Sarah Palin and Yoga

Sarah Palin, former governor of Alaska and a professing Christian, told the media in December that she is a longtime yoga enthusiast. Her regimen includes the "downward dog" and the "camel pose" ("Doing the Downward Grizzly," Breitbart, Jan. 8, 2014). No doubt she sincerely believes she is doing no wrong, but this only goes to highlight the confusion of the times in which we live. Having studied yoga before I was saved (as a member of Paramahansa Yogananda's Self-Realization Fellowship Society) and having lived as a missionary in a Hindu country for 22 years, I can testify that it is impossible to disassociate yoga from Hinduism. The term "yoga" means union and refers to the union of man with the pantheistic god through meditation. It is designed to overcome bad karma and end the reincarnation life cycles so that "the self reenters its original state of purity and consciousness" ("Yoga," Encyclopedia Britannica Online). "Once the aspirant has learned to control and suppress the obscuring mental activities of his mind and has succeeded in ending his attachment to material objects, he will be able to enter Samadhi (self-collectedness)--i.e., a state of deep concentration that results in a blissful, ecstatic union with the ultimate reality." There are many ways to get exercise. Why mess around with something that was clearly authored by demons? "But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils. Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and of the table of devils" (1 Corinthians 10:20-21).

(Friday Church News Notes, January 17, 2014, www.wayoflife.org [email protected], 866-295-4143)

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