BGC World magazine is a publication of the Illinois-based Baptist General Conference. BGC has a long history dating back to the 1800s when Swedish Baptists came to America to escape religious persecution. With a heritage like that, it is with dismay that we must report that the May 2008 BGC World magazine is carrying an article about fitness written by contemplative proponent Jan Johnson. The article, titled Bent Every Which Way shows photos of a young woman in various yoga positions.
Jan Johnson is the author of Enjoying the Presence of God and When the Soul Listens. In the latter book, she states:
Contemplative prayer, in its simplest form, is a prayer in which you still your thoughts and emotions and focus on God Himself. This puts you in a better state to be aware of God’s presence, and it makes you better able to hear God’s voice, correcting, guiding, and directing you. (p. 16)
Johnson’s explanation of the initial stages of contemplative prayer leaves no doubt that “stilling” your thoughts means only one thing; she explains:
In the beginning, it is usual to feel nothing but a cloud of unknowing…. If you’re a person who has relied on yourself a great deal to know what’s going on, this unknowing will be unnerving. (p. 120)
Johnson points to several mystics in the book, including Henri Nouwen, Thomas Merton, Madame Guyon, Brother Lawrence, John of the Cross, and others. Brother Lawrence would resonate with Johnson’s message of “unnerving” prayer. In his book, The Practice of the Presence of God, it says he “danced violently like a madman” when he went into the “presence.”(1) Thomas Merton likened contemplative prayer to an LSD trip(2) while Henri Nouwen denounced Jesus Christ as being the only way to salvation.3 He did this after years of practicing mysticism and encouraged Christians to move from the “moral to the mystical.”4
In Johnson’s book, she references the book, The Cloud of Unknowing Ray Yungen discusses this book:
To my dismay, I discovered this ‘mystical silence’ is accomplished by the same methods used by New Agers to achieve their silence–the mantra and the breath! Contemplative prayer is the repetition of what is referred to as a prayer word or sacred word until one reaches a state where the soul, rather than the mind, contemplates God. Contemplative prayer teacher and Zen master Willigis Jager brought this out when he postulated:
Do not reflect on the meaning of the word; thinking and reflecting must cease, as all mystical writers insist. Simply “sound” the word silently, letting go of all feelings and thoughts.
Those with some theological training may recognize this teaching as the historical stream going back centuries to such figures as Meister Eckhart, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, and Julian of Norwich. One of the most well-known writings on the subject is the classic 14th century treatise, The Cloud of Unknowing, written by an anonymous author. It is essentially a manual on contemplative prayer inviting a beginner to:
Take just a little word, of one syllable rather than of two … With this word you are to strike down every kind of thought under the cloud of forgetting.
The premise here is that in order to really know God, mysticism must be practiced–the mind has to be shut down or turned off so that the cloud of unknowing where the presence of God awaits can be experienced. Practitioners of this method believe that if the sacred words are Christian, you will get Christ–it is simply a matter of intent even though the method is identical to occult and Eastern practices. (A Time of Departing, 2nd ed., p. 33)
Many Christians do not understand that yoga is the heartbeat of Hinduism and it does not belong in biblical Christianity. Pastor Larry DeBruyn explains:
Christianity cannot be integrated with yoga and remain Christian. To think otherwise imperils the Christian truth and faith. As the managing editor of Hinduism Today, Sannyasin Arumugaswami, remarks, “Hinduism is the soul of yoga” based as it is on Hindu Scripture and developed by Hindu sages. Yoga opens up new and more refined states of mind, and to understand them one needs to believe in and understand the Hindu way of looking at God. . . . A Christian trying to adapt these practices will likely disrupt their own Christian beliefs”. East is east, and west is west, and if Christianity is to remain Christian, “the twain” should never be married.5
Jan Johnson is in like-minded company with Merton, Lawrence, Nouwen, and The Cloud of Unknowing, but given the Baptist General Conference’s heritage, incorporating the spirituality of Johnson into BGC seems like a paradox of major proportions. What’s more, the yoga photos are what we would call truly “unnerving.”
Notes:
1. Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God (New York: NY: Doubleday, Image Book edition, 1977, translated by John Delaney), p. 34.
2. Thomas Merton said this to Matthew Fox, as Fox stated in an online interview.
3. Henri Nouwen, Sabbatical Journey, page 51, 1998 Hardcover Edition
4. Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus, 1989.
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