What You’ve Been Searching For

Witchcraft, Violence, Yoga and Climate Change

All right. As I’ve been saying, we have a new round of research here at Christian Podcast Central. We have some new questions that you, the listeners, have asked us about, and I just want to go through, like I’ve done before once or twice. These are questions that I really didn’t think I could get a full podcast out of, quite honestly, but I do have some thoughts on them and you have asked them. I want to do my best to give you some probably incomplete answers that I could probably do a lot better job at, but this is what I’ve got for you this week. I think it’s important to do this. I think it’s important to try and cover all the points that you guys have been asking about. So, no further ado, I have the questions.

The first question that comes to us, I’ll start with an easy one and ease my way into it. First one is, is practicing witchcraft a sin? Yes. End of answer. There are about 18 or 20 different verses in the Bible that talk about things like witchcraft or divination or sorcery. The Bible makes it very, very clear that this is an affront to God and something that is definitely a sin and contrary to the will of God. Because it basically makes an idol or a God out of darkness, the Prince of Darkness, Satan himself, or just yourself and your own need. Most of witchcraft and these kinds of things are done by people just looking to be rebellious or somehow experience something, I don’t know, just to satisfy themselves. So, the answer to that question is yes. If you’re wondering about witchcraft, it definitely is a sin, something that’s an affront to God.

Here’s an interesting one. Why is Christianity not inherently a violent religion? That’s an interesting question, because a lot of people could probably make the case that it is a violent religion. Many, many wars throughout history have been fought by Christians. It’s interesting. I could answer this question both ways. You can put a mirror up to this question and make an argument that it is a violent religion.

But, as Jesus was a nonviolent person, for the most part, He only got violent when there was something He felt needed His righteous anger to cure. The most obvious one was the money changers in the temple. Jesus got very violent then. There are times when He tells His disciples to take a sword with them. He used lots of military analogies when He told parables. Christianity is not necessarily anti-violence, but as opposed to religions, say, like Islam, as some people call a muscular religion or a strong, iron-type religion, where conquest is the goal, that’s not Christianity. The goal of Christianity is to change people from within and make them new creatures. Well, if you’re going to go and kill someone, there’s not much chance of making them a new creature. The idea is to redeem. That’s what Jesus came to do. He took the violence that was coming to us, and He paid the price, and that’s what we’re supposed to project.

Again, that doesn’t mean I’m a pacifist. I’m not. There are just wars. There is a time for Christians to take up arms and fight to right injustice, to save the world. Like my dad helped in World War II. But the reason it’s not inherently violent is because Jesus’ message was not inherently violent. The idea is changing from within not without.

Can you lose your salvation? I haven’t really come to an answer on this one. I’ve heard it explained several different times. I tend to think, and the arguments that I’ve been told that are most convincing, is that if you are a position where you completely reject Christianity, you probably never were a Christian to begin with. That’s probably the most persuasive argument that I’ve heard. But, on the other hand, I do know people who were pretty sincere Christians, and I think I’m a pretty good judge of character, who now are not following the Lord at all and are totally going the opposite direction. At some point, I’m probably going to have to do a little more research on this and do an entire podcast on this question, because it does come up a lot. It’s something, all my Christian life, Christians have been asking this question, and I’ve been hearing sermons on it. It is a very big issue. But from my perspective, what I’ve heard, I’ve come to kind of the conclusion that if you are a person that completely rejects God, there was something not genuine about your faith. There was something missing in your faith to begin with. But don’t hold me to that. Like I said, I’ll do some more research on it, and in the future I promise a full podcast on that.

Okay. Now here’s a very, very important question. I want to be a Christian, but I did so many horrible things in my life. Will God forgive all my sins? Well, He promises to. If there were sins He couldn’t forgive, then Jesus’ death on the cross was kind of useless. More than kind of useless. It was useless. Okay? God can forgive anything that you’ve done. There is one unforgivable sin, but it has to do with something that doesn’t come up anymore. But God promises that there’s nothing, He takes your sin and tosses them as far as He can into the deepest ocean.

If you want to see and want to hear some stories of people who dealt with this, there’s two guys that I can think of, one that I know personally and one that I’ve seen personally several times. The first, I’ve seen him several times. His name is Michael Franzese. He’s an ex-New York mobster. He was very high up in one of the mob families in New York. He was a made man. If you know anything about the mafia, my people, the Italians, I’m so proud, in order to be a made man in the mafia, you have to do some pretty horrible things, and you have to be a pretty low person that is in desperate need of forgiveness. Well, Michael Franzese found forgiveness. He’s got a very, very compelling story, talks about how he dealt with this very thing and how God has forgiven him and given him new life. He’s dedicated his life to sharing that message with others, through prison, through all kinds of different things, death threats, you name it, but he found forgiveness.

The other person is a personal friend of mine who’s done a lot of podcasts with us in the past, comedian, Jeff Allen. I’m going to put a link below. Jeff tells a story of how he reached his lowest point in life. He was a confirmed atheist and his life was basically miserable. His marriage was on the rocks. He tells a story of before he realized people who have problems, people who were alcoholics, people who go through these things, there has to be a low point where they finally realize, “I need help.” Jeff tells a story of his lowest point, and I’m not going to spoil it for you now. We’re going to put the link below. But if you watch that video and hear Jeff’s story, you will realize that God can forgive just about anything. He can forgive anything. Because, I heard that story, and I said, “Wow, if God could forgive that,” and Jeff doesn’t pull any punches about the kind of person he was and the grace and the forgiveness he found.

Those are the best ways I can think to answer that question is to give you an example of two guys that I know who dealt with this and found forgiveness for some pretty awful stuff, I’ve got to tell you. So, hopefully you’ll check that out.

Can Christians do yoga? They can do yoga. Again, here, as I talked about with some of these questions, we’ve got to kind of take them apart. Can Christians do yoga? I’ve done yoga. I’ve done some yoga stretches, because I have a notoriously bad back. I’m a very stiff guy, so doing some yoga stretches has helped me. So, yes, I could say Christians can do yoga.

The better question is, can Christians practice yoga? That’s where I think it gets a little fuzzy. My wife and I had some conversations about this in the past, because she’s done yoga before, but she’s done her best not to practice it. Yoga is Eastern mysticism. Sorry folks. It’s a part of a worldview and a faith reality that I, as a Christian, don’t share and that most Christians don’t share. Again, it’s maybe splitting hairs a little bit, but I don’t think so. I think there’s a worldview, a philosophy and a faith behind yoga that is irreconcilable with Christianity. I would say, and like I said, if this is a cop out, so be it, Christians can do yoga poses and stretches, but I would stay away from actually practicing yoga and really getting into a lot of the mind, body, spiritual things that they do. Because I think those could lead you down the wrong path if you’re not careful.

And the last one, what do we, as Christians, do about climate change? I would say, as someone who’s very much a skeptic on climate change, I don’t doubt that climate changes. Again, as I said in my last video, my life has been lived through not only the civil rights movement, but also what used to be called the ecology movement or people now that’s called the environmental movement. Okay? I’ve seen too many predictions and too many things about the ecology and the environment that haven’t come true, which is why I’m skeptical about things like climate change. It seems like climate change, people embrace things like that to give them a cause that they can really get excited about, kind of a life or death scenario. “If we don’t do something about this, this is an existential crisis.” To me, these kinds of issues kind of give people an excuse to focus more on the here and now then they are on eternity. It doesn’t mean the planet is disposable. It doesn’t mean we’re done with it or we don’t have to take care of it. We’re here. One of the things I talked about also in the racial reconciliation video, what we get wrong sometimes about these things is we forget what we got right.

I try and tell my kids this. The climate, the ecology and the environment are so much better than when I grew up. I grew up in LA in the sixties and seventies. My whole childhood was spent underneath a 1,500-foot thick layer of smog. You couldn’t even see a mile where I grew up. I grew up on a hill overlooking LA, and I never saw LA unless it rained. That’s how dirty the air was and how dirty things were.

We’ve come a long way, and Christians have had a lot to do with this. We want to be good stewards of what God has created. We see God’s creation. It’s God’s creation. Why are we messing it up like this? We have done a lot, but again, these things, too many people have a vested interest in keeping these things going. I think that’s what’s happened with things like climate change. I think they’ve crossed the line to keep these things going, and we forget how good we have it. We have clean air and we have clean water these days. I don’t think there’s an existential threat to us based on climate. Again, I’m not a scientist. I could be wrong. I’ve just seen too much, too many things like this. Too many predictions have not come true. Call me a skeptic, and I can live at that. So, the question is, what should we do about it? Be aware of it, take in both sides of the argument, but don’t automatically buy into what everybody’s telling you. Does that sound fair? Okay.

I hope that’s a good job of, again, lining up some questions and knocking them down as best I can. Again, I think I will go a little bit more someday into, “Can you lose your salvation? Maybe someday soon. Stay tuned for that and other podcasts. Again, I just tackled a pretty controversial subject, so I know some of you disagree with me. Let me hear it in the comments. Where am I wrong? Like this video, if you like it, share it, please, with someone else, subscribe to YouTube and definitely go to ChristianPodcastCentral.com where there’s more good content like this. Thanks for listening.