#STRask - Should Christians Make Use of the Concept of Meditation?

Episode Date: August 8, 2024

Questions about Christians making use of the concept of meditation, advice for discussions with panentheists, and how to not be discouraged when pastors don’t use apologetics when it would be the perfect time to do so. How might Christians appropriately make use of the concept of meditation, or should this sort of thing be avoided? Do you have any tips or questions for discussions with New Age spiritualists—in particular, panentheists? How can we not become discouraged when pastors or teachers do not use apologetics when it would be the perfect time to do so?

This is Amy Hall and Greg Kokel. We are live at the Outpost Directors Conference. And if you missed our last episode, I explained about outposts. They're basically chapters of Stand to Reason that are grounded in local churches and led by directors who are trained by us. And we provide all of the materials that you need to lead your group. And if you're interested in joining or in leading one, starting one at your church, you can go to str.org slash outposts. It's outposts, plural, plural, yes. Okay. So great. Okay. So great. Okay. So Amy.

Let's start with a question from Kevin. Okay. Meditation is a popular concept these days that is often offered to help people cope with stress. Christians also talk about meditation, but don't teach as a rule any sort of effective techniques like Buddhists do. What is your take on how Christians might appropriately make use of the concept of meditation, or should this sort of thing be avoided? I feel that we as Christians have the most powerful ways to cope with stress, but we do a terrible job of teaching how best to actually do it. Yeah, this is a common confusion because the language, or at least the vocabulary,

is very similar in Christianity as with other religions, especially Eastern religions. Characteristically, in Eastern religions, the goal of meditation is to empty one's mind of activity. And I can imagine how that would be stress-releasing. I've never had the experiencing of emptying my mind of activity, but I've tried sometimes just in general. But the technique that's often employed is to repeat a syllable or a sound in a rhythmic fashion so that this helps to kind of empty your mind and maybe help you enter into an altered state of consciousness. And for a lot of people doing that, this helps them to relax and mellow out and de-stress and stuff like that. But I just want to point out that this particular exercise is a religious exercise that is tied to religious ideas.

Okay. And so I guess a person could just go into a state themselves, focusing on a sound or something, and maybe relax a bit and not run into trouble. But generally, it's associated with some kind of religious enterprise, okay? And that's a concern to me. Christian meditation is very different. Now, it has some similar effects. It can be de-stressing. It can help you calm down, all of those things. But the difference is in kind of cultic or Eastern mystical meditation,

the goal is to empty one's mind. In Christian meditation, it is not to empty your mind, but to focus your mind. And so, notice that when the word meditation is often used in the text, the object of the meditation is the text. You meditate on Scripture. You reflect on Scripture. You think about the scripture or some kind of spiritual thing um my understanding i don't know the hebrew but the the word captures the picture of a of a of a ruminant like a cow or something chewing his cud you know so they eat the grass and they sit down and they chew their cut. I wonder where they get all that food. They're laying on concrete, but they're chewing their gut. So this

idea is that you are taking something in and then you are chewing on it, mulling it over, thinking about it, looking at it from different angles and everything. And, of course, part of the advantage is if you're focusing in on something that has to do with God's truth and it's educational, it's bringing some insight about God to you, then it's going to have a salutary effect on your state of mind. And so I find like when I'm, this is, I mean, just something I do. I wake up in the middle of the night. A lot of times it's usually two to three in the morning,

and I'm worrying about things, a host of things to worry about like most people. And I start slowly reciting the 23rd Psalm. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pasture, and I'm going slowly and reflectively on it, okay? So there's a certain sense in which I'm meditating on the words of that particular Psalm. It's a fairlysalm, and it's fairly easy to remember. I'm chuckling because what I find oftentimes is before I can get to the end of that short psalm, I'm asleep. Now, I don't mean to be suggesting that it's like counting sheep.

You get so bored, you just fall off the edge. you know, but it's that I am relieved of the anxieties and the worries that have been keeping me awake, and instead I am focusing on God and His care and provision for me. And when I do that, and I don't rattle through this fast like a lot of people do. I take it line for line, and I say it in a meaningful way, and I think about the concepts. I also do the same thing with the Lord's Prayer, okay? And there are other passages people might know well that they can go through, but to me, this is what the Scripture has in mind with meditation. It has a similar kind of result as, say, mystical meditation, but the focus is entirely different. And the focus is what is meant to have the salutary effect. You're focusing on something about God that's true, especially in his word.

One thing you said, Greg, you said that like Eastern meditation is connected to religious things. It's connected to their whole worldview, right? Because aren't they trying to lose themselves in a sense and try and realize they're part of everything? Or I don't know exactly how it works. Yeah, it's an asana. An asana is a technique that is meant to get you in touch with the oneness of... In Eastern mysticism, the self doesn't really exist as such, and the only thing that's real is God. And the fact that we think we're different is part of our problem. It was an oversimplification. And so by doing these asanas, one of them is a type of meditation,

it allows us to realize that we're really part of God, something along that line. So now I was equivocal a little bit when I was talking about that because there are some people that just do the technique and they're not thinking about the religion at all. They're just doing something that calms them, and you can read magazines about that, but it is characteristically a part of a religious thing, and some people are drawn into those religions through the practice of this, and then they start attaching themselves to the spiritual significance of it, and that is a very different kind of thing than what we're encouraged to do in Christianity. So, you've already touched on the difference between meditation as a stress relief versus meditation as knowing God and reflecting on God. So, I just wanted to say a

couple things on that. First of all, if you want to meditate on God's Word, I highly recommend memorizing a book of the Bible. I promise you, you will never know a book of the Bible as well as you will that book. I promise you. That has been some of the deepest meditation I've ever had on the Bible because you have to go over it over and over and over, and you have to understand it. If you don't understand it, you're not going to remember it. So you have to really think about what it means, and you start to see how all the parts fit together. And if you've never done this before, start with Jude or 3 John. Just saying. And then in terms of stress, if we're going to talk about christian stress relief i will

say um if any of you are familiar with uh gary habermas he is well known for the the all his work on the resurrection i was taking a class with him one time on the resurrection and he for about 10 minutes talked about something that helped his anxiety, and it completely changed my life. What he said was, he talked about Philippians 4, and I'm sure you're all familiar with it. Let's see here. It was true. Well, he says, Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, Well, he says, lovely, whatever is good, of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise,

dwell on these things. And what he said was, just all you have to do is go through these steps. You know, be anxious for nothing. You present your request to God with prayer and thanksgiving, and then you think about what is true. So basically, it's a very simple concept. You think about what is true about God, what is true about your situation, and you think about what you're thinking that's not true, and you replace it with the truth, and you dwell on the truth. And if you practice that, and you consistently practice that, it helps with your anxiety. And basically, all you're doing is teaching yourself to think about

what's true. And what's true about God will take away your anxiety if you can keep reminding yourselves of it. We're so bad at remembering and really, I think, really trusting in God and what He said. So if we keep practicing that, I think that really helps. You know, I think there was a call, maybe not with STRS, but on the regular show where someone cited the first passage, be anxious for nothing, et cetera, do these things and the peace of God shall. And they said, well, I did those things and there was no peace. And what I said was keep reading because I think this is meant to be a package deal. As you do that, just like you described, and then you change your focus. I mean, I think anybody reading the second half, whatever is true, honorable, right, pure, et cetera,

anybody reading that said, you know, if I could do that, if I did that, my life would be a lot easier. My mental life would be a lot easier. My mental life would be a lot easier. Yeah, no duh. That's right. It would be. So the two of those things go together. I'm glad you read the Deuteronomy. Yeah, and that's like what you were talking about going through the 23rd Psalm. You're reminding yourself what's true about God, and that helps to ease your anxieties. All right. Let's go to a question from the Oklahoma City Outpost group. And this one is, do you have any tips or questions for discussions with New Age spiritualists, in particular panentheism?

Can this be done without appealing to traditional authority like the Bible or church history? I missed the middle part. Panentheism. Oh, yeah. So my understanding is that is the idea that everything is in God, God is in everything. He's beyond everything. Pantheism is everything is God, and panentheism is God is in everything and everything is in God, but God is beyond everything also. Yeah, he is more than his creation, but his creation is part of him.

I'll just tell you, quite frankly, I have a hard time with New Age. And that shouldn't be too surprising because I'm so left-brained. And New Age seems like so right-brained. And I have a hard, difficult time with trying to engage. a hard, difficult time with trying to engage. The question that comes to my mind is, why would anybody think that that's the way God is, panentheism? Why would you suggest that? And I'd also want to appeal to Jesus, because Jesus has a lot of credibility with people in general, even though they don't really know what he said, but especially with New Agers. Now, they think that Jesus is some kind of New Age guru or Eastern mystic or whatever, and they read mysticism into his language. It's a problem.

But even so, I think we could go, since they have this sentiment, they think well of Jesus, we can go to the things that Jesus said. We can cite those from the Gospels if we're familiar with them, and we can ask them questions about Jesus' view of God in light of their view of God. So who's right? of God in light of their view of God. So who's right? And I know when I did this kind of debate with Deepak Chopra, I don't know, it was 15 years or so ago now, and I had a particular strategy. Dr. Chopra was a, he's one of those guys where his first name is recognizable all over the world, you know, like Deepak. Everybody knew.

So I didn't call him Deepak. I always referred to him as Dr. Chopra because I didn't want to play into his brand. But he's Deepak, and I'm nobody. And so my goal was to pit Dr. Chopra against Jesus of Nazareth. So you say this, but Jesus says this. You know, who are you going to trust kind of idea. If it's Chopra versus Kokel, I mean, no contest, he wins. But if I pit him against Jesus, that's a different matter. And that would be a general strategy I think it's good to follow with New Agers. And of course, he's probably the most well-known, is the most well-known New Age guru in the world, you know, author. At the time when we had this 15 years ago, he'd already sold 20 million books, you know. So it was a particular point that he brought.

He was complaining because I thought I was right that Jesus was the only way, and that's why we are getting narrow-minded, you know, right? And so I asked him, well, you sold a lot of books, right? And he said, yeah, 20 million. Well, thank you very much. How do you sell 20 million books without writing that you think you're right about, whatever you believe in? That was kind of my point, but he walked into that one.

Yeah, 20 million. Okay, good. Thank you very much for that. But notice how my general strategy was to try to pit him against Jesus, not pit him against me. And that's what I would suggest in this circumstance. So, are there particular things that Jesus said that you think would be valuable in this situation? Well, it kind of would depend on what the people are saying at that point in time, you know. And if they're trying to advance kind of panentheism, I would just say, would you think Jesus held that

view about God? He's a Torah observant Jew, right? Do you think that was his view of God? Well, yes, I do. Well, can you cite anywhere in the text in teaching, where you think that's the view of God he was advancing. Notice he does say in John 4, God is spirit and must be worshiped in spirit and in truth. Now, if panentheism is true, God is not just spirit. He's spirit and all that he's created. That's part of him. Seems to me that would be a conflict. But the general principle there is to ask, does Jesus hold this view? And if they say, I think he did, then you can ask, where is it? Can you show me anything he said that gave you that idea?

Notice it's continually throwing the ball back into their court. But I'm not really that clever with New Agers, just because it's so hard to pin them down, and their ideas are so hard. One of the difficulties most people have with Deepak Chopra, and I don't mean this, you know, as a put-down, but I think it's just true with that, he would be on a panel discussion, and he'd say stuff, and nobody could figure out what he was talking about, so nobody had anything to say to him after. They would just move on to something else, and in my case with him, he was making certain claims about Jesus and about the Gospels and different things at different times that I knew something about so I could raise those issues, and that made it a little more difficult for him.

I wonder if you could also, because Greg, you've talked before about bringing up the idea of our being separated from God and having guilt, being guilty of something. Maybe you could play at that angle too. Not only the existence of evil, which I don't really understand how you make sense of that if you're a panentheist and you're saying, are you saying God is evil? Are you saying this is God? I don't understand how that could be. I think we all know that we are separated from God. We all know that we're guilty. We all know that evil exists. And that being the case, that might be an angle that you could kind of bring up also. The big question is why—it's our basic two opening Columbo questions,

get clarification on the view. And then the second one, why would you think that's the way God is? What would be your reason? And, you know, I think people largely adopt religious views that they hear about that they like. Oh, I like that. I like Buddhism. I like panentheism. I like whatever. Well, of course, this isn't the point of religion. If religion is a picture, all religions are like this, actually, but most people don't think of it that way. If religion is a take on the way the world is, if it's a picture of reality, okay, then

what reason does a person have to think that this particular account of reality, excuse me, is an accurate one? I think that's an entirely fair question to ask, although I don't think most people even think of it in those terms. Okay, we have one more question, so we're going to get to all of your questions. I'm so glad we got through all of them. All right, this one comes from Anonymous, and I think it'll apply to probably everyone who does a lot of studying in theology and thinking about Christianity. Some version of this question always comes up. Once you see things through an apologetics lens, it can be hard to not feel disappointed when you

witness missed opportunities for using apologetics in a sermon, speech, or discussion. How can we not become discouraged when pastors or teachers are not using apologetics when it would be the perfect time to do so? Yeah. I recently was sitting in an audience in a church. It wasn't where I was speaking. I was just a member, and the pastor made a comment about the importance of being able to address the current issues and the challenges and the errors of the day in order that your faith was relevant and vibrant in light of the challenges. Then he moved on to his next point. He never said, for example. He never,, for example. He never, I could believe.

Now, this is somebody I know and I care about. He's a friend and that just helped me. And after being involved in this for almost half a century, you kind of get used to this. This is a concern that, as you know, comes up frequently. A version of it is people will say, you know, now that I know how to read my Bible accurately, never read a Bible verse, how do I deal with when I'm sitting in the church and my pastor's violating the principle and going off here and hither, thither, and yon with goofy things that aren't in the text? off here and hither, thither, and yon with goofy things that aren't in the text. And what we have to learn to do, I think, just simply is to be charitable, just to be charitable.

And that's a learned skill. Let's see. Charitable is love. So I was going to say, being charitable is not a fruit of the Spirit, but it starts with love, right? Love, joy, peace, patience, et cetera. Love, patience is in there. Long-suffering, I don't know. So yeah, I guess that's all part of growing in the Lord and having fruit of the Spirit. It's just something that we learn to do. Now, there are occasions when we may be able to address something. But I think, especially since this is a conference for

outposts, those in outposts have a unique opportunity to be a resource to their local communities and their local churches, and to be able to feed those particular needs right there in their communities. So it's a little easier because they could do something about it, maybe not specifically address the pastor or whatever. That doesn't usually work. But maybe saying, okay, well, you mentioned this. We got some answers about that. Can we, you know, share them in some way that's appropriate for the circumstances? But I'm very sympathetic to that. And mostly it's just a matter of growth in being charitable and gracious to others who, I mean, look, we all start at the beginning.

And by God's grace, we are moving forward. And so it's easy to get frustrated with some people that in certain disciplines, like apologetics, are still kind of at the beginning. And so it's easy to get frustrated with some people that in certain disciplines like apologetics are still kind of at the beginning. And so we want to do our best to nurture them and encourage them and bring them up as we're able to encourage the weak and the faint-hearted. How does that go in this? I think it's in 1 Thessalonians 5. But help the weak, encourage the faint-hearted, and we can do that in a gracious fashion. But I'm sympathetic to the frustration. I have thought about this so much.

I can remember way back when, when I was at Biola, and I think I may even have talked to Craig Hazen about this, saying, I just need to know how to deal with this, with my character and my emotions, just with knowledge. It's not an easy thing, and it does test your character. But in this case, I came to a way of looking at this that was really helpful to me. And it is the idea that when God pulls people together into his church, we are the body of Christ. We are all different. There are all sorts of different skills. There are all sorts of different ways people have of looking at the world and teaching about God.

You know, some people are better at serving others. Some people are better at teaching. There are all sorts of different ways that we work as the body of Christ. So what I realized was ways that we work as the body of Christ. So what I realized was the way that God has brought people together in the church is a result of God's design. So the fact that you have this skill and this interest and this gift and someone else in the church doesn't, that's part of God's design. It's not the person's failure. That's actually an opportunity for you to use your skills and to serve others. And then they will in turn serve you with their gifts. But if you can look at it as an opportunity for you to act as that part of the body of Christ, serving others rather than as their failure, I think that really helps. And one image that I try to keep in my mind is the idea is that we

are supposed to be getting into the trenches below them to lift them up, not stand above them and look down on them. And that little image has really helped me and kind of given me perspective of how to look at this. This is all an opportunity for us to serve. We are here to serve the people in our church who don't know these things and haven't learned these things. And what a gift that we have that we can share these things and be part of the outposts of Stand to Reason. So thank you all for doing that. And thank you all for leading those outposts.

And I hope the people listening right now will look into this, find out if there's one near you. There's a map on our website, str.org slash outposts. You can find out if there's one near you. Someone told me today they were looking for an outpost, and they said there isn't one in our area. I guess we'll start one. So you could be one of those people too.

And everything that you learn from Stand to Reason, we would love it if you were putting it to use, not just sitting at home and enjoying the information, but actually putting it to use in the people in your church. Well, that's all the time. I'm so glad we got through all the questions that you all submitted today. Thank you so much for submitting those. And if you have a question, you can send that on X with the hashtag STRask, or you can go to our website at str.org. Just go to our hashtag

STRask podcast page. You'll find a link there, and you can submit your question. Just make sure it's short, like the length of what, what is formally known as a tweet. I don't even know what they call it. I know I say this every time. It should be tweet links, which is about two sentences. So thank you all for listening. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kokel for Stand to Reason. you