May 15, 2012

Is Feng Shui Anti-Christianity?


I found a great article that really helped clear something up for me.  I've found myself wondering lately, 'Is Feng Shui anti-Christianity?'

The following is an excerpt from The Christian Research Journal found at http://journal.equip.org/articles/feng-shui

**Please note that the original article is much longer, and has a lot more in-depth info than I've posted here.  It also has a long list of research sources.  I've simply posted the short answer, if you will, to my question without posting most of the arguments for the conclusion.

SYNOPSIS
Is the increasingly popular decorating philosophy called feng shui just another way to bring beauty to your home or office? Behind the seemingly harmless facade of intricate and detailed decorating advice is a spiritual belief system based on the concepts of a universal force called chi, the opposing but complementary yin and yang, and the interaction of the five elements — earth, water, fire, metal, and wood. Feng shui is a system in which one uses tools of divination and complex formulas and calculations to determine how to control the flow of chi outside or inside a home or office. Harmony, balance, and peace are achieved mainly through the proper placement of objects in one’s physical environment. Feng shui uses occult practices to identify lucky and unlucky areas of a home and to determine how to keep bad chi at bay while attracting good chi. Adherents of feng shui believe invisible, magical forces are tamed through occult forms of divination. Its worldview is antithetical to the biblical worldview of a supernatural, sovereign, personal God.

CHRISTIAN RESPONSE
The worldview behind feng shui is at odds with the belief in a sovereign God. There is no force called luck in the Christian worldview. To believe in luck is to believe one is favored or not favored by benevolent and/or malevolent forces or gods (which, biblically, do not exist), rather than trusting the sovereign God who “causes all things to work together for good…to those who are called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28 nasb).
Principles of the I Ching, a divinatory tool, are used in feng shui. Feng shui itself is a form of divination based on Taoist philosophy. Divination, however, is strongly forbidden in Deuteronomy 18:10–12 and other passages such as 2 Kings 17:17; 21:6; and Acts 16:16–18 (some translations may use the term “soothsaying” instead of “divination”).
Feng shui operates entirely on the principles of chi and balancing yin and yang energies. To accept chi, one must ignore the personal Christian God and instead trust an impersonal force, but there is no biblical evidence for an impersonal life force permeating the universe. To seek harmony through a balance of yin and yang energies, moreover, is at odds with trusting Christ, and with the peace we have through Christ. It is entirely inconsistent with Christianity to believe that harmony and balance result from the manipulation and channeling of nonphysical forces or energies, or that such can be done by means of the proper placement of physical objects. Such techniques, in fact, belong to the world of sorcery.
Nonbiblical, New Age ideas are also found in some feng shui recommendations. One author, for example, gives instructions for meeting “the Spirit of your home,” which could be a person, an animal, a voice, or a mere presence.71 One can also chant the Hindu sacred sound of “Om” and visualize its symbol in order to implant the symbol’s energy into the atmosphere.72 Another practitioner recommends clearing the space in your home through a ritual involving physical cleaning, a purification ceremony, invoking positive energy, and preserving the clean energy through the placement of a quartz crystal.73
Some feng shui advice can result in beautiful surroundings, but one can design a pleasing environment with- out using feng shui at all. One need only rely on common sense, personal likes and dislikes, and artistic sensibilities.
Consider what feng shui expert Lillian Too said about her visit to a Buddhist monastery in Nepal: “Below us is the sprawling valley that makes up the ‘bright hall’, where auspicious and favourable chi settles and accumulates before making its way up the meandering road to the monastery.”74 If this monastery is without the light of Christ, however, what good is the “favorable chi”? Christians have something much better to offer the world than a method for manipulating supposed impersonal forces to bring harmony and peace. They have a personal Savior, Jesus Christ, who gives a perfect and permanent peace totally unlike anything that can be offered or found in this world (John 14:27).

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