If Yoga Is Just Exercise, Someone Should Tell The Hindus

Recently Al Mohler was vigorously chastised by many people who took his comments about yoga and its incompatibility with Christian practice badly. His response and the links to his comments that stirred up such a tempest can be found here.

What brought this back to my mind was the strong response from Hindu's to Playboy's release of a nude yoga DVD. Now I am against such a DVD for the obvious reasons, and am no fan of Playboy and their exploitation of both women and men, but I am surprised that something so clear to Hindu's (and many others), that is, that yoga is a religious practice, can be missed by so many Christians. Lets get real here people, if you are a Christian holding Jesus as your Lord and Savior, there is not really a middle ground. As we find in 2 Corithians:

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? 15 What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said,
“I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 17 Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, 18 and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.”

2 Cor 6:14-18 (ESV)

There is no place for the practices of a false religion and Christian practice. If you do the moves of yoga without that, stop calling it yoga, because it isn't. If you are doing yoga to get spiritual clarity, realize you are trying to mix light and darkness, Christ with Belial, belief with unbelief, the temple of God with the temple of idols. Stop it! There is no place for this, instead seek to build yourself up Spiritually as God has directed in the Bible.

A Pickle

Sunday night as I came home from worship, I saw a person shooing off something in front of our house. I had no idea what it was, and at first I thought they were calling a dog. The walked on and had no dog, so I started to look. I saw a dark shadowy shape by our front kidney shaped garden. Then the shadow moved and came toward me. It was a cat. A rather pretty brown tabby, and very friendly. I went inside and told Annette and she went out to see him. Picked him up and he purred like crazy.

We left him outside as he was declawed and fixed, so we figured he would have a home to go to. Well, he seems to have adopted us. He lives in one of the rabbit tents, and comes and greets us every time we go out. Annette has even started feeding him. Justin likes him a lot, and has named him Pickle. He even brought him in the house for a while. Sparks and Milo are not as enamored by this interloper though. We are going to put of posters to find his people, but Justin will not be happy if we do.

It Is Amazing - Amazingly Unhealthy

I have not blogged for a while, for various reasons. I had a crazy busy schedule, and then I got sick with pneumonia which didn't get better. I had a small stroke, and was in hospital. For the last while I have been recovering. Looking back this has been good for me, at least God worked it that way. More than that, he was gracious in bringing healing, and renewed strength to me.

Now, as part of my recovery, I am working at dealing with high blood pressure. I am on 4 blood pressure medications among others. So far the pressure is down and staying down with meds and now with exercise and diet. However, that is lead me to start reading labels. Especially, in find the nutritional information from restaurants and prepared food interesting.

As I have done my research, I have found that restaurants pile on the salt. I mean you can't avoid all sodium but on restaurant in one dish had more that the daily allowance for sodium. That is one meal, meaning you shouldn't have an more that day. Some meals are a bit better, but for the most part they are surprisingly high. I even checked out some donuts, and although not as bad, among those I checked you are talking approximately 200 to 400 mg of sodium. I believe the recommended amount for a day is around 2400 mg. That means a few donuts, and you can have a quarter to half of that.

I don't know how sodium affects me. For some people it makes a big difference; for others not so much--I do know this, that much sodium cannot be good for anyone. I guess eating out will become much less common for me.

Having said all this there are some meals at restaurants that are not too bad, but unless they tell you on their menu the nutritional information (at least the important stuff like fats, saturated fats, carbs, protein and sodium) or make sheets available when asked, for those who are concerned about those things, or even those not so concerned, eating out is dangerous.

Inspiring

This was sent to me by a minister friend from Whitby. As I watched it I was reminded how easily we can complain about the things we don't have or the struggles that are part of our life. Yet, this reminds us that it is much more important to be thankful for what we have been given.