IMPORTANT UPDATE: On January 12, 2009, regarding our recent article “Contemplative Sightings, and Why We Should Be Concerned”, in which it was mentioned that Randy Alcorn was recommending Richard Foster’s book Celebration of Discipline, Randy Alcorn’s assistant contacted Lighthouse Trails and said that Randy has agreed to remove the recommendation to Foster. He did ask, however, that the following message be relayed to us: “[Randy] doesn’t believe in painting a broad brush over certain authors when we don’t agree with them in every area. For example, he has read three of Dallas Willard’s books, and while he doesn’t agree with him in certain areas, for the most part he found them to be very Christ-centered and biblical. So he strongly disagrees with the negative references to Willard in the books you sent.” Alcorn’s assistant said she looked through the books we sent, but did not say whether Alcorn saw them or not. P.S. A second contact from Randy Alcorn’s assistant to Lighthouse Trails on January 12th was made. We have been asked to post the following statement by Randy Alcorn:
“I do not give an overall endorsement for contemplative practices. There are many false and dangerous contemplative practices so it all depends on the context and what one is contemplating on. I do believe in meditating on Scripture and on our Lord, as this is explicitly commanded and commended.” — Randy Alcorn, 1/12/09
OUR COMMENT: For anyone who has any doubts as to whether Dallas Willard embraces mystical spirituality, please note that he wrote the foreword to Ruth Haley Barton’s book, Invitation to Silence and Solitude, in which Haley Barton encourages mantra-style (repeating a word or phrase) meditation. Haley Barton was trained at the interspiritual, panentheistic Shalem Institute in Washington DC, and today trains pastors and leaders in contemplative spirituality.
2ND COMMENT: We appreciate Randy Alcorn’s concern about “dangerous contemplative practices.” However, many people think that contemplative practices can be OK “depend[ing] on the context” and “what one is contemplating on.” Lighthouse Trails believes that even if the intent is to focus on Jesus and the Bible, there is never a time when the repeating of a word or phrase is safe … or biblical.
Research analyst and author Ray Yungen discusses the concept of “intent” with regard to the contemplative prayer controversy:
One of the most common objections made by the defenders and admirers of Foster and [Brennan] Manning is that they are not really teaching Eastern mysticism, because their focus and attention is on the God of Christianity; they argue that their focus is for people to walk more closely with Jesus, not Shiva or Buddha, thus the teachings are westernized even though the practices are identical to the East. On the surface this may seem like a valid defense, but listen to the founder of the top contemplative prayer school in America (Shalem Institute), and see why this defense is precarious at best: Tilden Edwards explains, “This mystical stream [contemplative prayer] is the Western bridge to Far Eastern spirituality” [from Edwards’ book, Spiritual Friend].
This means that, regardless of intent, Western mysticism, due to its common practices with the East, produces a passage into the understanding of Eastern spiritual concepts. Thus, if you practice Western yoga or pray the mantra, you go into the same trance as the East; if you open yourself, through this trance, to the Western spirit world, you end up in the same demonic realm or with gods of the East; then, if you open yourself to the demonic realm, you enter into the same realm of consciousness as the East where all is One and everyone and everything is seen as God–hence panentheism; finally, if you embrace panentheism, the Gospel loses its significance, and each individual feels persuaded to find his or her own way to God. What begins as a seemingly innocent “Jesus Prayer” [a contemplative practice] becomes a rejection of the Gospel. In other words, you can call a practice by any other name, but it is the same practice, hence the same results. For example, if you were to jump off a cliff with the intent to fly saying the word “fly, fly, fly” as you jump off and someone else jumped off the same cliff with the intent to hit the bottom saying “fall, fall, fall” as he jumps off, in either case both will hit the bottom. Unfortunately, this is exactly what is happening in contemplative prayer, although the intent may be to honor Christ. (A Time of Departing, p. 86)
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