John Montgomery posted a link to an Al  Mohler article yesterday that underscores how polemic and clueless right wingers are with any form or practice of Christianity that takes any kind of path divergent from their own Western-dominated, nationalistic, fundamentalist nonsense that they have adopted and have apparently sworn an oath to protect.   Meditative practices are the epitome of right wing Christian angst.  Take a centuries long development and journey in seeking a contemplative lifestyle (ala Merton),  and label it as a tool of the devil. 

Check it out:

Christians are not called to empty the mind or to see the human body as a means of connecting to and coming to know the divine. Believers are called to meditate upon the Word of God — an external Word that comes to us by divine revelation — not to meditate by means of incomprehensible syllables.

Hah?  Gibberish!  “Incomprehensible syllables?”  What the hell is he talking  about?  (Shaking my head)

All because it taxes the tiny brains of those who are dead set on remaining in the Western sickness we have in America that keeps us enslaved to the way  of the world.  These right wingers claim they are “keeping out the world” by refusing to “empty their minds”; that there is some sort of sinister plot of evil awaiting a “clean slate” so that Satan can jump in.  This seems to be communicating that Satan is more powerful than God.  That “empty” represents an empty puzzle piece that can only be “inhabited” by evil. 

It seems to me that quite the opposite is  the case.  If God is being sought,  and God is  the one who hears and who sees,  then God is going to inhabit us and heal the Western or whatever cultural sicknesses we have contracted.  Perhaps this is what the right wing fears.  Their most cherished “doctrines” and “propositional nuggets” might well be exposed as the ultimate compromise that they are.  Their idolatrous view  of the Bible as some kind  of Holy Sav with which we most “coat” the walls of our souls to keep out evil.  I might be  able to follow this kind of analysis to a point,  but it is where what Bible we are using to”coat our soul” that constitutes the big problem here.

AlbertMohler.com – The Subtle Body — Should Christians Practice Yoga?

So,  “no meditation with open-ness” ,  because that’s “scary”,  and therefore logically evil.  Right.  And instead,  “mediatate on the Word of God”,  like that is supposed tobe clarifying.  Problemis,  that for them,  it is.  The  clarification comes from their chosen authorities.  What THEIR interpretation of Scripture  is represents the actual word of God.  And this  is a point of mental block for the fundamentalist. They cannot tell the difference between the “The Word of God”,  and their interpretation of it.  They insist that they came to this interpretation all by themselves simply by reading it and discerning it’s “clear meaning”.  And yet,  they engage  in all manner of mental and exegetical shenanigans to ignore Jesus when he says “Love  your enemies” and  “he  who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword”,  and arrive at a Jesus who underwrites their right  wing nationalism.    Here,  they essentially reserve that inner place that is open and “empty”;  that “clean slate”,  and lock in a preconceived set of “truths” they are told are “clear Biblical mandates”. 

That “empty place” is one which locks out any tool that might confront the legitimacy of their working ideology.  Any opening that might allow for other voices that ,  horror of horrors, might challenge the legitimacy of their “pre-packaged theological defenses” is therefore of the devil. 

John asks:

I keep wondering how Thomas Merton might have responded to Albert Mohler’s latest thoughts about multi-faith encounter. Sigh! Oh, since Michelle Obama introduced Yoga to the Easter Egg Hunts at the White House, I guess she really is Hindu.

I think Merton would shake  his head sadly,  recognizing the mental prison that prevents these people from experiencing such an avenue  for healing and centered-ness that we have been shown by such trail blazers as Merton and centuries before us in the Body of Christ.