Should Christians do yoga? What about Holy Yoga or other “Christianized” forms of yoga?
Before I give my answer to this question, I’d like to ask a couple of questions.
Have you ever heard anyone ask the question, “Should Christians do aerobics/zumba/spinning?”
Ever heard of Holy Weight Lifting, Christian Calisthenics, Redeemed Running or another “Christianized” version of a particular form of exercise?
There’s a reason for that.
If you’ve ever participated in youth or Christian school activities with a dress code, a rule of thumb that’s frequently used to help kids determine whether a particular outfit is too short, too low-cut, etc., is, “If you have to ask, it’s probably not appropriate.”
I think the same thing could be said about yoga.
The reason the question “Should Christians do yoga?” is even being asked is because there’s doubt in the minds of the Christians asking the question that yoga is kosher with God.
That’s a healthy doubt because yoga is a Hindu worship practice.
Hindu Swami Parham on the Hinduism of yoga and why Christians shouldn’t participate
Now, before we go any further, let’s just let that sink in a minute. This activity is used by a pagan religion for worshiping false gods. Would you, as a Christian, participate in any other pagan religious activities used for worshiping false gods? Would you participate in Mormon baptism for the dead? Have a shrine to Buddha in your home? Take part in the fast of Ramadan, one of the five pillars of Islam?
No? What if the water the Mormons use had some special property that soothed your eczema? What if the kids started behaving better every time you set up the Buddha shrine? What if you lost weight while fasting during Ramadan? Would those benefits make participating in pagan religious practices OK even if, in your heart, you were only doing it for the benefits and not actually worshiping those false gods?
No, it would not. Neither is participating in yoga for the health benefits. Not convinced? Give the Old Testament another read.
Time and again, the Israelites were chastised and judged by God for idolatry. And not just full-blown idol worship, but all the steps leading up to it. It was not OK with God that they participated in a “Judaized” form of golden calf worship. When Israel entered the Promised Land, God told them to utterly destroy every last vestige of idol worship. It didn’t matter that they had no intention at the time of worshiping those false gods. Israelites were not to marry foreigners lest they be tempted to idolatry. God didn’t give any special permission to marry foreigners to those who promised not to worship the pagan gods of their spouses, He just said “don’t”. The first two – one fifth – of the Ten Commandments are prohibitions against idolatry. And there aren’t any instances in the Bible of God being fine with his people “Christianizing” idol worship.
This is not a God who’s OK with His people dabbling in paganism.
This is the God who loves us so much He sent His Son to be tortured to death for our sin so that we might be clothed with His righteousness, be saved from an eternity in hell, and inherit eternal life. Doesn’t He deserve better than sons and daughters who want to justify their involvement, at any level, in a religion that, ultimately, worships Satan? Doesn’t He deserve our highest, unsullied loyalty- a devotion that says, “I’m willing to give up anything that doesn’t please You, no matter the cost to me.”?
Yoga isn’t the only game in town. Let’s choose something else. Something that allows us to exercise, and worship God, with a clean conscience.
If you have a question about: a well known Christian author/leader, a Bible passage, an aspect of theology, a current issue in Christianity, or how to biblically handle a family, life, or church situation, comment below (I’ll hold all questions in queue {unpublished} for a future edition of The Mailbag) or send me an e-mail or private message. If your question is chosen for publication, your anonymity will be protected.
If you are considering commenting or sending me an e-mail objecting to the fact that I warn against certain teachers, please click here and read this article first. Your objection is most likely answered here. I won’t be publishing comments or answering emails that are answered by this article.
This article is kept continuously updated as needed.
I get lots of questions about particular authors, pastors, and Bible teachers, and whether or not I recommend them. Some of the best known can be found above at my Popular False Teachers tab. The teacher below is someone I’ve been asked about recently, so I’ve done a quick check (this is brief research, not exhaustive) on her.
Generally speaking, in order for me to recommend a teacher, speaker, or author, he or she has to meet three criteria:
a) A female teacher cannot currently and unrepentantly preach to or teach men in violation of 1 Timothy 2:12. A male teacher or pastor cannot allow women to carry out this violation of Scripture in his ministry. The pastor or teacher cannot currently and unrepentantly be living in any other sin (for example, cohabiting with her boyfriend or living as a homosexual).
b) The pastor or teacher cannot currently and unrepentantly be partnering with or frequently appearing with false teachers. This is a violation of Scripture.
c) The pastor or teacher cannot currently and unrepentantly be teaching false doctrine.
I am not very familiar with most of the teachers I’m asked about (there are so many out there!) and have not had the opportunity to examine their writings or hear them speak, so most of the “quick checking” I do involves items a and b (although in order to partner with false teachers (b) it is reasonable to assume their doctrine is acceptable to the false teacher and that they are not teaching anything that would conflict with the false teacher’s doctrine). Partnering with false teachers and women preaching to men are each sufficient biblical reasons not to follow a pastor, teacher, or author, or use his/her materials.
Just to be clear, “not recommended” is a spectrum. On one end of this spectrum are people like Nancy Leigh DeMoss Wolgemuth and Kay Arthur. These are people I would not label as false teachers because their doctrine is generally sound, but because of some red flags I’m seeing with them, you won’t find me proactively endorsing them or suggesting them as a good resource, either. There are better people you could be listening to. On the other end of the spectrum are people like Joyce Meyer and Rachel Held Evans- complete heretics whose teachings, if believed, might lead you to an eternity in Hell. Most of the teachers I review fall somewhere in the middle of this spectrum (leaning toward the latter).
If you’d like to check out some pastors and teachers I heartily recommend, click the Recommended Bible Teachers tab at the top of this page.
Ruth Chou Simons Not Recommended
According to her website, “Ruth Chou Simons is a Wall Street Journal bestselling and award-winning author of several books… She is an artist, entrepreneur, and speaker, using each of these platforms to spiritually sow the Word of God into people’s hearts. Through her online shoppe at GraceLaced.com and her social media community, Simons shares her journey of God’s grace intersecting daily life with word and art. Ruth and her husband, Troy, are grateful parents to six boys—their greatest adventure.”
“Birds of a feather flock together.”
“If you lie down with dogs, you’ll get up with fleas.”
The Bible teaches us, and even the world seems to know, that ungodly people will have a deleterious influence and effect on us. This is one reason the Bible commands us over and over not to associate ourselves or have anything to do with false teachers or those who claim to be Christians, yet live in willful unrepentant sin (persistent false teaching being one of those sins). In fact, to associate with false teachers and fail to rebuke them for their false doctrine disqualifies pastors from ministry. Dare we expect any less from female teachers?
Unfortunately, unrepentantly yoking with false teachers has become a major snare for Ruth Chou Simons. Teachers are under a stricter judgment, and this rampant sin disqualifies her.
Partnering with, and Influenced by False Teachers (Including Female “Pastors”/Preachers)
Ruth’s life and ministry are absolutely saturated with false and problematic teachers, nearly to the exclusion of doctrinally sound teachers (at least this is the way publicly available information about her ministry associations makes it appear).
There are so many examples of her partnering with false teachers that it would be impossible to cite them all, but here is a sampling:
Television
Ruth has appeared numerous times on TBN’s Better Together. If you’re not familiar, it’s a little bit like a “Christian” version of The View without the studio audience. A group of several (varying) women’s “Bible” study celebrities discuss life issues and biblical topics. And par for the course for TBN, they’re all problematic at best, raging heretics at worst. (There’s a reason TBN is often wryly dubbed the “Total Blasphemy Network”.)
Ruth has also participated with the IF:Gathering team to create other media.
*See the final section of this article, “Other Issues of Interest and Concern” for a compelling, biblical review of Ruth’s 2020 IF:Gathering teaching session.
Ruth is part of Lifeway Women’s (the women’s division of Lifeway) stable of authors and conference speakers. The prototypical Lifeway Women author/speaker preaches to men, yokes with false teachers, and teaches false doctrine. (This is why you can feel comfortable making an across the board decision not to follow, listen to, or purchase the materials of a teacher if she’s platformed by Lifeway Women.) Ruth and her materials have been featured in articles, podcasts, giveaways, and so on a number of times at Lifeway Women.
Lifeway Women Live 2021. Photo courtesy of Lifeway Newsroom. Seated L-R: Jackie Hill Perry, Angie Smith, Kristi McLelland, and Ruth Chou Simons
The Gospel Coalition (TGC) should be avoided in general. While it may have been doctrinally sound 15-20 years ago, it has been on a progressive trajectory ever since. Today, TGC is woke, egalitarian, soft on perversion, has a social justice bent, and mishandles Scripture.
Ruth has spoken at some recent TGCW conferences alongside too many false teachers, women preachers/pastors, and “same sex attracted Christians” (yes, you read that right – I told you TGC has gone progressive) to list. One of these was TGCW24 (you can see all of the speakers listed here).
Women of Joy is a women’s conference organization that, for all its extensive proclamations of being “Bible first” and “Bible-based” (“No need to worry about the content that you will hear”!), seems to book false teachers – including women “pastors” and women who preach to men – as speakers almost exclusively.
“Extraordinary Women’s mission is to host Christian women’s events and provide resources that equip women to handle life’s difficulties while enriching their hearts, encouraging their souls and expanding their ministries.” Somehow they hope to do this by booking mainly false teachers to speak at their events.
Come and See Foundation fundraiser. Ruth will be speaking at a private event for this foundation, the purpose of which is to raise money for the production, translation, and distribution of the hideously unbiblical program, The Chosen.
In this episode of Ruth’s podcast, she featured the audio of her panel discussion with Jen Wilkin and Jada Edwards (who preaches frequently at the church her husband pastors) at Ruth’s “Pilgrim Stories” event.
If you’re not paying careful attention, and you don’t dig a little, you might be misled by the banner at the top of the Speaking page of Ruth’s website. “WOMENS EVENTS & CONFERENCES,” it boldly proclaims. Perhaps your initial reaction is (as mine was), “Great! That means she only teaches at women’s events!”.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. Ruth does – regularly and unrepentantly – violate Scripture by preaching to and instructing men in the Scriptures. Currently listed on her calendar of events are three co-ed evangelical events, at which it is reasonable to presume she will be speaking to co-ed audiences on biblical topics: the Sing! Conference, the Come and See Foundation Fundraiser, and the Turning Point Summit*.
*There is a women’s luncheon “hosted by a special guest” one of the days of the Summit, so, although Ruth’s calendar indicates she will be there for the whole event, it’s possible she’s only speaking at this luncheon and not to any co-ed audiences. This doesn’t lessen the point that she preaches to men, I just want to be accurate.
Previous events at which Ruth has preached to men:
Ruth was a keynotespeaker at the 2024 Asian American Leadership Conference. According to the FAQ page, “This conference is primarily for pastors and leaders serving in or adjacent to Asian American ministry contexts. However, this conference is not exclusively for pastors or ministry leaders.”
TGC23 – The Gospel Coalition’s National Conference (not their women’s conference, but the annual TGC conference which is co-ed). Men are clearly visible in this co-ed breakout session audience from the beginning of the video.
And, while one of her sessions at the2024 conference was geared toward moms, the other session she taught, “Preaching the Truth to Yourself and Your Child” was in the “Family Discipleship” track. It was not labeled as being for women and since fathers are responsible for leading family worship/discipleship, it is reasonable to assume there were men in attendance. Let me reiterate: a woman teaching men how to be the spiritual leaders of their homes.
Ruth preached a 2018 chapel service to the (co-ed) student body at Oklahoma Baptist University. Chapel attendance is required of all students as course credit for graduation.
Both I and a couple of my eagle-eyed research team members noticed that in several interviews (such as the one on Revive Our Hearts’ Grounded podcast above), in a series on her own podcast, and in various other discussions, articles, teaching sessions, and so on, Ruth talks a lot about “spiritual formation” and “spiritual disciplines”.
There’s a good bit of confusion these days in evangelicalism over spiritual formation. Spiritual Formation proper is an unbiblical system of mysticism led by people like Richard Foster and the late Dallas Willard. Some churches and individuals are not aware of this, and think the term “Spiritual Formation” is just a trendy, cutting edge synonym for “biblical discipleship” or training in Christian character, and, unfortunately, that’s how they use the term, creating no end of confusion.
Until the Spiritual Formation movement came along and co-opted it to include unbiblical, mystical practices, spiritual disciplines was legitimate theological terminology for practices taught in Scripture that help us to grow in Christ: Bible reading, prayer, worship, Scripture memory, giving, serving the church, evangelism, etc. Many doctrinally sound churches and Christians still use this term correctly and it does not mean they’re into mysticism or Spiritual Formation. (One example is Don Whitney in his excellent and doctrinally sound book, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, which was the subject of Ruth’s aforementioned podcast series.)
Unlike The Daily Grace Co. (and some other evangelical teachers and organizations) which has espoused Spiritual Formation proper, from what I can tell without examining every single thing she’s ever written or said on the subject, Ruth seems to fall into the second category of evangelicals who use the term “spiritual formation” to mean “biblical discipleship” and use the classical (biblical) definition of “spiritual disciplines”.
I listened to Ruth’s Spiritual Disciplines podcast episode on silence and solitude, Worthy of Your Full Attention. In Spiritual Formation proper, silence and solitude are for the unbiblical practices of lectio divina, contemplative prayer, some sort of Christian-y mindfulness, or the like. But this is not what Ruth describes. She talks about unplugging, going for a walk or being in a quiet room, and appreciating the beauty of God’s Creation, reciting and/or reflecting on Scripture, or praying. It’s not exactly your every day, formal Bible study and prayer time, but it’s a perfectly biblical way to rest your mind at other times.
From what I’ve seen so far, and unless I see hard evidence to the contrary, I don’t believe Ruth is teaching Spiritual Formation proper.
Discontent and Hollow Hope
I have no doubt whatsoever that Ruth loves and cherishes her children. She even says so at the beginning of this brief interview about her book Now and Not Yet: Pressing In When You’re Waiting, Wanting, and Restless for More.
That’s why it gave me pause when she described raising her children as “tedious” and as a stage of her life where she was “not getting where she wanted to go”. The subtle message that comes across is that motherhood is not a purposeful, God-glorifying end in itself. It’s a way station on the journey to where you really want to be, the thing that’s really important and purposeful.
So I read the sample chapter of the book that’s available at Amazon, and that’s the same impression I got of the overall theme of the book: “First, let’s commiserate in how tough things are right now, girlfriend, but cheer up! One day you’ll be where you really want to be in life.” This is not biblical. It reinforces sinful discontentment by training the reader to covet and put her hope in better life circumstances that God has not ordained for her at this time.
Now, not having read the entire book, perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps somewhere after chapter 1, she really does stop telling personal anecdotes and experiences, she drills down into rightly handled, in context Scripture, and she teaches the biblical perspective on all of this: contentment. The Bible doesn’t teach us to get through trials and frustrations by putting our hope in better days ahead. The Bible teaches us to be content and put our hope in Christ, whatever our circumstances.
I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. Philippians 4:11b-13
Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. James 1:2-3
Nothing, not a word about focusing on a brighter future to get us through the unpleasantness of the moment. Contentment in Christ. Joy in being conformed to the image of Christ. That’s what the Bible teaches us about our difficult circumstances.
At the end of the interview when the host asks Ruth for a parting word to the audience, she has the perfect opportunity to share the gospel – to share real hope in Christ with millions of people. And she punts to, “Your ‘someday’ is made up of thousands of ‘right nows’.” Something any Buddhist, New Ager, or atheist could have come up with. A hollow shell of an empty promise. Not the gospel.
One of my researchers described her style as “self-help”. I would describe my impression of Ruth’s teaching as “evangeligirl life management”. Ruth doesn’t handle Scripture well. She talks around the gospel and clear cut, hard hitting biblical doctrine and principles, opting instead for fuzzy, watercolored Christianese platitudes and practical tips expressed in pretty penmanship with a Bible verse sprinkled in here and there. I would say her theology is a mile wide and an inch deep, but that would be grossly overestimating how wide it is. There’s just no substantive biblical there there. And to bring things full circle, that’s due, in no small part, to the influence false teachers have had on her.
I’d like to be able to recommend Ruth to you as a trustworthy source of biblical teaching. I really would. She seems fun and very nice, and I greatly admire her artistic talent. But when you have difficulty rightly handling Scripture, and you rebel against God’s Word by preaching to men and yoking with false teachers, you’re not a trustworthy source of biblical teaching, no matter how sweet and talented you are. I would encourage you not to follow or receive teaching from Ruth Chou Simons.
Many thanks to my research team for providing some of the links and information above. If you’d like to become part of my research team, click here.
