On “The 700 Club” today, Pat Robertson responded to a concerned viewer who feared that ever since her family moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, they have been exposed to “New Age spirituality” such as “dream catchers, yoga [and] veganism,” and wondered whether she should let her daughter take “yoga classes with one of her friends.”…. Robertson cautioned that while there is nothing wrong with stretching exercises, “along with yoga they have a mantra, and the mantra you say is in Hindu.”…. “You don’t know what the Hindu says, but actually it’s a prayer to a Hindu deity and so it sounds like gibberish. So you’re saying ‘kali, kali, kali,’ but you’re praying to a Hindu deity and you don’t want your daughter in that,” Robertson said. “Stretching exercise is cool, praying to a Hindu deity is not too cool.”
I’ve long since moved past considering Pat Robertson’s theology as something worthy of being taken anything close to seriously. He long ago took up residence the realm of cheap entertainment; it’s easy to laugh at him, if for no other reason than he clearly lacks the self-awareness to recognize just how completely ridiculous and laughable he’s become.
No, the problem isn’t with Robertson, who’s to serious theology what Charles Manson is to matrimonial harmony. What’s truly frightening is the still large numbers of Christians who take him seriously…and, even worse, send him their hard-earned money. Anyone who could seriously believe that “dream catchers, yoga [and] veganism” are instruments of Satan and thus a danger to their immortal soul has issues far more serious than anything Robertson could address and resolve. ‘Course, that’s not about to stop him from milking their pious concerns for donations…because when you break it down, all he really cares about is lining his pockets.
How a rational person could think the idea of doing yoga could be the leading cause of spontaneous fluidity in Hindi defies understanding. Can eating a croissant and drinking espresso cause a person to begin speaking in French? Will eating paella result in speaking in Spanish? Does eating cheese result in being transmogrified into a Green Bay Packers fan? Does drinking vodka lead to being conversant in Russian? Da!??!?! Of course not, in the same way that doing yoga has nothing whatsoever to do with speaking Hindu or praying to a Hindu deity.
Then again, instead of saying “kali, kali, kali,” what if yoga devotees are actually chanting “kill whitey, kill whitey, kill whitey”?
Perhaps THAT’S what we should be afraid of.
