Via the Agape Press, I find out about Pastor Hubbard, of the Evangelical Free Church in Smith County, Kansas.

He’s worried that Hindus are moving in to his area to build temples and won’t admit that their purpose is religious.

He says they are being dishonest when they say that one can do Yoga and transcendental meditation without it being a religious practice. 

I can see why he would think that they could only make that claim dishonestly.  It is a common view of people like Pastor Hubbard that mankind has one inherent nature…brutal, sinful, deceitful, thoughtless, and base.  Without supernatural intervention, man cannot change that state.  Any attempts, successful or otherwise, to transcend the selfish and corrupt aspects of the human condition, must then involve the super-natural.

So if someone says that they can teach skills and exercises and philosophy that will help others become better people, then they must be proselytizing a religion.  If they insist that they are not proselytizing a religion, then they must be lying.  It is the self-loathing and rigid thinking of the fundamentalists that make them unable to explain the behavior of the Transcendentalists as anything but deceit.

And why shouldn’t Pastor Hubbard suspect that the people in question are lying?  After all, many a Christian missionary has gone to China to “just teach English”.  I think its common human nature to suspect others of the duplicity that we practice ourselves.

But I don’t think the Transcendentalists are lying.  They might well all be Hindus themselves, but they are correct in saying that a person can learn meditation and Yoga and benefit from the discipline, exercise, and contemplation regardless of what they believe or disbelieve.  The Hindus would have no reason to actively “convert” those they teach.  Some might convert, but that would not be the goal.  The goal would be to help their fellow human beings be healthier, calmer, and more free from suffering; thus increasing the peace and tranquility of the world.  Don’t forget…Eastern religions play the long game.  What do they care if you meditate on the name of Jehovah, or Shiva, or The Flying Spaghetti Monster?  What matters is that you meditate, and become better able to bear your burdens, help bear the burdens of others, and refrain from adding to the burdens of yourself and others.  If you don’t find Nirvana in this life, you’ll come around in the next, or the next.  They are not trying to convert.

Many Eastern philosophies and health practices are interwoven with the various religious beliefs found in the East.  Just because Christians developed the philosophy of the Enlightenment and the Rights of man, it doesn’t mean that one must be a Christian in order to embrace modern Democracy.  Similarly, just because Hindus invented Yoga, it doesn’t mean that one must become a Hindu to successfully stretch one’s muscles and relax one’s mind by performing “The Sun Salute”.  If saying the Rosary was a physical work-out with widely acknowledged health benefits akin to those attributed to Yoga, I’m sure you could find an atheist or two doing it on the advice of their doctor, and it would be as likely to convert them to Catholicism as doing yoga is to convert you to Hinduism.

But back to Pastor Hubbard.  He’s a true American Christian, at least.  He acknowledges that the Hindus have a right to their religion, and to own their property and use it for any legal purpose they desire.  But he is going to preach against them, and their teachings and their work.  Because he judges them and their actions by his own limited understanding that he is too afraid to expand.  So he will preach love from a foundation of ignorance, fear and hate.

What’s that Pastor Hubbard?  It’s NOT hate?  Really?  How do you explain that?

     While he does not hate these people, Hubbard says he and other townspeople are opposed to their teachings. "It could be any one of a number of divergent religious groups and we would still have the same problem," he explains.

Oh!  It all makes sense now!  It’s not discrimination if you hate and oppose the practices of all non-Christians equally.  Silly me.  How could I have misunderstood that?  Well then, you just go on preaching against the new people and their practices.  Also, if I were you, I’d make sure that any member of your church who associates with them, or goes to any of their classes gets disciplined, like being shunned, or kicked out of the church or censured, or called out about it from the pulpit on Sunday morning.

After all, you wouldn’t want them to learn anything that might help them develop self-control.  I mean, then what would they need YOU for?