You call these things demonic. Let’s hold them up to the light.
Yoga is demonic ~ but the posture you strike when you kneel at the altar, hands open, body surrendered, breath slowed? That is the same technology. Embodied spiritual practice. The alignment of the physical and the sacred. Yoga comes from ancient Hindu tradition, yes. So does the numerical mysticism embedded in your biblical numerology. The body has always been a site of G-d’s encounter.
Sage and incense are witchcraft ~ but frankincense and myrrh were brought to the manger. They are in your nativity scene. The burning of sacred plants to cleanse space, to mark transition, to invite the holy? That is not a New Age invention. That is an ancient human practice that your own scriptures endorse. Leviticus 16. Exodus 30. The priests burned incense before the Lord. What exactly do you think that was?
Meditation is Eastern and suspect ~ but Psalm 46:10 says be still and know. The Desert Mothers and Fathers built entire contemplative traditions around the practice of stilling the mind to encounter the divine. You call it prayer. You call it centering. Someone else calls it meditation. Same practice. Different vocabulary.
Manifestation is New Age heresy ~ but you just got done shouting “name it and claim it” at a prosperity gospel revival. You believe that speaking things into existence ~ declaring your healing, declaring your breakthrough, claiming what G-d has for you ~ is anointed. The mechanism is identical. The theology of spoken intention creating reality. The only difference is the teacher.
Ancestors are idol worship ~ but you light a candle at your grandmother’s grave. You say, “She’s watching over me.” You invoke the faith of your foremothers in testimony every Sunday. You read Hebrews 11 ~ that great cloud of witnesses ~ and shout. In African and African diasporic traditions, honoring ancestors is not worship of the dead. It is the acknowledgment that those who came before us remain part of the living community of G-d. Jesus himself, within a Womanist theological framework, functions as an ancestor ~ as one who walked the path, broke through death, and continues to be in relationship with the living.
Zodiac signs are satanic ~ but you read the book of Daniel, full of star interpretations and celestial signs. The Magi ~ the wise men, the astrologers ~ followed a star to find the Christ child. Nobody called them demonic. The Hebrew calendar is lunar. The church calendar is tied to solstices and equinoxes. The seasons of planting and harvest, of Advent and Lent, are cosmological. Your faith has always been in conversation with the heavens. Astrology did not arrive with the devil. It arrived with human beings trying to read the sacred order written in the sky.
Energy is secular and godless ~ but you just told me the Holy Spirit moved through the room and raised the hairs on your arms. You testified that you felt something shift when the choir sang. You described an experience of tangible, felt, invisible power that moved through bodies and changed the atmosphere. What is that, if not energy? The refusal to use that word does not make the experience different. It just makes the theology smaller.
Dr. TAD
tawana@thedrtad.com
Come get some of this healing!
