Holy baloney

A Hindu holy man, or Sadhu, practicing his religion through yoga back home in India.

"No matter how thin  you slice it, it's still baloney." - Rube Goldberg.

There's been a strange little fad spreading around Mount Pleasant of exercise classes being called "Holy Yoga" or some equivalent.

Now, we pretty much all know the United States is not a decent civilized Christian nation any more, but here in Texas we still preserve the same moral values and ethics that most of the nation has tossed away in trade for "stuff" and security.

One way civilized values - which are the same as Christianity - have been shoved aside in America is to come up with secular equivalents which are also trendy and faddish. Everyone is dazzled by the new and latest thing.

Yoga is at heart an extremely old thing - the practice of physical contortions as a mean to make the mind blank to reach the state of nothingness or "nirvana" which is part of the Hindu religion.

That religion believes life is an endless cycles of births and rebirths and everything is fleeting or an illusion. Why care or pay attention to this world, anyway, you'll be dead soon and reincarnated.

But if people use the mind God gave them, they will eventually figure out life is meant to be more than that. A famous Jewish rabbi once said "Life is God's way of saying he loves you."

The word "yoga" comes from the same root as the word "yoke", which is a thing that hitches together. By hitching your mind to your body through breathing exercises and physical contortions, you go blank upstairs and don't have to worry about the futility of this existence - at least, that is the Hindu goal.

Many years ago, people trying to be creative about the essentially unglamorous job of exercising decided to brand some of this stuff as yoga. It's new and trendy and exotic.

BUT - and you probably have noticed this yourself - a LOT of exercise classes are held in churches, because they are community centers. And any preacher, pastor or priest or stayed away in seminary will quickly point out the religious connection and origin of yoga.

The solution? TA-DA! Call it holy yoga!

To us, exercise is exercise, and you don't need to dress it up with some goofy slogan, especially one that misrepresents a practice derived from a pagan religion. If you want a religious reference, just go full retard and call it something like Come to the Cross-Training (We're being really sarcastic here).

We've got nothing against people trying to stay in shape and taking care of themselves, and their bodies God gave them, but drop the Eastern Mysticism reference. Yes, as Christians we are probably a little sensitive today, after seven years of having a Muslim sympathizer as president. But like the psychiatrist said "You're not paranoid if you really have enemies."

Many if not all people locally who are involved in so-named classes are almost assuredly trying to do anything bad. Most of the wrong in the everyday world is not done consciously, but because sometimes we're just not thinking.

We'd just like to drop a bug in their ear and suggest they find some other program to follow, one that doesn't rankle local sensibilities. Mount Pleasant is a traditional, God-fearing Christian community, and we need to stand up for our culture and values. One of the reasons our nation is so messed up is because so many people haven't.