I have a friend named Denise that I’ve known since elementary school. Though we’d never been the best of friends, I had always known her to be a kind person. From our days making arts and crafts together, it had always been clear to me that she meant well. Back then, of course, religion was never a subject that came up between us.
After Denise graduated high school, she began exploring a spiritual route in life. We didn’t see each other much in those years, but in the little that we kept up over social media, she spoke to me of crystals, mindfulness, and meditation. As a strong advocate of meditation, I had been delighted to hear it.
When she elaborated on the different crystals that added to this mindfulness experience of hers, I’ll admit that I was cynical. But the practice was harmless. “You should use amethyst or rose quartz the next time you meditate, it can really make a difference,” she’d tell me. “Thanks for the advice! I’ll have to give that a try,” I’d respond. And while I didn’t quite believe her enough to actually take her up on the suggestion, the dubious healing potential of these crystals was far from anything worth confronting her about.
Her belief in crystals didn’t seem fully founded, but they were innocuous. Her intentions were good. She was still the same Denise I’d always known.
But a few years later, I noticed a stark shift in her social media presence. She’d found Christianity. And it wasn’t just any branch of Christianity that she’d found. It was the “all who believe differently than me are doomed to eternal hellfire,” type of Christianity. She was wearing that same smile that I’d grown to recognize over the years, but her words were now ones of hate.
As weeks went by, I tried my best to turn a blind eye to some of the more extreme things that she was beginning to post online. As a teenager, I had gotten into a few too many scathing Facebook arguments about politics and religion, so I’ve spent most of my adult years tempering myself and allowing the waters to settle, sitting on the sidelines of these more controversial back-and-forths as they break out.
One day last March, I noticed something she’d written on Facebook that grabbed my attention.
“If anybody is thinking about getting into healing, crystals, astrology, tarot, yoga, acupuncture, tapping, any type of therapy not based in Jesus… Ima tell you right now, it’s not God and it will send you to hell. The only way to heaven is being all in for Jesus love you!”
I stared at the post in frozen contemplation for a few moments and wondered whether to comment. It had gotten to the point where it didn’t even seem like it was her words that were written on that page. It was as though finding Jesus was at the expense of her vocabulary and reason. Whatever transition had occurred since we’d last spoken, I was stumped to see it. But I decided then that it was better not to discuss it with her and simply assumed that, with time, she’d change her mind on this.
A few months later, she shared a post to Facebook which read, “The ‘do what makes you happy’ culture is so toxic for Christians. We are NOT called to do what makes us happy. We’re called to do what glorifies God… Do. What. Glorifies. God.”
I considered then, too, whether to challenge her thinking, but I decided again to hold my tongue. As months went by, though, she continued proselytizing. Eventually, she rebranded her Facebook account as “Christian Influencer Denise.”
As her Facebook quickly devolved into a personal worship center, I debated whether I should simply mute her account. I think it was largely a morbid curiosity that prevented me from silencing her. As much as I couldn’t stand to see these shifts in her thinking, I was fascinated by what could drive such a caring person to keep spouting off about how everyone who believed differently than her was going to hell.
A couple of days ago, I noticed another post of hers emerge in my feed.
“I really used to be into what they call “new age” which is really a mix of all witchcraft and heathen/pagan religions put together.
I’m so glad that the Lord took me out of that. The devil is a LIAR!!!!
Your ancestors are dead yall. If anything is visiting you that ain’t an angel of God, it’s a demon.
I really used to think me seeing and/or feeling a spiritual entity was an ancestor. boy was i wrong and deceived.
Trust me y’all. That ”new age” stuff ain’t nothing to mess with. Put your faith in Jesus Christ. They want you to put your faith in crystals and false gods so you’ll burn in hell for all eternity with them. don’t do it y’all.
Jesus Christ is The Way, The Truth, and The Life.
even yoga wants to send you to hell. stay vigilant my friends. This post’s coming out of love for Jesus and love for your soul…”
Reading the post, I was simply baffled at what happened to this friend that I used to know. I wondered what powerful indoctrination could have left her proudly shouting such hateful nonsense from digital rooftops.
I was about to just keep scrolling again, but this time something got the better of me. I decided to comment.
“It’s pretty confusing to see you say a thing like “even yoga wants to send you to hell.” As someone who’s struggled with chronic pain, yoga really helped me a lot. I’m not sure if you quite see how offensive it is for many people when you just dismiss it as the devil’s work.
Meditation, too, is something that helps millions of people and isn’t all that different from prayer. The truth that you’ve found in Christianity should never negate the value that other people have found in their respective practices. I think it’s unkind of you to dismiss all of it in that way and I’ve never viewed you as an unkind person.”
Her reply came the next day in the form of a follow-up post on the subject.
if you want to stretch your body, stretch your body. Don’t do yoga. It’s Hindu god worship. Don’t believe me? Research for yourself.
Hindu god worship is demon worship
I’m big on sharing this because I was deceived by this practice and it led me into more Hindu practices that weren’t pleasing to God.
The devil is slick. It all goes back to Genesis 3
Jesus is the only one who can save our souls… not just for right now, but for eternity
Slightly incensed with her thinking, now, I pressed the issue with a follow-up comment on this new post. “Yoga can be a Hindu practice but it doesn’t need to be. I’m not worshipping any demons by watching Yoga with Adriene videos to deal with chronic pain,” I explained. I included with the comment a link to a young woman offering yoga tutorials beside her dog, Benji.
“Stretching is good and helps with chronic pain. Yoga specifically though was made for the Hindu religion. It’s just the truth,” she replied.
“And there isn’t anything wrong with that. Hinduism isn’t any less valuable than Christianity.”
“Who told you that?”
“When you’re coming from a place of, ‘I’m right and everyone on a different path is wrong,’ the burden of proof falls on you.
One of the aspects of organized religion that’s a little frustrating for me is how much of our affiliation is decided by geography. If you’d been born in New Delhi or Tehran, I don’t think it’s very likely that you’d be preaching this same message. Other cultures aren’t wrong just because they’ve adopted different practices than you have.”
I had hoped loftily that I might get a more direct response to this point, but alas.
“You gotta live for and follow Jesus Christ of you want to go to heaven❣️ Anything else will send you to hell
Jesus is love and He loves you very much Ben. He is so comforting and peaceful It’s the best choice you’ll ever make.”
By this point, my patience with this impenetrable thinking of hers had begun to wear thin. “This ‘I’m right and everyone else is going to hell’ mentality is a disgusting way of looking at the world. It’s really strange to see coming from someone I’ve always thought of as so kind,” I replied.
“i’m kinder than ever before now. to know the truth that can save others and not share it would be sad and evil. Hell is real and I don’t want anyone to go there . I know we were taught that all beliefs were good growing up, but it’s simply not true. Only one belief will save our souls from hell.
When I talked with you about me meditating with crystals and how amazing it was, wow now I reach meditations infinite times as strong with Jesus Christ. The meditation I did in the past could never compare to meditations with Jesus. I really suggest that you try it and investigate in this truth.”
Following this, two more of her Christian friends smugly entered into the discussion with re-re-retranslated bible quotes to prove their points. So I decided it was about time to make my retreat.
What I had hoped to gain here was uncertain. My expectations hadn’t exactly been high. But that multiple mutual friends of ours reached out to me privately and thanked me for confronting her confirmed I wasn’t the only one taken aback by this philosophical turn she had taken.
Religion is rarely an easy topic to discuss. As time has gone on, even politics has grown into an impossible conversation between most members of opposing parties. To truly hear and understand each other in this increasingly divisive climate is rarely easy. Even in those instances where we have reason and statistics on our side, so often our words fall on deaf ears when we enter into these discussions.
But where the religious debate is concerned, reason falls by the wayside entirely. Proof and logic lose their value.
So much of organized religion is hinged upon a faith that doesn’t falter before fact. That the stories of Noah’s Ark and Adam & Eve are genetic, geological impossibilities is irrelevant to those who believe in them. That science has bucked religion at every turn — from the origin of species to our place in the cosmos — matters very little in the face of faith.
To the extremists certain that all doubters are damned to lakes of eternal hellfire, there is little action that can be taken to correct their course; the rules of debate no longer apply in conversations with zealots. It’s a kind of thinking that’s utterly cultish in its detachment. It’s a kind of thinking that spawns conflicts, wars, and holocausts when left unchecked. The purported Christ-followers with such beliefs are walking, talking embodiments of what makes religion so very dangerous.
Christian extremists so often are able to hide beneath the all-loving veil of their long-haired, curiously caucasian savior even as they spout messages of unrepentant animosity. They can believe sincerely themselves that they’re helping the world with “God hates fags signs,” and sanctimonious decrees that yoga and meditation are hell-worthy evils. In those hateful messages, I see a level of extremism that most Americans attribute only to the Taliban.