Should Christians Do Yoga? How To Combine Energy Medicine & Religion, Flat Earth Christianity,...

Hey, what's up? It's Ben Greenfield and on today's show I've done it again. I am taking a dive into a controversial topic. In this case whether or not Christians should do yoga and how people of a religious background such as Christianity can combine their religious beliefs with the use of modalities like acupuncture and biofeedback and whole homeopathic medicine, chiropractic and energy medicine and ayurvedic and Chinese medicine and yeah, yoga. In other words, should Christians do the down dog? That's what this podcast is all about.

So it might be a little bit controversial, but I think you'll get a lot out of it.

It's actually super duper interesting. This guy named Toby Sumter, a pastor in Idaho. So.

As if that's not conservative enough to be a pastor from Idaho. So you'll enjoy this one, I think, and I'm curious to hear your feedback on it. This podcast is actually brought to you by TradeStation. TradeStation helps active military veterans and first responders get the most out of the market by teaching them how to frickin trade how to make millions on the Internets. Maybe not millions, but I don't know. People do it right? They invest. And TradeStation is dedicated to helping everyone who has invested so much into this country.

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In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

If we get that wrong or we say only living is really the crucial thing, and, yeah, maybe there's life after death, but I don't know, who's to say you're going to end up idolizing this life. You're going to get things in a bad order. You're going to get them imbalanced. The question is, is it lawful? But then is it edify? And I think especially in this area of sort of alternative medicine and so on, questions to ask would be, is my use of this causing me to grow in holiness and godliness?

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

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Hey, folks, it's pretty much not a secret that lately I've taken a somewhat deep dive into what a lot of people consider to be woo woo, meaning forms of healing and enhancing the body and the brain that involve modalities like acupuncture and yoga and chiropractic medicine and energy medicine, acupuncture, ayurvedic energy points, traditional Chinese medicine, and even this concept of qi or prana or chakra or life force or whatever you want to call it. And you know, a lot of these things were dismissed for a long time as not just medically questionable, but also religiously questionable. But now it seems that a lot of these kind of once suspect health practices have gained approval and they've been recategorized as somewhat non religious and instead falling under the auspices of healthcare or fitness or scientifically acceptable modalities. And they seem to have gained a great deal of cultural legitimacy because people interpret them as science instead of as religion. And the use of meditation and visualization are commonly prescribed by even physicians to reduce stress. And chiropractic medicine, which we did a podcast episode on a few weeks ago, even though it still gets ridiculed every now and again, it's actually acquired a pretty decent amount of respectability and in many cases spinal adjustments that you might have done are a lot of times combined with energy balancing and chakras and meridian pressure points, and a lot of these things that, frankly, because it is also no secret on this show that I am a professing Christian, I've been called out on because I have a strong belief in the power of things like prayer and the ability of God to work miracles and to heal. But I also embrace and personally utilize a lot of these unconventional therapies. I mean, I was doing. I was doing Kundalini yoga in my sauna just this morning. And, you know, that's something that definitely stems from a non Christian tradition. Well, recently I was hiking down in Scottsdale, Arizona. And while I was hiking, as I'm prone to do, I was listening to a podcast, in this case a sermon from what's called the Trinity Reformed Church Podcast. And the sermon was by this guy named Toby Sumpter. And in that sermon, Toby, he went into things like how. How folks used to do things like pray over people and anoint them with oil. And he kind of described the link between spiritual health and physical ailments. And it was a really great message, especially considering that while I was listening, literally that day, I was at a medical conference where there was a ton of discussion among a lot of the world's top physicians about energy medicine and its growing relevance and efficacy. And so I decided that in an attempt to frame for myself and for you, particularly if you are Christian or if you are Trying to discover whether or not these newer forms of alternative medicine that really are based on non Christian past in many cases are something that are acceptable for you to be delving into or what the Bible has to say about these things. And so I invited Toby onto the podcast. He graciously accepted. And I've actually attended his church in the past. I used to live in Moscow, Idaho. I've met Toby. He's a great guy. He's the pastor of Trinity Reformed Church in Moscow. And he has a master's degree in theological studies from the Erskine, I don't know if I'm pronouncing that properly, the Erskine Theological Seminary. And he has a bachelor's in liberal arts and culture from New St. Andrews College, which, by the way, if you haven't heard of that, is a great little liberty Arts College in Moscow, Idaho. Toby also you can find on Amazon. He's the author of the book A Son of Glory and the book Blood Bought World. And he has four kids along with his wife Jenny down in Moscow. Now, before we delve in and welcome Toby to the show, everything that we talk about, including the specific sermon that sparked my desire to record this episode, Toby's books, his blog, which is excellent, the Trinity Reformed Church podcast, and other related episodes that I've done on energy medicine, you can all find over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Toby. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com T O B Y so, Toby, that all said and out of the way. Welcome to the show, man.

Hey, thanks so much, Ben. It's real pleasure to be with you.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, kind of a funny story, I think the first time that I met you, I believe you had it was like pink or purple or blue hair.

Yeah.

Am I remembering that correctly?

You would bring that up first?

Gotta break the ice somehow, man.

Did you really.

Was it pink?

Well, you know, it was. So actually, originally it was burgundy. And then so I was on a. I went on a mission trip. My poor dad. So I'm a pastor's kid, which should, you know, explain some of this. But I went on a missions trip, a buddy, and I thought it would be cool one night to dye my hair burgundy. And my poor.

Father the next morning said, oh, we gotta take care of that. Took me down to a hair salon in which the lady did her very best to strip it out of my hair, leaving it a rather pinkish color.

Yeah.

And so I think when I arrived in Moscow, probably when you met me, it was maybe, maybe almost a Year later. But that was sort of the color still of my hair as it was growing out.

Okay, gotcha.

See, I thought you were just some rebellious punk rock and roller, but it turns out that it was all innocent.

Huh.

There's probably some blend of that, but. Yeah, no, I. No, that's. And that's how I. Yeah. And I would point out. Yeah, I think I was like, 17 or something like that. So, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

It was a while ago. Blame it on youth. Hey, so like I mentioned as I was introducing you.

It'S kind of a growing phenomenon, even among Christians to be doing things like yoga classes and meditation and visualization and utilizing energy medicine to heal themselves. And it's not as though Christians have not been appropriating other religious traditions for centuries. Right. Like Easter, for example, used to be a fertility ritual. You know, that's why we have the bunny rabbits and the eggs that you get more babies. But now we celebrate that as a Christian holiday. And I might be mistaken on my historical interpretation of Easter, but it seems as though that's. That's one thing that we've kind of claimed, you know, we could say the same thing about Christmas in some cases, I believe, as well. But what's the difference between doing something like that and something like yoga?

Yeah. So this is a massive topic as you've already sketched.

We've got time.

Yeah. So in the Christian view of the world, as you know, God created everything.

So at the core, back at the beginning, God is the creator of everything. And so everything that God made is good. And so everything in heaven, in outer space, on the earth, under the earth, you know, it's his good creation. You can read about it in Genesis, chapter one. The problem comes with. After God creates the first man, the first woman, Adam and Eve, you know this, but they rebel against God. Adam sins. And the promise was that if Adam was obedient, faithful, trusted God, that he would be blessed. He would live forever. He would enjoy God's creation and in communion with God forever. And in fact, he puts him in this garden in the middle of the world that he's freshly made, and everything in the world and everything in the garden except one tree, everything else is a yes. If you imagine when your kids are.

Little.

You have to work hard not to turn everything into a no.

Everything.

Except the big apple tree. Because we're all convinced it was an apple.

Right.

Whatever it was.

But anyways, everything's a yes. So everything in the world is good, everything is blessed, everything's for the good of his people. He says, be fruitful, multiply. Fill the earth. Find all the cool stuff I put in the world. Sometimes in lessons I'll talk about. Genesis 2 is actually kind of like a treasure map. You read Genesis 2 and God puts them in a garden. He says, there's a river flowing out of this garden, and it divides into four different rivers. And down one river there's gold and bedulum stones. And you think about God telling this to the very first human being, and what's gold? And how's he going to find it? But God sketches this treasure map and basically is telling him the world is full of really cool stuff, amazing stuff. Go find it and use it. Find out what it's useful for.

So that's the backstory. But then Adam does the one thing that God says do not do. He says, if you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die. The servant comes into the garden, tempts the woman. She's deceived. She eats. She gives some to her husband. Rather than remaining faithful to God, her husband acquiesces, sins, and plunges the world into sin and death. And so this begins the story of the Bible and the story of the human race. And so from here on out, you have this good creation that God made, but now have sin and death that's contaminated it in some way. And so Even in Genesis 3, as God is confronting the situation, says, now the ground is. Is going to fight with you, Adam. So rather than it being somewhat easier to work the ground and find all the cool stuff that God put in the ground, now there's going to be thorns and thistles growing out of the ground. It's going to fight you. And now the woman is made to bear children. Now that's going to be. You're going to bear children with great pain and agony. God says there's going to be divisions and enmity and animosity in the world. And ultimately Adam and Eve and their children are going to die. And so there's this good world, and yet there's this real brokenness in the world. And there's death in the world and there's dying in the world, there's animosity and division in the world. And so when you ask me, although.

We'Ve fixed most of that with epidural anesthesia during labor. So it's all taken care of.

It's all good now, Right? Yeah. And Twitter. Right, Right. It's between Twitter, but, you know. Yeah. Right. Sometimes we pretend, and this really is the issue. So you come to the world and you say something like, what about acupuncture or what about Eastern meditation practices or anything like that?

And as a Christian, you come in, you say, well, anything good in the world is from God.

However, sin and death is really has done a number on the world and on people in particular. So following this opening episode of sin entering the world, you have this division that develops in the human race. God actually promises this in Genesis 3:15. He says that the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent are going to be at odds, but ultimately the seed of the woman is going to crush the. The head of the seed of the serpent. Ultimately, I believe that's a prophecy of Jesus, and on the cross, he is lifted up in order to crush evil, in order to crush sin, in order to destroy the power of death, in order to take away our sins, basically.

In order to remedy what happened way back when in the Garden of Eden.

Exactly. So ultimately, Jesus comes in order to break the power of sin and death. And that's what the gospel is. The New Testament is this gospel that Jesus is God come to rescue the human race from sin, death, and the devil.

Right. And it's not just the gospel, by the way, for those of you listening in, go listen to my podcast interview with Rob Bell, because this is also an amazing story. I mean, even if you're listening and you haven't read the Bible, you aren't familiar with this story. And. And you might think that some of this stuff is religious gobbledygook. The fact is that it's actually a pretty cool, magical story. In the same way that J.R.R. tolkien's Lord of the Rings is a wonderful story, and C.S. lewis's Chronicles of Narni is a wonderful story. And what Toby is describing is not just religion, it's also one of, in my opinion, the greatest, coolest stories that exist.

It's funny you say that, Ben. I was just reading the Gospel of Matthew this morning, and I got to the section of the betrayal of Jesus, his arrest, his trial, and his crucifixion. It's all at the end of Matthew. And actually, I was just thinking that very thing. I thought, you know, of course I believe this, and this story, I believe, is the center of human history. But at the same time as I was reading it, I was actually thinking like, this is just an amazing story. Yeah, it's a beautiful story. And I thought to myself, you know, even if somebody says, I'm not A Christian, I'm not a believer. They should still read the Gospels. And I think they would be compelled by the beauty of the story.

If not actually drawn, to love Christ. But back to your question.

Long story long. So we come whenever we come into the world and we pick something up and we say, what do I think about this as Christian? We have that backstory which is good creation, fallenness of man, and then this salvation coming through Christ. But in the meantime, human history has these two lines. The line of faith, the line that looks to God for salvation, looks to God for forgiveness, and ultimately looks to God for redemption from this problem. And then you also have this other line, this line of the serpent, the line of those who continue in their rebellion, hate God and hate one another. Now, of course, because we're people and because we're actually still made in the image of God, even when we rebel against him, we don't, you know, just, we don't run around with pitchforks and, you know, sneers on our faces, you know, cackling wickedly most of the time, right in our sin, we like to pretty ourselves up, we like to pat ourselves on the back, we like to justify ourselves. And so because we want to be right, we want to be good, we want to be thought well of. And so the seed of the serpent, you know, isn't just doesn't look like a bunch of, you know, Halloween characters. The seed of the serpent is often, you know, people who tuck their shirts in and work out at the gym and have nice looking families. But the principle is that they are serving themselves. They want to find a way for themselves in the world to be successful apart from God. And so they're going to do things their own way. And the Bible says that the end of that is ultimately death. And it's rebellion against God because God made them, God loves them, God made this world, God gives them life and health and so on. So what we do apart from God is what the Bible says. We make idols, we pretty up our rebellion.

We give it all kinds of fancy names, but ultimately it's us doing life without God. It's us doing life on our own terms, us trying to justify ourselves. So then you come again to the question, okay, I found this thing in the world and I think a lot depends on, okay, what are you using it for? Where did it come from, what has it been used for? If it's something that God made, you know, it's a tangerine, you know, then it's, I would say it's by definition Part of God's creation. God made it. It has a basic goodness. Now, just because it's good doesn't mean you can't do anything bad with it. You know, I could take a tangerine and, you know, chuck it at my neighbor's head, right? And, and, you know, I can't justify that by saying, well, it's part of God's good creation. No, you can misuse God's good creation. It's meant to be, you know, the skin's meant to be peeled and it's meant to be eaten and enjoyed. Likewise, we can do that with lots of, in lots of ways. We can take things that God made that's good, and then we, we can misuse them. And so when we come into, you know, an Eastern culture that, you know, for example, doesn't know God, we have to be asking questions like, okay, is there something in this that's part of God's original good creation, a way he made the world, or is this a way of living life apart from God?

Now, if I could interrupt you real quick before you jump into answering that question you mentioned, and I didn't want to necessarily.

Skim over this. You mentioned that the Eastern processes or these Eastern practices are void of a belief in God or presence of God. I admittedly am not well versed in the history, but is that indeed the case? Did most of this stuff arise from pretty much zero background in a belief in the Christian God or any form of historic Christian theology?

Right. Well, I would say that's a really important question, and I don't know the thorough answer to that myself.

I mean. Well, I can tell you I read a lot. I'm reading a book about marma points right now where I'm learning how to, how to massage different points on the body to elicit certain reactions. Like there's a point on the elbow that you can massage to assist you if you have stomach pain, for example, or there's a point towards the top of the head that can reduce nausea or morning sickness. And I've read this book cover to cover. It's a comprehensive treatise of traditional Chinese medicine and also Ayurvedic medicine. And there is nothing, any, any discussion of Christianity or God therein when it lays out the historical context of at least those two practices, which I know influence a great deal of the. The modern versions of Eastern medicine practice in the U.S. so from what I've experienced, the answer is no.

But I was curious if you had come across anything.

Yeah, I mean, part of, part of the research that would be interesting to do is, I mean, there were, there were early, there have been, there has been Christianity in the East. So we, you know, at least tradition says that after the ascension of Jesus, the apostles scattered basically.

Across the world. Jesus told them, go into all the world, baptizing the nations, discipling the nations, teaching them the gospel, teaching them to walk with God through Jesus. And so the tradition said that some of the early apostles and Christians went East and made it into places like China and so forth. So a fascinating study would be to say.

What kind of influence has Christianity had on the East? But I think that's the key question, though, is people need to dig through that carefully and say, what is part of God's good creation? What is potentially influence that comes from God's new creation in Christ? And what stuff is part of man's rebellion against God and trying to hide from God? That's what has to be teased out. And I think that's the really crucial question about these things. I think it's. We can't just. We don't want to be just utilitarian and say, if it works, it must be fine. Because again, there's lots of things that, you know, either might seem to work, might work for different reasons, or are working, but are working for bad reasons. And we really need to, we need to be careful about that. I think one thing that I will say is as a Christian, I have a supernatural view of the world. The Bible invites us to believe that the world is more than just matter. God is immaterial. God the Son became man. But we see evidence of miracles, angels, demons, evil spirits, the Holy Spirit.

So one of the things, of course, is that I staunchly believe in the supernatural world and in supernatural realities now.

Related to that energetic medicine like meridian therapy and kinesiology and therapeutic touch, and a lot of these, they really are focused on balancing or releasing energy in the body for the advancements of health or the treatment of disease. And it's called all sorts of things like bioenergy and vital force and life force and cosmic energy and chi. But are you saying that when a Christian, for example, is considering whether or not they're going to utilize one of these healing modalities that they don't necessarily need to be able to scientifically explain the energy.

Because it falls into the category of something spiritual or something supernatural? I mean, can we say that invisible energy forces are something that.

Would be acceptable or okay in terms of fitting into a Christian worldview?

I think the answer would have to be it Depends. So the Bible tells us in James 5, for example, that people who are sick should call the elders of the church over and that they should ask the elders to pray over them, to anoint them with oil, and that they should confess their sins, and that you should expect that God will be at work in that prayer to bring healing.

So, which definitely falls into like a woo woo form of healing or like dumping oil on your head and praying.

Sure. There's no, I don't know of a medical reason why that should work.

Well, you know what, I take that back though, because you look at essential oils, for example, or aromatherapy, and we definitely do find some examples that there are things like frankincense, for example, that does indeed have a physical or a physiological effect on the body in terms of the effect on the brain via the nasal passages, and also the effect from an anti inflammatory standpoint. Or lavender is another perfect example. You take a bath in lavender and it actually increases the activity of your parasympathetic nervous system. So I suppose the oil seems to make sense. But of course, laying your hands on someone and praying for them, we could probably say that that's a little bit more related to this concept of qi or energy or life force or human touch actually causing some kind of a physical healing response without there necessarily being a scientifically explainable phenomenon occurring.

Correct. At the same time, the thing that I would point out is that the Bible also gives us examples of evil spirits having certain kinds of powers in the world too. So in the book of Acts, for example, at one point Paul and I think one of the other apostles is going through a town and there's a girl who is able to tell the future, and she's apparently able to tell the future with the power of an evil spirit.

And she's following them around. And apparently eventually Paul sort of gets tired of this and casts the demon out of her. And it says that her owners, she's apparently a slave girl who are using her this way, are completely enraged because now she can't tell the future anymore. And so I do believe that there are spiritual forces in the world. I believe that some of those spiritual forces are evil and wicked and that we should be at war with. And there are also good spiritual forces at work in the world, supremely the Holy Spirit himself, the spirit of the living God.

So it's not enough, I think, just to say, you know, is it? You know, can a Christian be open to spiritual forces in the world? The answer has to be, well, which ones? Yeah, and, and There are warnings about, in the Bible, you know, the Israelites in particular in the Old Testament are warned against not having anything to do with evil spirits, right? Sorcery, witchcraft.

Right. And that's, that's the, that's the tricky part is, right, because. Because we look at this concept of energy medicine. And the Hindus have prana and the Hawaiians have mana, and the Chinese have chi. And Hippocrates called it the heat oozing out of his hand. And in Mesmer, it's called animal magnetism. And even in Star wars, right. It's called the Force. And then we see examples of something that seems somewhat like this in scripture. And I guess what I'm trying to figure out is whether they're all referring to the same, same invisible energy that is something good that God created and made a part of us. And some people would even say that energy is the breath that God breathed into us when he first made man and woman. Or whether all of it should be kind of thrown away because it's, well, it's New Agey or it's not steeped in Christianity or doesn't have its origin in Christianity. And so it's kind of like that argument of whether we should throw the baby out with the bathwater or whether we should kind of, I guess some would say, like, claim these things for Christ or claim this energy for Christ. How do you approach that?

Right. So again, I think a Christian needs to be someone who is, first of all immersing himself or herself in the Bible. So the Bible is God's word, and it's God's clearest word to us. So we learn about God from creation, we learn about God from experience. But our senses can trick us, our experiences can trick us. God's word is clear. That's the Bible. So first of all, let's just say we need to be people of the word, not just going off of, how does this make me feel? But then you look at the Bible and again, you find out that there are different. You know, there are good spiritual forces and there are evil spiritual forces. I was thinking as you were talking about the story of the Exodus, famous, you know, the story of Moses and leading the people of Israel out of Egypt. God gives Moses the staff, you know, sends him into Egypt. And, you know, Egypt is the greatest civilization in the world at this time, right. This is like an old man with a stick going up to the door of the White House. You know, excuse me.

I've got some instructions for you. And you know, Pharaoh says, I Don't know who you are and get off my front porch.

But when he starts to demonstrate, like, I'm from God. Initially, Pharaoh has magicians who can do magic, right? Moses throws his staff down, it turns into a serpent. The Pharaoh's magicians, they throw their staffs down and their staffs can turn into serpents. Then, of course, Moses staff eats theirs, which is kind of cool, but it doesn't stop there. The first plague, Moses strikes the water in Egypt and it turns to blood. And when he does that, it says that the magicians of Egypt could do the same thing with their secret. This is the reason why Pharaoh was like, I don't care. You can do magic tricks. I can do magic tricks. They're also, I'm pretty sure the Exodus story says that they're able to make frogs. They're able to do the second plague as well. So, again, which powers are we using? Are you using the power of the living God? Are you authorized by God to use that power? Or are you drawing off of evil powers, dark powers in the world that really has to be unpacked, that really has to be distinguished. Before you say so, I mean, I agree with you. Like, I don't think that Christians should just say, you know, that sounds weird, therefore it must not be any good. Well, by that standard, the Bible is out. Because the Bible has a lot of weird stuff in it.

Yeah, I mean, that's almost like flat earth Christianity. Right. It would consider heretical or demonic. Any theory that doesn't fit within commonly acceptable traditions or present knowledge.

So, for example, Christians who say, I don't think you should read J.R.R. tolkien's Lord of the Rings because there's, you know, because Gandalf is a wizard. Well, then you shouldn't read the book of Exodus because Moses was the first wizard.

Yeah, right.

That's a good point. Moses was a wizard.

Old guy with a staff. You know, all he's missing is the hat. Right, but again.

And the hobbit sidekick.

Yeah, right. But again, you have a. You know, there are evil powers in the world. And that's one of the great things about reading something like Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia, you know, similar Lewis and Tulkin. And these guys are getting at the fact that, yeah, the world is supernatural. But it's not just enough to say, get supernatural power. Because, of course, you know, Saruman is going to tap into darkness and he thinks he can wield it, he thinks he can use it for good, but ultimately it's going to Turn him to the dark side, you know, and so. And I think we really do have to be careful with that. I don't think it's enough just to say spiritual powers or to say, which ones are they?

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Yeah, that's the tricky part. It's almost like Star wars to a certain extent, right? As silly an analogy as it may seem, you have this energy, right? And it can be used for good or it can be used for evil. And I guess what I'm trying to wrap my head around is, you know, there's this idea of this chi energy and acupuncture and auras and chakras. And, you know, what I'm trying to decide is whether that is possibly just another part of God's creation. And as you mentioned earlier, we're called the exercise Dominion over God's Creation to explore and discover all these amazing capabilities of the human body and the energy inside us.

And I don't know if you ever.

Had a Reiki treatment done, but you can feel the warmth of someone's hands washing over you without them actually touching you. And they can actually elicit a healing response just from.

The energy of one human, kind of like getting close to the energy of another human. And what I'm still trying to wrap my head around is whether that form of energy medicine or forms of energy medicine like those Forms are something that we can. We can accept as Christians and ethically utilize as Christians, or whether we're tapping into demonic powers and the evil part of the life force.

Yeah. One of the ways of answering that question would be to ask questions about.

Two principles in Scripture. One is, is it lawful? And secondarily, is it edifying? So those are two principles that the Bible gives us. So there's certain things that God just says, this is off limits. It's not lawful.

Like what?

So Ten Commandments type stuff. So somebody might say, in my deepest heart of hearts, I believe that I need to have that other man's wife. And I believe that it will bring me peace and oneness with the world if I have that other man's wife. Well, the Bible says you may not.

It's unlawful, it's wicked, it's evil. And it doesn't matter how you feel about it.

It's not allowed.

Right.

So adultery is off limits. Fornication, sex outside of marriage is off limits. Stealing is off limits. So these are lying Ten Commandments stuff. This is unlawful. So that's just. So first of all, you ask the question, is it lawful? Does God prohibit me from doing this? And so in this area, I would say any place where. So maybe we're getting close to the first or second commandments, which is, you shall have no other gods before me, and also you shall not bow down to any graven image.

Do any of these therapies, do any of these practices require you to do anything that would be disobedient to the God of the Bible?

Right. And that was actually, that was a situation where I had something really uncomfortable happen to me. I read up on and did a lot of research on Transcendental meditation and its effect on allowing you to get by on less sleep, its effect on being able to replicate a deep nap, its decrease in salivary cortisol, all these effects that it had. So I went and took a TM course, and the very first thing when I walked in was, they were like, you bring fruit and flowers and burn incense in front of the photograph of the guy who invented tm?

There you go. There you go.

For me, it's like, well, it's tough because it's like, could I skip that ceremony and still practice TM and get a great deal of benefit out of this thing that involves some form of. What we could definitely say would be idolatry or idol worship, but yet still reap all the benefits of tm? You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. No, I do and so I think, you know, so, for example, I would say, if somebody asks me, I think I'm going to take a course on transcendental meditation, I would say, okay, but you can't offer incense to somebody's image.

Right?

Right.

Because Scripture doesn't say don't meditate. It just says don't worship idols.

Right. And then there'd be further questions. I'm not familiar enough with Transcendental meditation. But like what? The Bible does urge us to meditate on Scripture, for example. It urges us to meditate on the glory of God, on the greatness of God, on the wonderful acts of God, on his mercy, on his grace, on his goodness, on his beauty. So you read the Psalms, and David loves meditating on God's greatness, God's goodness, God's word. And so that's Christian meditation right there. But if transcendental meditation would require you to avoid God or ignore that God exists or. I know some forms of meditation are all about just emptying yourself. And that strikes me as weird from a Christian point of view, because, again, it depends on what that means. Because we're called to be full of the fruits of the Spirit, full of the knowledge of the Lord, full of the Holy Spirit. So if we're putting away sin, if we're putting away the works of the flesh.

And we're turning to God in meditation, then that seems great. But if we're in some way not, you know, not doing that or turning away from God or trying to again, live life on our own apart from God, or even just have some kind of peace apart from the presence of God, then that would be wrong. That would be evil.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that makes sense. So we need to look at everything. Basically, it sounds like what you're saying through the eyes of whether or not something is lawful. And then the other thing that you said was in addition to lawful, what was it?

Is it edifying?

Is it edifying?

Yeah. And so does it, you know, is it. So we've been given freedom as human beings, and the Bible teaches that in Christ we've been given sort of this freedom from sin. But the Bible over and over again in the New Testament says, but we're to use this freedom for the building up of others, for the building up of the church, for the building up of the kingdom of God. We're. We're called to be people of good works in the world in order to be a blessing to our neighbor and to do good. Well, so we're not to use our freedom to serve ourselves. And we're not to use our freedom as a way of doing harm to other people. We're to use our freedom to build them up to be edifying. So some examples of this would be. So this kind of goes back to the. The thing in itself might be fine or okay or good, but are you using it for good or are you misusing it? So this is my chucking a tangerine at my neighbor analogy. There's a good use and there's a misuse. The Bible teaches, for example, that God invented the idea of wine. God invented the idea of beer and he made grapes so that if you smash them and you leave them long enough, they turn into this amazing juice, this amazing drink called wine. But the Bible also prohibits drunkenness. The Bible says do not be drunk with wine. Drunkenness is a sin. Drunkenness because you're not in control of yourself. You're not in a position to be able to protect other people.

Which is actually, it's almost like a tough call because as you probably know, that glass of wine at the end of the day can relax you. And. And yeah, I think that again, you have to be logical about some of these things. And that's kind of like the rule that I use is the house catch on fire or protect my family analogy to where is my consumption of said compound going to affect my ability to protect or to provide? And if so, then I've used too much of it. But ultimately it's kind of tough because some people say, oh, you get happy and de stress at the end of the day. Have a glass of wine, therefore you are are drunk and sinning. I would argue otherwise. I would say you simply have a glad heart.

Yeah. And actually that's what the Bible says. So the Bible again says it prohibits drunkenness. So.

We may not lose control and we must be in a position to fulfill our responsibilities. As you say, we need to be able to provide and protect for those that are responsible for. But the Bible also says that God gave wine to make the heart of man glad. And so again, so there's an example though, of a good gift of God that can be used for, you know, the Bible also, actually Paul tells Timothy in one place, take a little wine for your stomach. So I don't know, apparently, you know, maybe Timothy was having some, you know, stomach problems. And Paul says, hey, a little bit of wine has medicinal qualities to it as well. But again, that doesn't mean then it's fine. Three sheets to the wind.

You'Re called to use it. Responsibly so the question is, is it lawful? But then is it edifying? And I think especially in this area of sort of alternative medicine and so on, questions to ask would be, is my use of this causing me to grow in holiness and godliness and in the fruits of the spirit, or is it causing me to sin against God and other people?

Is this enabling me to be more forgiving? Is this enabling me to love my wife more faithfully? Is this allowing me to love my children more faithfully? Is this allowing me to give more generously? Or is this becoming something in which I'm sort of so obsessed with it, or it steals so much of my time and energy away from these other responses responsibilities that now I'm shirking my duties in the name of being healthy and whole, I'm ignoring my wife and my kids. Or in the name of being healthy and whole, I'm not building the kingdom of God, I'm not in church regularly.

Right.

Like almost like a form of health idolatry, which I actually want to talk to you about.

But first I had a couple other questions, like returning back to the energy medicine concept. You know, one clear cut teaching of the Bible is that it's inherent in God's nature to heal. And throughout the Old Testament you find God healing a lot of people. And in the New Testament, you know, Jesus has a ministry of healing. You know, there are multiple examples, especially in the Gospel, Matthew and Luke, you know, and you outlined a couple of them already, where Jesus heals and the apostles were anointed as agents of healing. And healing was seen as like one of the gifts of the Spirit. And like you mentioned, James exhorted the Christians to anoint the sick with oil and to pray for healing. Many people would say then that the apostles, for example, were using some form of energy healing or energy medicine. Now, do you think that God gives certain people the ability to place their hands on someone and to heal them or to have, you know, more chi or more life force or more energy, or that it's all simply.

Like a completely supernatural healing experience? Were the apostles using some form of energy healing, do you think?

Well, the Bible calls it Holy Spirit. So I don't know if it's energy healing, but I know that it was by the power of the Holy Spirit, it was by the name of Jesus. I do believe that God has in the history of the world given that power to specific individuals. And so we see that in the Old Testament in men like Elijah and Elisha, the prophets. And then we see that again as you note in the apostles, I do believe that.

That gift given to a particular individual ceased with the apostles. So I don't believe that people are still given that same apostolic power.

You mean the ability to just like touch people and heal them right on command?

Right. So Peter and Paul and the other apostles, I believe, were given a unique gift of the Holy Spirit in which. And the reason was, is because they were writing the New Testament. So the way that the Bible says that not anybody can write scripture, not anybody can speak and say, thus says the Lord. Right. I can't just randomly say, you know, I got a word from the Lord and you know, Ben, you need to sell your house and move to Bermuda. You know, the, the Bible says that if somebody says that they are required to demonstrate by miracles that they are sent by God. So in order to speak on behalf of God with that kind of direct authority from God, God gives those particular individuals miraculous powers to demonstrate that they really are from God. And if somebody can't do miracles of healing and so forth, then the Bible says, they're not from me, don't listen to them. So the apostles were given the job of writing the New Testament, and they were Jesus authorized spokesman, and they were the foundation of the Christian church. And so God gave those men specific miraculous gifts of power and healing. Now, at the same time, I'm enough of a history nerd, especially a church history nerd, to know that that doesn't mean that I think that miracles have ceased. I believe in miracles. I believe miracles still happen. I believe that God still heals people through prayer, through anointing. I just don't believe that that gift is given to individual people as a, as a possession anymore.

Right.

But I do believe that, you know, I mean, I believe that God gives, you know, physicians and other people powers of healing, though I don't think that it's a supernatural, you know, on command, you know, stand up and walk, you can have your sight back.

Yeah, well, I mean, I think God gives humans in general the power of healing simply based on our ability to express certain emotions. And yeah, I know it's controversial, but there's like the Masaru Moto guy who does studies on water and has found that when you expose water to prayer or love or gratitude or good, good emotions or what we might call positive vibes, the crystalline structure of the water actually changes, you know, under a microscope and you can see a more organized lattice like structure of water that actually results in.

What'S called an exclusion zone, an area of negative ions towards the interior of the water and positive towards the outside that allows water to better move through plants or through human vasculature.

Right.

And the simple act of us expressing a positive emotion or praying over something or someone appears to actually have some kind of a physical effect. And yeah, we might not be able to just touch somebody and say, whatever, cancer be gone. But at the same time there is kind of this interesting phenomenon that occurs when humans direct their energy into certain objects or into other humans.

Right. So I would say. So the Bible says that everything is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. So I don't think we know exactly what all that. Like what does it mean for something to be sanctified? Well, literally it means that it, it becomes holy or it is set apart for a God given use. So the marriage bed, for example, is holy and undefiled. Hebrews 13 says, and so it's to be honored by all men. But fornicators and adulterers, God will judge. But when a man.

Makes love to his wife, that's according to God, that's a holy act. It's sanctified, it's given by God, it's its proper use and it's blessed by God.

Right. Another example of like a work of creation that could be harnessed for good or for evil.

Exactly, exactly. So the word of God and prayer sanctifies. The Bible says all things by word of God and prayer, everything is sanctified. So if we're obedient to God's word and we give thanks for it in prayer and we're asking God for wisdom in its use, we're led to believe that.

All things have holy uses. And so I guess in principle don't have any problem with saying.

That'S very possible that you pray over water. And perhaps God is doing more than meets the eye, more than we know. I think the issue is, are you praying to the living God through Jesus or are you just thinking thoughts to yourself or to Brahma or to Buddha or to Allah? Well, that's a different thing entirely. But if you're praying to the living God in the name of Jesus, then the Bible does say that everything is sanctified. Everything can be used in a holy way, in a right way, and can be used for the blessing and the building up of other people.

Yeah, I think that's a really good point. I mean, instead of having a blanket rejection of this concept of energy medicine or rejecting something because it came from a secular Eastern mysticism, history, simply approaching things on a case by case, Basis. Right. Is this something that is not only, as you mentioned, lawful and ethical, but is it something that can be claimed for Christ and done in such a situation or in such a format where there's not idolatry involved or some form of hero worship, and there's also not some form of calling upon.

Some type of power or some type of name or some type of God, in many cases in Ayurvedic medicine or some forms of traditional, traditional Chinese medicine, or even calling on like, you know, the God of you, which is, which is a lot of times what some of these practices will endorse as well. But if it's instead some beautiful part of creation, you know, this ability of humans to, you know, feel invisible energy.

Or to be able to, you know, project positive emotions or prayer onto another person, if it's something like that, it sounds like, like we simply can, as I've mentioned a couple of times before, almost claim something for Christ, like claiming Easter for Christ or doing yoga before church? I mean, I think that some of these things can certainly be done by Christians.

I think the crucial thing is to actually fully and completely take it for Christ. So I agree completely. I think the dangerous thing is that I think sometimes we're naive. I think sometimes we can be naive about things. And so, for example, I'll be controversial for a moment on your podcast.

We never do that.

But if I fly a rainbow flag out my house, it doesn't matter what I mean by that rainbow flag. I could say I mean the rainbow in the sky that God put after the flood promising never to destroy the world again. But everybody in the west and in America will see, oh, that guy is a LGBT, affirming, welcoming guy. It doesn't matter what I think it means or say it means. I can't say I've taken it for Christ. Well, sorry, right now it's a sign that means something in our culture and our society. And so a few, I don't know, maybe a month or so back, Ken Ham, who's the hardcore six day creationist, literal flood guy, fundamentalist Christian who has the ark encounter in Kentucky or whatever, lit up his ark with rainbow colors and.

And it was unmistakable what he meant by it.

And made a bunch of people mad because they said, hey, that's our sign. And he was able to use it in a way. I think he totally took it for Christ. He said, I mean it in this way, like Noah's ark, like God judges sin and you need to run to him for salvation.

I thought that was a Glorious moment where somebody took a sign, took a thing, and clearly submitted it to the lordship of Jesus Christ. So I think that's the key, though. Back in the day when the missionaries were going out into the boondocks of Europe, one of my favorite stories is Boniface was this badass.

Christian missionary who goes out into the woods and these Germanic tribes have this holy tree dedicated to Thor.

And so this holy sacred tree, and it's this ancient, ancient tree. And Boniface one day finds out, oh, this is their God. They think this is their sacred tree. He gets an axe out and goes out and chops the tree down. And all the heathen tribes are like, oh no, he's going to get struck by lightning. Thor's the storm God. He's dead. He's totally dead. And they wait around for Thor to strike him dead. And it never happens.

And because of this courage and bravery, tons of these Germanic tribes turn to Christ because they realize that Christ is the more powerful God and Thor is impotent.

I think that when Christians come to things like this, if they're going to plunder the Egyptians, if they're going to take things back for Christ, they have to figure out ways in which they clearly, clearly cut down the tree of idolatry that it's connected to and clearly identify it with, with Christ. I would say one example of this would be make sure that you, as best you can, recognize the power of language.

The power of words. And I told you before we started talking, Ben, that I'm not that familiar with a lot of this alternative medicine stuff. But I would say part of what has to happen is a translation process.

Did you do a 90 minute Kundalini yoga session before we started recording?

You know, Ben, I. No, I was like, I'm on the other end of the spectrum. I'd probably just sort of make you sick if you knew, like the last time I took a jog or something like that. So I'll spare you the gory details, but no, but like, I think to the extent that there's a conquering taking place, you need to figure out, how does the Bible say this? So you want to submit these things to the word of God. That's how everything is sanctified by the word of God in prayer. So I would be leery of people just sort of getting sucked into the language of these other alternative Eastern anti Christian practices and then thinking, but I'm doing it like a Christian because I go to church on Sunday or because I read my Bible every day. Well, you need to take it all the way in. You can't just go out there and say, I think it'll be okay because I'm not going to do the incense in front of the picture. That's good. But you also need to figure out, okay, how does this translate into biblical categories? What does the Bible say this is called? So I'm leery of saying, you know, talking about life or stuff when the Bible doesn't use that language. The Bible does talk about the God making us living creatures. The Bible does talk about the Holy Spirit. God does talk about his power at work in us. I would want to translate all those things into biblical language.

Or even like the breath of life, right? Like we see that type of terminology used in scripture, which I know there's like this whole concept of vitalism, for example, which you know, is something that distinguishes a living from a non living being. And that, you know, certain people, you know, there's this vital force is the breath of life that God breathed into dust to make a person. And I know that a lot of, a lot of these, these concepts are based around this concept of vital energy. But it could just as easily, as you point out, be, be deemed the breath of life. You know, one other thing that I was thinking about when you were talking about, you know, how people interpret what we're doing is also this idea. You know, I remember when I was growing up, like for the longest time, my parents didn't drink alcohol. And one big reason for that was because they had a couple of friends who were alcoholics or former alcoholics, right? And so they just didn't even want to confuse those people or cause them to, you know, as, as we would say in Christian circles, to stumble right? To.

Right.

And, and so they simply decided, hey, I'm not going to do alcohol. And I would say the same thing, right? Like if, if I've got a friend or, or somebody who sees me doing, let's say, transcendental meditation, right, or hers, that I practice, practice that, and all of a sudden they think it's acceptable to worship an idol or begin to hang paintings of different Indian practitioners around their house and bow down to them and bring them little fruits throughout the day, I would probably reconsider whether or not it's a good idea for me to be doing TM or at least allowing that person to see me do it because I'm going to negatively, negatively influence others or draw others into a scenario that might actually be a sinful scenario for them. So that's another thing that I think we should consider as well is how we're appearing to other people when we're doing some of these things or whether we're explaining it thoroughly to them versus just letting them think that we're steeped in these Eastern mysticism practices and accepting them for everything that they are.

Right. And that's the whole point of edification. Again. So edification is building people up. It's causing them to understand God, to understand the Gospel, to grow in holiness and godliness and wisdom. And so we want to be building one another up, urging one another on, to follow Christ, to put off the works of the flesh, to put on the works of righteousness. But, yeah, if we're sending mixed signals, then we're not building one another up.

Yeah, yeah. You know, there's this concept that I mentioned earlier, and this is probably one of the last things I want to touch on, Toby, of health idolatry. The idea that Christians do, like a lot of us, especially in America, we spend a lot of time focusing on health on our bodies. And even for me, Right. I've had a really distinct focus lately and a really big interest, interest in anti aging and longevity. How do we enhance our happiness and our quality of life and how we feel when we're 80 or 90 or 100? How could we even perhaps live to 150 and do so in a manner in which we're not just cold and hungry and sick all the time? And I'm curious what your perspective is, especially for Christians, on. On where it becomes something like health idolatry or body idolatry.

Right. So again, back to the original creation and fall. You know, death is an enemy, and the effects of sin and the fall and death are enemies in the Christian worldview. And this is why Jesus came, why he lived, why he died. And of course, Easter is the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, that he conquered sin, death, and the devil and set us free.

So a big picture is that death is an enemy.

And to the extent that healing and medicine and technology are gifts of God for sort of pushing back the conquest of death, if you will, to the extent that God gives us those gifts and enables us to live longer, fruitful lives, that's all to the good. Every breath we're given is a gift of God and it's to be used to glorify him and again, to be a blessing to other people. So all things being equal, longer life, healthier life is more opportunity to praise God, to worship God, to draw others to God, and to be a Blessing to our neighbor and to the world around us. So that's all things being equal to good. At the same time, Paul says, for me, to live is Christ, but to die is gain. And so what he means by that is after the resurrection of Jesus, because death is not the last word anymore, because our sins are taken away in the death of Jesus. All those. Jesus says that all those who trust in him will live forever. All those who trust in him will never die, he says. But what he means by that is that he says in another place, those who trust in him, though you die, yet you will live. And what that means is that, and this is the promise of life in Christ is resurrection. That just as Jesus died and he rose again, all those who trust in Christ, who find their identity in him, they're promised not only life in Christ now, but death and life again, resurrection, life in him. Which means that. I think the crucial thing to distinguish then is we should love life, celebrate life, and use the opportunities and the abilities and gifts God gives us to extend life. And at the same time, I think if we don't have the same attitude as Paul and say, but to die is gain. You know that like living is a win and dying is a win because of Christ. If we get that wrong, or we say only living is really the crucial thing. And yeah, maybe there's life after death, but I don't know, who's to say, well, you're going to end up idolizing this life. You're going to end up putting things, you're going to get things in a bad order. You're going to get them imbalanced. And so St. Augustine is famous. Church Father from the 5th century AD is famous for talking about one of the effects of sin in our lives is that we have disordered loves. So our loves are sort of all disordered out of whack. We love certain things more than we should, and we don't love other things as much as we should. Our loves are out of whack, they're disordered. This is what sin does. And so I think we have to make sure that when we're thinking about life and health and energy and things like that, that we're ordering our loves rightly. So, for example, for a Christian, the longing of our hearts is to see Jesus is to be with Jesus forever. He's our hero, he's our Savior, he's our God. And to see Jesus face to face is the longing of our hearts. It's what we want. And so that has to be our first love. And that's only going to come through death. Every one of us is going to die. Unless Jesus returns soon, every one of us is going to die. And then we will meet Jesus face to face, which means there's a certain kind of eager anticipation to get there. That has to be our first love, to see Christ face to face. For the resurrection, for heaven, for glory. Now, does that mean then that I just smoke a pack a day and sit on my couch like a slob? No, of course not. Because that's squandering the gift of life that Jesus has given me now, right? So Jesus has given me life now to glorify him, to get ready to be with him and to draw other people to him with me. And so to the extent again that I can extend my life, I can have more energy, I can have good health and be a blessing to my neighbor. That's all to the good, as long as that's ordered rightly underneath. The greatest goal of glorifying God and enjoying him forever, of wanting to serve his purposes and longing to be with Him. Does that make sense?

It makes sense. And actually another really good book that I'd recommend for any of you listening in right now that you should read about kind of this idea not just behind Christians and taking care of our bodies, but Christians and the way we view the food, the energy that we put into our bodies in terms of, of how that energy, if it was an animal, was treated, and also what it's doing to our bodies in terms of allowing us to share the gift of God's creation or to enjoy the life that we have here on earth to the fullest is a book called the Marvelous Pigness of Pigs. Respecting and Caring for All God's Creation. It's a relatively new book by this guy named Joel Saladin. Really great book. As a matter of fact, by the time I release this podcast with you, Toby, I may have a. An interview with Joel that's already been released. And for those of you listening in, I'll, I'll put a link to, to that book too in the show notes called the Pigness of Pigs. Just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Toby and I'll have that in there.

That's a great, that's just a great title. Regardless.

Yeah, you should definitely give it a read. I think you'd get a kick out of this guy. It's a really great book that goes into why maybe we shouldn't have GMO corn and Twinkies at church. Pop potlucks.

Anyways, though, I know we've been going on for a while and this has been incredibly eye opening and real thought provoking discussion. I think ultimately I would say that if you're listening in and you want to pipe in and you have something.

To say or you have a question.

Or you have your own comment, or there was an area we didn't cover that you wish we would have, just go to the show notes, go to Ben Grint by, leave your question, leave your comment and I'll jump in and reply and try to point you in the right direction. And in the meantime, also check out Toby's podcast again. I listen to a few sermons each week and that's one of the ones that I tune into. So it's a great show. It's called the Trinity Reformed Church Podcast. And then also he's got some great books on Amazon and a wonderful blog. And I'll link to all that. Just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Toby. So Toby, in the meantime, thank you man, for coming on the show and sharing all this stuff with us.

Yeah, well, thanks for being willing to talk to a flat earther like me.

Dude, now you got to go for a jog.

All right.

Yeah. Okay.

All right. All right, folks. Well, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Toby Sumter signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a healthy week.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast.

Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.