[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the Truth Exchange Podcast. Unique program where we have conversations about worldview all through the lens of oneism and twoism.
This lens is based on Romans 1:25.
We've exchanged the truth of God for the lie, worship and serve the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.
I'm your host, Joshua Guillo. Today with me is Mary Eady, the project Manager at Truth Exchange, as well as Dean Broyles.
If you are listening by way of itunes, don't forget to give us a rating based on your appreciation of the show. Your feedback is important to us as we continue to write these programs. The rating also allows others to find the podcast so that we may continue to equip and empower churches to communicate the Gospel effectively and lovingly to a culture that has lost the crucial distinction between worshiping creation and worshiping the triune Creator and redeemer. Remember, this program is listener supported and made possible by friends like you. If there are topics that you would like to hear discussed, please drop us a line in the comments section or on the website or on itunes. Dean Broyles is the president of the national center for Law and Policy. He earned his Juris Doctor degree from Regent University School of Law as well a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from Westmont College in Santa Barbara. He's married and has three adopted children. Dean, it's subject privilege to have you here on the show.
[00:01:31] Speaker B: Thank you, Josh.
[00:01:33] Speaker C: Just to kickstart this, Dean, give us.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: A little bit of history on. How did you come across Truth Exchange?
[00:01:38] Speaker C: What's the relationship?
[00:01:40] Speaker B: Well, I discovered Truth Exchange probably three to four years ago, but when we switched churches, we started going to New Life Presbyterian Church in Escondido, and I came, I think even before that to a Truth Exchange conference.
[00:01:56] Speaker D: You crashed it. If I remember, as the event coordinator, you crashed the think tank.
[00:02:01] Speaker B: I think that's right. Actually, one of my board members told me about the conference, and when I read and heard about what you guys were discussing and the topic, I got really excited and I showed up and said, can I come?
[00:02:13] Speaker D: I think we told you yes. Yeah, yeah.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: You let me in in partook of the wonderful food. That's right.
[00:02:20] Speaker C: That's why he kept coming back.
Okay, so now, moving forward, then, you.
[00:02:25] Speaker A: Had a case out here in Encinitas.
[00:02:27] Speaker C: And recently in some of the podcasts, we were discussing yoga. What happened with yoga here in Southern California?
[00:02:34] Speaker B: Sure, it's a long story, but there's a lot of information on our website if you're interested in digging
[email protected], but basically Encinitas School District, without really consulting parents or warning anybody, instituted started instituting a Ashtanga yoga based. And they said it was part of their PE program, but they basically substituted traditional PE for Ashtanga yoga.
And that developed in kind of me becoming a community organizer and helping parents try to get the district educated about the program to voluntarily remove it. Ultimately, it led to litigation over the program.
[00:03:18] Speaker D: That is where I first remember meeting Dean, is when yoga had been in the schools for two years at that point. And when this more robust program had come in, several different parents, I think, had contacted you. And so I remember you came to the first concerned parents meeting because all of a sudden all of these different parents at different schools were starting to get really uncomfortable about what was going on.
I had written a little bit at that point about what was happening at our particular school where my son had been attending at that.
But you really helped us kind of organize and get all the pieces put in place to understand what we needed to be looking for, to understand.
Because I remember the phrase that stood out to me was that they weren't even calling it a PE program. They were calling it a life skills curriculum that included health and wellness.
[00:04:09] Speaker C: Okay, so I'm going to jump in. I'm going to, on this podcast, this episode, I'm going to play a lot of the devil's advocate. So.
So I'm going to ask a lot of oneness, perspective, what's wrong with the school introducing new curriculum like this? I mean, it helps students, it releases stress, it's good and physical. Kids need to get out and move and stretch their bodies.
What could be more better than starting the day with releasing the bad energy from life stress, the stressful life that they may have at home? What's wrong?
Why can't a school just say, you know what? We see that there's problems at home, we see there's problems in their lives, we have something the answer to help these kids out.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: Sure, I mean, there are a lot of stressed out kids and there are a lot of problems in modern culture that cause stress and distress for children. But the question is, how do we deal with that? And who's the primary?
Who's primary responsible for that? Is that the school's job or is that the parent's job? To parents of children, that's a whole other podcast. But as far as yoga and MBSR or mindfulness based stress reduction that we'll be talking about today, the problem with it is historically, if you go Back to the 1960s, the courts in America started saying that you cannot have religious beliefs and religious practices promoted in the normal educational curriculum. And so that's the time that they started taking Bible reading, devotional Bible reading out of public schools, start taking prayer in the public schools. And what you've seen kind of historically and practically occur is with that vacuum that's been created by taking Jesus and God out of the public schools, it's now being backfilled, because that's a gaping void that wants to be filled with Eastern religious practices, specifically yoga and mindfulness based stress reduction, mindfulness meditation. So the problem isn't necessarily addressing stress. The question is how do we address it? Do we address it in a way that crosses religious boundaries?
Because what yoga and MBSR teach, for example, a Christian child in the public school, is that you no longer need to go to Jesus in prayer. You no longer need to turn to devotional Bible reading to help you address the problems in your life. You just need to tune in, turn off, look inside of yourself for the answers rather than to a transcendent creator God. So it orients the child in a very one is direction, basically to acknowledge that they're their own God, they're their own Savior, and there's no one outside of yourself that you can pray to or ask to help you in your life. And so it really subverts the whole Judeo Christian view of twoism and is moving kids to look inside themselves for the answers rather than to God.
[00:07:04] Speaker D: It's interesting to hear you talk about the creation of that vacuum, because I'm thinking in terms of sort of like the macrocosm and then the microcosm. And so the school system sort of represent on a microcosmic level what we've talked about happening overall in the culture. And that is that Prior to the 60s, there was this materialist movement, this secular humanist movement where everything that was spiritual and couldn't be tracked by quote, unquote, science, you know, so if it wasn't material, it wasn't real and didn't need to be paid attention to. But we are created to worship. We are created beings who have souls. And so that materialist mindset then created a place where we did back out of the Judeo Christian religious mindset or the religious umbrella of the culture. And then people were left wanting. And so what comes back in is this one of spirituality that's been coming in from the east. And so you see that happen culture wide. And now we're seeing it happen within the microcosm of the schools. Okay.
[00:08:07] Speaker C: I'm going to take off my devil's advocate hat and I'm going to ask a real sincere question.
Leading up to this podcast, I was reading a lot of the articles that I had seen on the web on the case of yoga, also on this current case that you're working on that we're going to talk about more in depth in a few minutes.
But one thing that is always brought up is the Pledge of Allegiance.
Now, I grew up in a kibbutz, so we didn't do the Pledge of Allegiance.
But in the Pledge of Allegiance, from when I did learn it, I've seen there's two ways it could be done. One is with the reference to under God, and then there's one without those words.
Do schools do a daily pledge to the flag?
And if they do, are they using the words under God or are those extracted from the pledge?
[00:09:00] Speaker B: Sure. I mean, the Pledge has been legally challenged both locally here in California and nationally. And the courts have viewed it as an accommodation and acknowledgement of our religious heritage and founding, as opposed to seeing it as necessarily coercing religious beliefs or practices. There's a huge difference between what's happening in the Pledge of Allegiance and what's happening in Buddhist mindfulness meditation or in Ashtanga yoga, in that they're actually teaching the kids liturgical ritual religious practices, and they're training them in a oneist worldview. And so it's not just a mention of a deity. And the idea of God kind of transcends religion. So they're not necessarily pledging allegiance to a Christian God or a Jewish God or a Muslim God. It's just an acknowledgment of God. So the courts have said that doesn't cross the line. That's part of our history, part of our heritage, and that's been upheld across the board.
[00:10:04] Speaker C: So it's an artificial God?
[00:10:06] Speaker B: Well, I mean, it's kind of a fill in the blank. God, I think, is the way the courts see it. They're not saying, you know, it's not necessarily proselytizing to say that there's one God and here's who he is and here's how you follow Him.
But once you get into devotional religious practices such as the liturgies and Ashtanga yoga, or you get into mindfulness meditation, where you're really being taught to look within for God, I mean, that's a devotional religious exercise, and it's treated very differently.
[00:10:40] Speaker D: I think a really interesting parallel, and this is something that I've talked On the podcast about before is, so when you're saying one nation under God, you're right. There's no explanation within a school system saying, and this is the God that you're referencing, it's simply a reference to a God. So I understand that. Fill in the blank. I'm thinking of a conversation that I had with the principal at the school where my son was attending about respect, because they were teaching the kids to say namaste to each other. And they were literally teaching them to say to each other, I see the light in me. I see the light in you. This light in all of us makes us one. Namaste.
And that's where respect sprang from. And so now the school is taking it upon themselves to define not just how do you. How do you respect one another? So you don't push and shove. You speak with kind words. That's what respect looks like. They're talking about, why do you respect? So that's a totally different issue.
The why of respect, and that's the conversation I had with him using oneism and twoism, was that you're teaching these kids that there's a divine something within themselves that, that they are bowing to and respect, as opposed to what I would teach my son, which is you're created in the image of a holy God just like every other human being on the planet. Therefore, every human being created by God deserves your respect. That's a completely different issue. And that's. I think what is most troubling for me with these programs is that they are addressing the items underneath. So there's a collective acknowledgement culturally, yes, we need to respect each other. But when you go underneath and start saying, and here's why, now you're teaching religion.
[00:12:19] Speaker B: Sure. So they're not just teaching, you know, that's one of the excuses in the karma choice example we'll talk about is that they're saying they're teaching compassion, they're teaching empathy, they're teaching all these universal values. So what could be wrong with teaching universal values? Well, when you look at the actual curriculum and you look what actually is happening in the classroom, they're not just teaching about respect in general, they're teaching about respect in the context of Buddhism, undergirded with a worldview, an approach to life that's very different from the Judeo Christian worldview. Like you said.
An example that you said, namaste means really, you strip it away. The God in me bows to the God in you. The divine in me. Light in me bows to the Divine light in you. Well, that's not just a statement of fact. That's a theological, metaphysical statement.
And if kids are taught that they are God and then taught to look with them themselves through the practice of yoga and meditation, that's not just teaching them some fact that they learned in school, like math or science. That's teaching them a worldview, that's teaching them approach to life that really cuts them off from the twoist worldview and marinates them in the oneness worldview.
[00:13:37] Speaker C: What was the outcome of the case?
And is yoga just going to stop in Southern California?
[00:13:44] Speaker B: Good question.
The result of the case was actually just fundamentally bizarre.
The trial judge and the appellate court affirmed the ruling. Basically, in so many words, the judge said, yes, yoga is religious. It not only has roots in Buddhism, I'm sorry, Hinduism, but it is in fact religious.
But then the judge went on to say that the district had changed their curriculum enough and had watered down presentations of yoga in the classroom enough so that it no longer violated the establishment clause. It no longer violated what some people call. I don't like to call it this, but just for popular understanding, I'll call it this, the separation of church and state. So in other words, it wasn't enough of a promotion, a clear promotion of religion.
And one of the things the judge really honed in on is that they were supposedly not teaching the theology or the worldview as much with the practice. But the problem with yoga, once you look at yoga and know what it really is, is they were still doing the exact same series of yoga poses that they were doing before, which, according to the founder of Ashtanga yoga, Pattabhi Joyce, was worshiping and bowing down to the Sun God. It was a liturgical form of worship that you were expressing things with your body, even though you weren't saying the theological words. And so the interesting thing about that is a lot of people say, well, so what? It's just a pose, it's just a physical form. What's the big deal? The problem is that the social science research has shown that just doing those physical poses over time is spiritually and metaphysically transformative.
And you can't understand that unless you have a twoist worldview and you really believe in the spiritual realm. But there's something more going on than just the physical.
[00:15:34] Speaker D: Yeah, we had a discussion about some of this with Pamela Frost in one of our previous episodes. And what I found so interesting with Judge, it was Meyer, wasn't it, was that he said that they had changed it and that Ashtanga yoga was in particular a religious form of yoga, and then had to go back and amend his ruling saying, oh, no, they actually are doing it in its entirety as an Ashtanga sequence, this very religious sequence. And yet they can still do it.
[00:16:03] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:16:04] Speaker D: It's just a very. It was such a bizarre ruling.
I remember just being confounded by that.
[00:16:11] Speaker B: The analogy there is that you can do the Catholic Mass in Latin, right, where the kids aren't understanding the words, or you just don't use words, but you're still doing everything, including kneeling and standing and sign of the cross, and yet it's somehow legal because you're not explaining explicitly the theology to kids. Well, if you look at establishment clause cases since the 1960s through today, if the practice involved any proselytizing of the Christian religion or any Christian liturgy, like prayer, for example, or any Christian religious practice, once they identified it as a Christian religious practice, the. The court almost universally would say it can't happen in the public schools, at least not led by the teachers. Well, in this case, they fudged it basically and said, yeah, the practice may have religious roots, it may have religious underpinnings, there may be a religious liturgy involved, but we're going to give it a pass. And they've never done that with Christian religious practices. So it's a very hypocritical, bizarre split ruling that doesn't follow established precedent.
[00:17:20] Speaker C: Okay, so where is it going in the country?
[00:17:22] Speaker B: Well, what we're seeing nationwide. That's a very good question.
Is that there's many organizations like the Joyce foundation, which became later the Sonoma foundation, out there promoting yoga in public schools nationwide. And it's spreading.
It's spreading nationwide. We're also seeing, as we'll talk about today, MBSR being spread nationally in public schools.
[00:17:48] Speaker D: Right.
[00:17:49] Speaker B: And so there's a huge. Again, that void where Christianity was removed is being quickly backfilled with alternate Eastern religions.
[00:17:56] Speaker D: And I really want to key in on this, Dean, because I'm glad that you put it that way, and I'm glad you asked the question that you did, Joshua, because I think there's a tendency. And I remember one particular mom, we laugh about this. She and I are good friends who, when I first went to her because of what was happening in Encinitas, she had her children in public school in Encinitas also.
Neither of us do any longer.
But I remember her saying, yeah, that's super weird, but I don't have time to deal with it.
So her response really was that's something happening over in your neck of the woods, but I'm not having to deal with it. And I just to speak to our listeners really, really clearly and I want to beat this drum loudly, especially during this episode. Is that this if it has not landed at your doorstep yet, it probably has. I really would say if you really took a look around it, prob.
This is not a fringe issue. You know, we've been teased that of course in California this would happen. But it's everywhere now and with the Sonoma foundation in particular. I think they have a goal to get their yoga curriculum into 100 school districts. I can't remember the timeframe, but it's not that long of a timeframe. So it really is everywhere. You are going to have to understand this and deal with this. It's not a fringe issue. It's on everybody's doorstep now. I really want people to understand that.
[00:19:17] Speaker C: Okay, so let's now jump to current events.
Calmer choice nonprofit organization has been providing mindfulness education to eight school districts in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. How did you get involved with this case?
What is it? What is mbsr?
What should Christians know about it?
Loaded gun.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: Loaded gun. Thank you.
MBSR is mindfulness based stress reduction. It was pioneered by a medical doctor by the name of John Cabot Zinn who used to openly identify as a Buddhist. He'd basically converted to Buddhism and his whole goal of MBSR is to teach the Buddhist dharma. The whole dharma in like Lost.
Like Lost.
[00:20:09] Speaker D: Can you explain that? Can you explain dharma?
[00:20:11] Speaker B: Yeah. No, I'm not the religious studies expert. I'm more of the legal expert. But it's part of the core Buddhist teaching on how to live.
And we talk about it in our resource.
The Letter to the District is a 24 page letter. It has 89 footnotes citing social science research, scientific research and religious studies scholars. And it explains all this in in gory detail. It's on our resources
[email protected] it's a top item on the page. So if anybody wants to read into that. There's so much information in there that I couldn't possibly share 1/10 of it today. But I can just give you a summary of what happened there.
[00:20:54] Speaker C: Okay. I've got in front of me a clip from one of the articles that has come out.
2016 study in Frontiers in Psychology measured emotional well being of 7 to 9 year olds and found that a school based mindfulness program improves higher order thinking and help students become more engaged positive learners.
A randomized controlled study in The Journal of School of Psychology on more than 100 sixth grader students found those who completed classroom based teacher implemented mindfulness meditation were significantly less likely to develop suicidal ideation or thoughts of self harm than the control groups.
[00:21:36] Speaker B: Those studies are not supported by the overwhelming majority of the science. What the science actually shows is they've done mostly studies of adults in MBSR. It's been studied for over 20 years in adults. And what the adult studies show is that adult there, there's many exclusion criteria for adults now with MBSR as a result of all these studies. And the exclusion criteria are basically any serious mental disorder like psychosis, ptsd, depression, anxiety, extreme fear, almost any psychological problem. They tell adults not to engage in MbSR. That's because MbSR brings up a lot of positive things in these people's minds, but also brings up a lot of negative things that can lead to suicide.
[00:22:26] Speaker D: And actually trigger practice. Right. Like people are triggered who have had these things and then it's triggered for them when they participate even like in a corporate mindfulness setting or. Yeah.
[00:22:37] Speaker B: And even people who haven't had prior psychological problems, it can lead to mental breakdowns where people can literally lose their mind. It's very similar to Kundalini syndrome that's been identified with the practice, deep practice of yoga meditation. So there's a lot of similarities there that have been documented in eastern countries like India and elsewhere for years.
But in America now, they're actually receiving a medical diagnosis. Willoughby Brinton, who's cited, her studies are cited in our documents.
She's documented this problem and she's a practitioner of mbsr, she's a proponent of mbsr and she actually has people come to her house and live with her who've basically lost their minds after engaging in mbsr. So there's a lot of psychological problems. And I'm. I'm particularly concerned that MBSR is being used with our veterans who have ptsd. And you look at the high suicide rates there and I'm concerned that there may be a link there that's a whole other issue. But as far as the danger to children, then the problem is there haven't been a lot of studies done on children and the studies that are done have not been good.
And even Willoughby Brinton talks about that problem. They're not peer reviewed, they're not, they're not looking for the negatives, they're only looking for the positive. So they asked the kids, you know, if you felt better, tell us on a scale of 1 to 5 if you felt happier Tell us on a scale. They don't say, did you have a negative emotion come up? And what was that negative emotion? Did you want to kill yourself? I mean, what they don't ask them the problems that reveal the negative issues. And Willoughby Britain documents that in her writings. So the. The problem is, we know it's dangerous for adults, especially with these psychological exclusion criteria.
And it hasn't been sufficiently studied for children yet. They're bringing it into these schools untested. There aren't sufficient brain studies and emotional studies on children, and it's potentially very dangerous. I mean, if a child, for example, has a psychological break in five years after getting into MBSR and getting deeper into Buddhism, there's a lawsuit for suicide. Who are they going to sue? They may sue the school district. So it's very.
The dangers for adults are well documented. The dangers for kids are somewhat assumed, but we haven't studied it enough yet. So we're really treating these kids purely from a materialistic perspective, even as psychological guinea pigs, and we're throwing them into this program that hasn't been sufficiently studied.
[00:25:13] Speaker D: It's really interesting to hear you talk about this because before, prior to my work at Truth Exchange, I worked in medical education for psychiatry specifically, and I was involved in that when they started doing the black box warnings for depression medications.
And it was again, particularly an issue for children. So there were all of these recommendations for how to use these medications for adults. But because children are a vulnerable group, as these problems that were unexpected started to crop up, just like the problems within the adult age groups were cropping up, they did have to specifically label medications that dealt with these issues for children because of suicide instances. And there were lawsuits that led. So it's very interesting to hear you talk about how it hasn't been studied. And they really are, at least with adults, they have the choice of whether to involve themselves or not. And I think that's one of the things that's so troubling to me about doing this in the public space school setting is these children don't have a choice unless they have a parent who intervenes. They don't have a choice about whether they involve themselves or not. They're told by their authorities to involve themselves just kind of with. With a blanket encouragement.
[00:26:30] Speaker B: Well, and the parents were not sat down and informed fully about what calmer choice was or about what the curriculum was or what they were going to do with their kids. There's a lot of. Since our case was kind of came into the media in the last two Weeks. A lot of parents are coming forward, say, we didn't even know they were teaching MBSR to our kids in the public schools.
So, and, and. And parents aren't being told, yeah, informed consent, you know, we think about that medically, right? If you're going to have an operation, your doctor tells you the pros and cons of everything, right? And so informed consent in imposition of yoga and MBSR in public schools is a huge issue because they aren't giving the parents full information.
What are the positives of yoga? What are the negatives of yoga? What are the positives and negatives of mbsr? What could possibly happen with your child if they get into this program? What could possibly happen with your child if there's psychological exclusion criteria that they have?
These kids are not being psychologically screened and psychologically evaluated and psychologically monitored in these programs. So if you're a parent and your kid is doing yoga or mbsr, in a lot of these situations, you don't even know. So I encourage all parents listening to this podcast to go to their school and ask, are we doing mindfulness meditation? Are we doing mbsr? Are we doing yoga? And research the program that their child is in and know about it so they're at least informed. And a big issue with that is not just the psychological health and safety, but it's the spiritual health and safety of these kids. But because similarly to yoga, all the social science studies show that mere exposure over time to mbsr, even though they say it's secular and they say it's going to have no spiritual impact on your kids over time, MBSR has been shown to be a gateway into the Buddhist worldview and ongoing Buddhist practices in mindfulness and deeper involvement in the dharma.
So if it's secular and it's safe, you know, is it really secular and safe? The answer is no. And these programs are being camouflaged, so the religious terminology is being changed or watered down. Jon Kabat Zinn actually has promoted that in a lot of his writings. He admits, yeah, I was formally identifying, self identifying publicly as a Buddhist, but I realized that that didn't work so well. If I wanted to get into hospitals, if I wanted to get into the va, if I wanted to get into public schools, if I wanted to promote mbsr, I had to change and hide and camouflage the terminology and the spiritual and religious aspects behind the program.
[00:29:15] Speaker D: And that was similar to what Tara Guber, who originally brought yoga ed into the schools in Colorado, also did, where she changed the language. She camouflaged it. She did not identify it as Hindu, though she herself identifies as a Hindu. And it wasn't until years later when she was interviewed by Hindu Times that it really came out that she was aware of the camouflage that she was doing. And so she wasn't willing to change the program. It was just the language she used to describe the program so that it wouldn't raise those red flags for parents. So there is this issue of kind of a.
Joshua, you were saying during the break, sort of this shroud of secrecy that surrounds these programs.
That is interesting. And I know as a parent I still sort of have a residual frustration and anger over what I had to go through to find out what I was actually being taught. Because there was within Encinitas, you know, the one thing that I was told was going into my son's first grade classroom, oh, and we got this grant from the Joyce foundation and the kids are going to be doing yoga. Yay. Onto the next topic. And my question was, well, what is this?
Who is Joyce? What is this foundation? And we literally had to go searching through the district servers, their public records, to read through meeting minutes amongst the board, to read through transcripts of what the board had decided and then go read the documents that they had been discussing. And that's where we found a lot of very religious language, very religious descriptions of what they were doing. And when we addressed that, they changed the language, but they didn't change the program.
[00:30:58] Speaker C: Yeah, the shroud of secrecy is I think is key because people have realized, our culture has realized as a whole that modernity has failed. And as Dean, as you said earlier, there was a vacuum that was created in the 60s, so modernity has failed. People are looking to fill that void. They've realized that modernity as, or quote, secular.
So they're using the word secular, but there really could be no neutrality.
And so they are looking for something to fill that void and they are moving to interfaith type spirituality. Of course, when you look at everything though, the one thing that is never accepted of course is a twoist worldview or Christianity.
I read one comment somebody said, sounds like this is absurd fear. If these so called Christians really knew Jesus, they'd have nothing to fear. Just love fear and give. It's so sad.
[00:31:57] Speaker B: Yeah, I call that fluffy bunny Jesus. I don't subscribe to that worldview. That's not a Judeo Christian worldview that that person is expressing.
I mean ultimately, you know, we're saved and we're going to heaven if we're part of God's family. Right. So ultimately we do have nothing to fear. But in this present darkness on this side of heaven that we live in, there are many dangers, snares and temptations and sins and diversions that the enemy of our souls can lead us, can use to lead us away from Christ. And MBSR and yoga, I think for our children today are the chief means by which they're being led away from Christ, no matter where you start. I mean, the child may start off as an atheist or an agnostic or a Christian or, you know, have be a Muslim. Whatever their religious background is, they're being led away from the truth and towards darkness and error from my perspective as a Christian. And so I'm not opposed to people ascribing to other religions and following other gods that I may believe are wrong or false.
But. But there is a danger that people can, can be led off the path and led away from Christ. And it's happening. I mean, I got a call a year or two after we started our litigation from a Christian attorney in Encinitas who'd ignored our warnings and had kept his son in the program. And he called me, freaked out one day and said my son spontaneously at home got in the lotus position and started meditating.
And I thought, wow, you know, first of all, be great if we get our Christian kids to pray spontaneously at home. That'd be a neat thing. But the fact that this Christian kid, when he's stressed out, is turning to yoga and meditation rather than Jesus Christ and he was raised in a Christian home, that's a big deal. That's a serious concern.
And there are spiritual realities and we do need to be aware of them and discerning and not expose vulnerable people to practices and programs that are going to lead them away from Christ and from truth.
[00:34:08] Speaker C: Although when I come home, my kids do burst out into spontaneous praises that I'm home, but that used to happen.
[00:34:15] Speaker B: To me, but my kids are a little bit older now.
[00:34:19] Speaker C: I will say, though, it is fearful in a sense that these children are being subjected to things that for adults anyways, that the outcome is certain and we've almost created or this Cape Cod, the school districts have created these children as lab rats.
[00:34:43] Speaker B: That's right. I call them guinea pigs. Right.
Not to diminish the image of God in the children, but just to see how calmer choice and the district is abusing these families and abusing these kids and not being honest with them. I think it is very deceptive and despicable, to be honest with you.
[00:35:02] Speaker D: I think, you know, I could be soft pedaling myself into something that would be a discussion for a whole other episode. But our children are there to be taught by us. You know, you train your child up in the way that he should go.
And so, you know, I've gotten to the point where we used to joke about me being the yoga police, you know, because once I started to speak out in Encinitas and wrote the booklet letter to a friend on yoga, you know, I would have people come to me on occasion and kind of be like, oh, did you know that so and so practices yoga? And I'm not going to go, you know, around to different adults and you know, seek them out and find out whether they're doing yoga or not. But I think that the issue with our children is a different one. I think that we are responsible to go and find out what they're being trained in, to find out what is laying that foundation of their understanding of the world. Because they are out there, they're taking everything in around them. And if we're not seeing, speaking to it, then it's not neutral, it's not just going to sit there. Something else is going to speak to it and something else is going to inform it. And I remember that that's a conversation that I had over and over again in the issue with yoga and Encinitas is that our children don't live in vacuums. It's not that they simply exist in these school campuses and then our homes and that they're never going to run into the undergirding of these practices that they're being taught. And that's something that we talked about with Ashtanga yoga in particular, is that maybe they're not using religious terminology, but if a child for seven years learns that yoga feels good and yoga is a practice that they can rely on to calm themselves and all of these different things, the moment that they're out in the world and they go to find that yoga, it will come with all of its religious trappings and they will have been conditioned to accept it and to love it.
And so for our kids, it's just such a much bigger issue and there's so many long lasting implications that I think we don't consider.
[00:37:02] Speaker B: About a year ago I was approached by a Christian couple with tears in their eyes after a presentation that I gave.
And they told me that their child started doing yoga in high school and now lives on an ashram in India. But this was a straight A kid raised in a strong Christian home, went to a good church and the power of yoga to draw him away from his family, to draw him away from Christ.
I mean, there's real.
We don't need to be afraid, but we need to be aware and we need to be discerning of all these issues.
My big concern and what this has really opened my eyes to is what a lot of theologians and a lot of research is showing us as Christians is that Christians who go to Bible believing evangelical churches, a lot of them don't read the Bible themselves or know the Bible very well themselves. So we talk about a Judeo Christian worldview. But to be quite honest with you, I find a lot of pastors and a lot of Christian leaders don't really have a well defined, well developed Christian worldview. And as you and I have talked about in other places, Mary Joseph Goldberg wrote the book American Veda. And what dealing with yoga and dealing with MBSR has really opened my eyes to is the fact that we as Christians today in America are very vulnerable to these New Age beliefs. We used to call them the New Age beliefs. Right. But these Eastern religious beliefs and practices, A, because we don't have a strong biblical worldview and a high view of God and a high view of his authority in our lives, but B, because it's so pervasive in our culture.
A lot of Christians.
[00:38:49] Speaker D: You're more than frogs in a pot.
[00:38:50] Speaker B: Yeah. A lot of Christians I talk to, they really express more of a Hindu or Buddhist worldview than they do a Christian worldview. A lot of their beliefs and practices are very Buddhist and very Hindu. And so there's this watering down. There's a syncretism where we kind of throw Jesus in the bag with yoga. We throw Jesus in the bag with meditation. We mix it up. And we think we can have our Jesus and our yoga too. And we think we can have our Jesus and our mindfulness too. But darkness doesn't mix with light. And the Bible is very clear on that.
[00:39:23] Speaker D: Yeah. And I think, you know, Dean, that's why Joshua and I were talking about this a little bit this morning.
We both feel so strongly about what we're doing here at Truth Exchange. And we're so thankful for the fights that you're taking on at the national center for Law and Policy is that Christians need. And I speak for myself here because I've experienced a profound change.
And my understanding of how I read the Bible and what I find to be important in the Bible, I mean, all of it's important, but how it stands out to me and a profound change in How I speak about my faith and understand what other people are saying to me within the culture because of these categories of oneism and two ism.
And what you're referring to, I think, is that in this all is one mindset. There is a lack of distinction, there's a lack of understanding of the superiority of the truth. There is the truth and there is a lie.
And so the difference between myself and God, God uncreated, triune, existent forever, I will never be that. And I am different from him. And therefore he is superior and wise. And what he tells me is true is important.
The fact that he created man, male and female, he created them. And that males and females are different and that they're distinct and that men and women created in the image of God are distinct from the animals of creation, all of these differences, the light and the dark that don't mix, are really important for Christians to understand. Those lines are important. And so that's why we beat this drum so loudly and so consistently of one ism and twoism, because it helps people categorize, it helps them think through I think some of these issues that they really feel so amorphous and like you're saying, it's just the cultural air that we breathe. And so it's hard to even find that finger hold to start making those distinctions. And I think that oneism and twoism is so helpful for that.
[00:41:31] Speaker C: Okay, so moving forward and in closing, where is the case going and how do parents inform themselves and prepare or position themselves if mindfulness education, secular, quote unquote, mindfulness education is introduced to the schools?
[00:41:53] Speaker B: The case itself is an interesting animal. There's a lot going on, some of which I can publicly talk about, some of which I can't.
But really, in a week and a half to two week time period, we flip the whole conversation there by God's help and grace, by issuing a well documented 24 page demand letter and press release, but also by doing a lot of media interviews and not backing down, speaking the truth in love and not backing down.
And I, you know, that's one of the things I would encourage parents to do is find out what their kids are being taught and if they're being taught it, research it and find, find resources. There's a lot of resources at Truth Exchange. There's a lot of resources on our website.
They can call me and ask me what I think about it or ask for help.
Unfortunately, I have to say right now I'm probably the only attorney in the United States of America who's willing to take on these types of battles.
The culture 20 years ago the culture kind of understood the Christian culture at least understood the New Age movement, saw that it was darkness and really opposed it when it came out in force with, with Shirley Maclean and her book out on the Limb and you know, the yogis and the ashrams in Oregon and all that was happening at the time. In the last 20 years though, the culture has been marinating in it so much that even Christians can't discern it anymore.
So become educated, learn about what is Buddhism, learn what Hinduism is.
Again, there's a lot of great resources on both of our websites. There's a lot of great books out there.
I think more books are starting to be written to kind of counteract this Christian yoga craze, which is a whole other conversation. But I think a parents need to be in the word of God, going to a Bible believing, Bible preaching church that preaches the full counsel of God. They need to be involved in their kids lives, know what they're being taught in school, know what they're not being taught in school, take primary, primary responsibility for educating their children at home and sometimes counteracting what they're being taught at school which undermines their worldview.
But really just be proactive and discerning and really care. I mean don't be fearful, but be armed with the truth.
And there's a great verse in one of the minor prophets in the late Old Testament. I think it's the Micah where it says my people die for lack of knowledge and my people perish for lack of knowledge. I think another version says but, but really I see MBSR and yoga as a spiritual Trojan horse that's come into our culture. It's coming very rapidly into our churches and I believe very strongly that if we don't figure out the Biblical response to will further decimate and destroy the church in America.
[00:44:55] Speaker C: This concludes our episode of the Truth Exchange Podcast, a unique program where we have conversations about worldview through the lens of oneism and two ism. Be sure to subscribe on our website truthexchange.com where we have many free resources and updates about upcoming events. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
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