Earlier today, I read a Facebook post from a friend of mine. It read,
“My World Literature professor just made the class participate in a Hindu ritual. It was about throwing your enemies and people you hate into god’s mouth. Me and one other person were the only ones who didn’t do it.”
I responded thus:
“Good job Shaun Leavines. As an instructor, I believe this goes too far. Here is what I mean. If religion is nothing more than an objective, systematic body of ideas, then what this instructor did was fine. However, religion is something that people, for better or worse, orient their entire lives around. It is an extremely personal affair (this goes for true adherents in any religion). Thus, what this instructor did was objectify religion. He did not take into account that for those who subjectively adhere to one particular religion, that person will not and cannot betray their convictions for an exercise a professor deems purely intellectual. Follow Christ!”
We live in a very spiritual Universe, and to enter into another religion’s rituals that no doubt are associated (whether one is conscious of it or not) with various spirits, seems more akin to witchcraft than an innocent “intellectual” exercise. Our problem sometimes in the sophisticated, scientific West is that we are naturalists at heart. We do not really, really believe in the spirit world even as Christians. We need our eyes opened. Paul wrote, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).
As I like to reiterate every chance I get, “All things are spiritual.”
Dr. BJ Condrey 
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