Mindfulness, Part 2
Posted by Matt Postiff July 19, 2020 on Matt Postiff's Blog under Theology
I asked our deacon if he could do me a favor and expand upon this paragraph in the prior post:
By claiming that thoughts and feelings are autonomous, mindfulness excuses guilt, and convolutes the idea of identity and personhood (similar to the way atheism does by denying free will).
The reason I say that mindfulness meditations teaches that thoughts are autonomous (not intentional) is because of their analogy of watching your thoughts go by like you would watch cars go by. They do not acknowledge that when you observe those "cars", your actually driving each and every one of them. They imply that the thoughts are driving themselves.
Atheists have a similar view. Atheists deny free will. (By "free will" they mean being free of nature's dictate, not what we mean by "free will." God's sovereignty is not even a factor in their thinking.) Atheists teach that everything we are and do is a product of our natural environment. Everything is just time, chance, and material reactions.
This materialistic world view can lead to confusion about what a person even is. Your molecules weren't you before you existed, so what is you after the molecules come together to form you? Furthermore, your matter and energy are in a different state at any point in time, and so there is a question as to whether you are really the same person at any point in time. That may sound ridiculous, but these are the kinds of things I have seen the atheist philosophers pontificate about.
By the way, the book I read on meditation is "The Headspace Guide to Meditation and Mindfulness: How Mindfulness Can Change Your Life in Ten Minutes a Day." This book made it into Bill Gates' recommended reading list and seems to be an authoritative book on the subject. For the Christian who wants to learn more about the falsehood of mindfulness, this is a good resource, as long as he watches out for the leaven in the book. The lies are presented in such an attractive way I fear it could beguile baby Christians.