bible says, “to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins.” Acts 26:18.

Praise the Lord! Christ by His death and resurrection conquered sin and Satan on our behalf. Now God can fully and freely forgive us! Our part is to repent—to turn from our own darkness to His light, from our weakness to His strength—as we receive God’s gift of Jesus Christ.

Listen, my friend. Any notion of spirituality apart from Christ is only a delusion. Jesus said: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6. So Christ is not just one of many ways to find God—He's the only way. Through Him, God “delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love.” Colossians 1:13.

There again is that wonderful word: love! Remember—it’s all about love. The solution to selfishness is not yoga meditation, emptying our minds of desire. Instead, we redirect our desires toward loving Jesus.

So now we know God’s program for meditation: loving Him because He first loved us. And then we go out into the world and love one another as He has loved us, caring both for the people and the earth around us. And so we are transformed into physically, socially and ecologically responsible citizens of society while anticipating the return of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But what if the coming of Jesus doesn’t fit into your plans? Then by all means change your plans, my friend. God will help you!