Bethel University Seeks ‘Common Ground’ with Buddhists
Jan Markell, Christian broadcaster and President of Olive Tree Ministries, writes about her November 3 evening at Bethel University. It was an ‘Interreligious Symposium’ with the aim of finding some kind of “common ground” between Buddhism and Christianity. She writes of her experience in her latest column.
When Students Are Left to the Wolves
By Jan Markell
I wasn’t prepared for what I was about to hear the evening of November 3. My alma mater, Bethel University in St. Paul, MN, sponsored an Interreligious Symposium promoting some kind of “common ground” between Buddhism and Christianity. One would think if a Christian had an ounce of discernment, they would deduce that Christianity has nothing to do with Buddhism and such unions are playing with fire. But a panel concluded that there was “common ground” when it came to “meditation.” Granted, this kind of meditation could put one in a dangerous altered state of consciousness, but maybe that’s ok as long as we can find a bit of unity here! Some would call this common bond of meditation “contemplative prayer.”
About 200 students and a few adults were crammed into the symposium auditorium. Attendance by the students was mandatory. The three main presenters were Buddhist monk Witiyala Seewalie from Sri Lanka, Bethel professor Paul Reasoner who is a part of the “Christian Zen” movement, and Ted Meissner, an active Buddhist layman and meditator in Zen, although he grew up in a Christian home.
The kind of meditation being promoted by the panelists is the kind that brings “enlightenment,” whatever that means.
Ted Meissner described the goal of enlightenment to our daily growth and walk with Christ. Panelist Paul Reasoner did not particularly enlighten anyone to his area of interest, Christian Zen, so I am still clueless as to what that is. I think it’s an attempt to again help people become Buddhist-friendly. It was clearly an emphasis on the blending of Christianity and Buddhism. With only about 20 minutes for questions, there was no way I was going to get a multitude of mine answered.
Doing a bit of research told me that Zen is a school or division of Buddhism characterized by techniques designed to produce enlightenment. This term is used repeatedly yet I have never seen such a line-up of unenlightened panelists! In particular, Zen emphasizes various sorts of meditative practices which are supposed to lead the practitioner to a direct insight into the fundamental character of reality — whatever that means! And if I don’t fully get it, how are 20 year old college students supposed to get it? This one thing I do know: It doesn’t mean getting to know the fundamental character of the one true God.
I was accompanied on this journey by Pastor Bob DeWaay from Twin City Fellowship in Minneapolis. He has contributed some thoughts to this summary of the event.
There was not one whit of “Christianity” that was presented to the Buddhist participating on the panel. This sent a message to him that he is ok being a Buddhist.
The push was “meditation.” But being a Buddhist means becoming conscious of one’s own divinity. This was not clarified. Had it been clarified, it could have sent out a huge red flag to questioning students at Bethel. So why would Christians get on board with this kind of meditative enlightenment when acknowledging one’s own divinity for a Christian would be idolatry and an abomination to the one true God?
The students were encouraged to do meditation that would silence or empty their minds. Keep in mind that some who promote this kind of meditation such as Richard Foster, actually tell you to pray a prayer of protection over yourself before you begin! Yet there was no warning to innocent and naïve students and again, attendance for most there was mandatory.
We heard a lot about those ancient mystics and desert fathers. Here we go with the mystical again, and mysticism always trumps doctrine. Bring on “experience”!! Another panelist talked about the Jesuits he studied under. Is Bethel a Baptist-rooted university or Catholic-rooted? Try the former.
A symposium like this is leading these kids straight to the Emergent Church which goes along with all of the above. And if anything will bring spiritual death, it is all things Emergent. The step beyond that is the one-world religion.
You can hear the entire audio of the 75 minute symposium here.
So now that we know some of what was talked about, what wasn’t covered? With a Buddhist on the panel needing truth, Jesus Christ was not mentioned. Nothing of the gospel was talked about. Sin was left out as was a Christless eternity for those following the wrong path. Rather, all that was praised was some kind of glorious unity and mind expansion that could be achieved through Buddhist meditation.
No one talked about the possibility of opening oneself up to demonic influence from emptying the mind in the wrong kind of meditation.
Let me be blunt and say that the meditation techniques promoted at the symposium were Eastern and unbiblical. They claimed that Christians could gain spiritual benefit by using Buddhist meditation. What an affront to the Lord who inspired the Biblical writers. It was as if to say that God failed to give us what we need to draw near to God, but we can find what we need through Buddhism.
A simple Scripture like Psalm 119:15 was never used: “I will meditate on your precepts and consider your ways,” presenting a solid biblical statement on “meditation.” Or meditating on God’s wonders in verse 27. The psalmist meditated, that is, deliberated over God’s Word in such a way that he was able to understand it.
It says in Psalm 19:14, “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD.”
This “meditation symposium” was not pleasing to the Lord.
I am reminded that there are students and faculty at Bethel University who meet regularly for prayer not using any kind of techniques. There is a ministry there called “Pray First” which focuses on the students. As one person said to me, “please also share that God’s light is shining brightly in areas at Bethel University.”
This is not an attempt to castigate the entire university of teachers and students, many of whom are godly, righteous people. This column is not directed at them. It is directed at some careless faculty who are enthusiastic about their beliefs who should use better judgment than to present Buddhism, “Christian Zen,” and contemplative prayer as some good alternatives for the students.
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There is definitely common ground to be had between the tares and other religions…it's called the broad road that leads to destruction!
At least they aren't deceptive… it should be pretty plane even to the immature that those people are delusional.
James 4:4 “Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore want's to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God”. Are we stronger than the Lord to provoke Him to wrath and live? What agreement is there between the Temple of God and idol's? Can we drink of the cup of our Lord Jesus's table and the table of demon's? The answer to the question's is NO. Then why are these people doing at this College. Satan is trying to use the name of Christ to promote evil. Just as the devil tried to use the demon possesed girl in the book of Act's. So are these evil men and women using the Name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to promote evil. So my warning to them is awake thou that sleepest and Christ will shine upon thee. Repent or perish those are your options.
There is definitely a movement afoot to ecumenicalize all religions. The push is to 'find common ground' upon which we can agree and put the rest aside. You see this from humanists, secularists, false religions, quasi-Christian groups, and even from within 'evangelical' groups. (I personally believe that the term 'evangelical' has lost every sense of meaning due to the fact that so many groups use it. Many of the groups are heretical in nature)
Christians have no common ground with nonChristians. Unless nonChristians are saved by grace through faith, we will have no common ground with them. Sure, we can work and maintain civil discourse with them, but our charge is to evangelize not make friends.
Nowhere in scripture does it say we can or should place a stamp of approval on a false religion. Joining ecumenical groups does exactly that…
If this “symposium” was designed to or an attempt to mesh, merge, join, compare, unite or bring together Christ's work on the cross with ANY satanic lie from hell, it's NOT Jan Markell's “assertion” that “stir's up the controversy”. The controversy was stirred up in the Garden of Eden when satan told this same lie (that we can be like God). This satanic gospel (buddhism, contemplative prayer, “christian zen”, “christian yoga”…), just as he (satan) preached it in the Garden, appeals to the flesh (self) and denies that Jesus' death, burial and ressurection is the only way of salvation and perfect peace. If even a suggestion of an attempt to join the life-giving Gospel of Christ with the deadly lie of satan, does not “stir you up”, you have serious and dangerous problem. I'm not judging you, I'm just observing that you are clearly attempting to justify something about this gathering. It's a little scary.
The symposium wasn't designed to “mesh, merge, join, compare, unite, or bring together Christ's work on the cross with any satanic life from hell.” I am indeed trying to tell you that what Ms. Markell says happened at the gathering CANNOT BE SUPPORTED FROM THE RECORDING OF THE GATHERING. Period. Am I saying that she is lying about the event? What I am saying is that it is in her interest to make herself look as though she is correcting Bethel, or is speaking authoritatively about the situation, or has spiritual insight into what would “fix” the situation. If you listen to the recording, I counted 29 evident points where her editorial confuses the facts, contradicts the facts, or distorts the facts. Some are small: she says 200 students and others were present–but the room is a tiered classroom that holds 139 seats, and you can't get more than a dozen others on the floor space available. She says there were only 20 minutes available for questions–but the recording is clear that there were 30 minutes of questions. Some are significant–she says the Christian speaker never referred to the scriptures–when in fact he does. Some are matters of internal consistency–she says she doesn't know what Professor Reasoner stands for–so in the next two sentences she literally makes up what she thinks he stands for. This is despite the fact that he announces explicitly that he's not a Buddhist, but a Christian, and discusses how the experience of Christian meditative prayer has an entirely different goal and purpose from Buddhist meditation. She says that the meditation techniques “promoted at the symposium were Eastern and unbiblical,” when the Christian faculty member in fact discussed the long history of meditative prayer practiced by Christians in North Africa, Europe, and the Americas. She says “They claimed that Christians could gain spiritual benefit by using Buddhist meditation”, and while the Buddhist participants did, the Christian faculty member made it clear–as did another questioner–that the goal and experience of meditative prayer is entirely different for Christians, as we experience the presence and majesty of God and experience the work of the Holy Spirit and God's grace in our lives. If you listen to the recording YOU WILL ACTUALLY HEAR THESE THINGS SAID. What is scary is that readers believe Ms. Markell without verifying what actually happened at the 75-minute session. Go to https://cas.bethel.edu/dept/religious-studies/i....
I listened to as much of this audio as I could stomach (which was about five minutes). Five minutes made me feel nasty. In the creepy introduction alone, there is more than a “suggestion” that this “Interreligious Symposium” and its “interfaith(?) dialogue” was an attempt to convince themselves (and you) that New Age religion is equal with what Jesus accomplished on the cross. This gathering of lying spirits was demonic-even if Jan Markell had never been born.
see the link below at the end of my posting.
You are nitpicking. Small facts like a tiered classroom that holds 139 seats instead of 200 and 30 minutes for questions instead of 20 are not going to prevent anyone from going to heaven. The more important facts Ms. Markell seems to have misrepresented, like the speaker who piously referred to scriptures, is as significant as Satan who referred to Scripture when he tempted Christ in the wilderness. I can assure you, quoting Scripture does not impress God in the very least.
Does the fact that someone calls himself a Christian and not a Buddhist make him a Christian? Allow me to quote to you some Scripture, seeing that Professor Reasoner loves to refer to Scripture: “ . . . Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away” (2 Tim. 3:5). “Christians” who practice contemplative or centering prayer, the so-called “silence” or any other form of meditative prayer love to think that their brand of meditation is purely Christian because it ushers them into the presence of God. Nonsense! This is pure paganism that denies and rejects the power of the Gospel and all true Christians are commanded to turn away from such. They are not supposed to engage them, as Rob Bell the new Billy Graham teaches, in order to learn from one another’s truths but to present them with the unadulterated Gospel of Jesus Christ so that they may be saved. The power of the Gospel, as Paul so succinctly says in 1 Corinthians 1:18, is the preaching of the cross of Christ and not some kind of meditation that is supposedly Christian and grants you the boldness to enter into the holy of holies in heaven. Do you really think God would have given his only Son to be slaughtered on a cross if sinful man was able to enter into His holy presence by means of a technique like meditation? You must be joking! That’s the way of Cain and not of God. He ordained for mankind only a single way of entering into his presence and that is through the shed blood of His Son (Hebrews 10:19-22).
You are playing with fire. As I said earlier, those things you mentioned cannot prevent anyone from going to heaven but the assumption that a so-called Christian meditation can bring you into the holy presence of God, will indeed bar anyone from heaven.
Did Jesus command us to engage all religions in an interfaith dialogue so that we may learn from each other or did He say “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you”?
If you would like to read Bethel's response to Jan Markell's inaccurate assessment of the symposium you can go to http://www.bethel.edu. Underneath, NEWS and EVENTs, you can click and view Bethel's response. Anyone willing to embrace Ms. Markell's views owes Bethel, a school truly committed to Christian teaching, at least the 2 minutes it will take to read.
I would also like an audio and video link to Bethels psychology classes…where the profs introduce mystical “contemplative prayer” to unsuspecting students of trusting Baptist parents who send their children off to these indoctrination centers posing as Christian.
I am unaware of any psychology class where this happens. PSY325G Psychology of Religion includes a range of speakers from various faith traditions, but no psychology class that I'm aware of includes an emphasis like this. It is possible that a senior level general education course taught by a psychology faculty member might have such an emphasis. The closest I can find is described like this in the Bethel catalog:
GES433P • Biblical Spirituality: Experiencing God (offered occasionally) 3 credits
A study of spirituality in a variety of biblical texts, both Old Testament and New Testament. Essential issues related to spirituality will be addressed including: What is spirituality? What are biblical teachings regarding prayer, worship, and spiritual disciplines? How do we interpret biblical texts as guiding paradigms for the contemporary practice of spirituality? Prerequisites: Senior standing; GES110 or GES245; Nature of Persons (N) course; THE201; Comparative Systems (G) course.
The prerequisites, you will notice, require an introduction to theology course, but underlying this is also an introduction to the Bible course and a course in Biblical interpretation, the first taken in the freshman year, the second in the junior year. (Christian Theology is a sophomore-level course.) All of these build to the senior level course listed above, which is one of many in this “integrative” category.
Your awareness level is certainly not the issue…
I am certain most parents are unaware of this mystical garbage being peddled…
Nevertheless… it exists….and…since my original post said that these practices were “introduced”, I would appreciate it if you did not use the word ” emphasis “, since I did not use that term even once…
Even an introduction or momentary daliance or initiation to this spiritual leaven is spiritual poison enough and wholly unnaceptable at any level of any University seeking to pass itself off as Christian.
Very well. Since you appear to know which course or courses deal with the subject, why don't you tell me, and I'll investigate further. I'll be specific: I don't know any course taught by a psychology faculty member where contemplative prayer is even introduced as something one ought to do. It has to be mentioned in any historical study of Christianity, since this is part of the Christian tradition of the middle ages, of course.
Jan is right on about this symposium. The “Christian” professor practices Eastern meditation, which he calls Christian Zen. He said that he has entered consciousness-altering states while meditating. He also said that Christians can practice Buddhist meditation, and that we can borrow things from other religions. It's obvious that a couple of administrators or faculty from Bethel have come here to “defend” themselves. I doubt that they are regular readers of this blog. If they were, they might have learned by now that this kind of meditation is not Christian at all, and is in fact very dangerous.
You cannot drink both the cup of the Lord's table and of devil's. To provoke Him to jealousy. Are we stronger than He. I don't have to listen to this leaven to understand what a lie of Satan actually is. Let God be true and every man a liar.
You cannot drink both the cup of the Lord's table and of devil's. To provoke Him to jealousy. Are we stronger than He. I don't have to listen to this leaven to understand what a lie of Satan actually is. Let God be true and every man a liar.