Should Christians Vacation to Religious Shrines?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:04.000 | This is the time of spring when many begin planning out summer vacations and it raises the question
00:00:08.000 | over whether or not Christians should visit the touristy shrines of other active religions.
00:00:14.000 | Samuel is a listener who writes in to ask it.
00:00:17.000 | Pastor John, can Christians who travel abroad visit the shrines and temples of other religions?
00:00:22.000 | Countries like India, China, Japan, Korea, and Thailand
00:00:27.000 | have places of worship that are culturally filled with wonderful art and history.
00:00:31.000 | One argument says that it's a great way to learn more about a culture as long as we don't participate in the rituals.
00:00:37.000 | However, another argument says that a Christian should stay far away from idol worship and demonic activity
00:00:42.000 | and should not even give a passive acceptance to a false god.
00:00:46.000 | This issue can be extended to visiting Mormon temples in Utah
00:00:50.000 | or perhaps more controversially, Roman Catholic cathedrals and basilicas in Europe.
00:00:55.000 | Pastor John, what would you say to Samuel?
00:00:58.000 | I think this is a very appropriate question to ask
00:01:03.000 | and I wish more Christians were thoughtful enough and discerning enough and spiritually concerned enough
00:01:11.000 | to even ask the question instead of just letting their American tourist role or their artistic role
00:01:17.000 | or their wanderlust control their feelings and thoughts
00:01:21.000 | so that they do that sort of thing without even asking those kinds of questions.
00:01:25.000 | I think that's really good that he's asking.
00:01:29.000 | We are to do everything we do for the glory of God in the name of Jesus.
00:01:35.000 | It is a sign of terrible cultural captivity and spiritual obliviousness.
00:01:44.000 | If a Christian can go to a shrine of another religion and not feel both the heartbreak
00:01:52.000 | at the millions who are deceived by this religion
00:01:56.000 | and caution about the supernatural demonic powers of deception at work in the religion,
00:02:02.000 | all of these things are massively real.
00:02:06.000 | And to treat them lightly just because we're having a vacation is a sign of serious spiritual superficiality.
00:02:15.000 | So I love Samuel's question.
00:02:18.000 | So here are some questions that I would be asking myself in order to decide where to go
00:02:26.000 | and where not to go and how to go if I go
00:02:30.000 | and if I must decide whether to go to some shrine at all.
00:02:36.000 | So first, more important than the mere geographical going is what you believe and love and feel as you go.
00:02:47.000 | What are your motives in going?
00:02:50.000 | How have you prepared yourself spiritually for going?
00:02:54.000 | What do you believe about the religion and the harm that it has done,
00:03:00.000 | say, the way Islam or Buddhism or Hinduism has led billions of people into everlasting suffering apart from God?
00:03:10.000 | Do you know that? Do you believe that? Do you feel that?
00:03:14.000 | Do you know why that is and why the religion is so destructive?
00:03:19.000 | Do you care?
00:03:21.000 | Is that part of your decision-making process or you just consider that irrelevant?
00:03:27.000 | The answer to those questions will prepare you to see things in the proper light if you choose to go.
00:03:34.000 | Another question I would ask is, what are you required to do while you are there?
00:03:41.000 | Do they require tokens of respect or even honor that would compromise your allegiance to the Lord Jesus?
00:03:51.000 | Third, I would ask, have you given thought to the various levels of demonic activity that might influence you?
00:04:00.000 | My own sense is that there are some active temples and shrines which are so dense with demonic activity
00:04:09.000 | that you would need to be a fairly strong Christian with your devil-resisting guard up in order not to be negatively influenced.
00:04:18.000 | Fourth, what will you do, what will you say about what you saw there when you leave?
00:04:27.000 | I think that's a huge question about the profitableness of going.
00:04:32.000 | In other words, will you simply absorb it and go on your life giving naive tribute to pagan strengths,
00:04:41.000 | art strengths, building strengths, or will you discern how Christ is dishonored there
00:04:49.000 | and how God is distorted there and how the way of salvation is nullified there?
00:04:56.000 | And will you write something or say something?
00:05:00.000 | I'm just thinking an email to friends or a blog or letter or something to Sunday school class
00:05:07.000 | so that it becomes an opportunity to magnify the greatness of Christ and the truth of God and the glory of his way of salvation.
00:05:17.000 | Will you simply just fit the experience into your life as something normal
00:05:22.000 | or will you take it as an extraordinary opportunity to glorify Jesus?
00:05:28.000 | Let me give you an example.
00:05:30.000 | In the last several years, I visited both the Vatican in Rome, including the Sistine Chapel,
00:05:36.000 | and the third largest mosque in the world in the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque.
00:05:44.000 | In both cases, I tried to turn those experiences, which of course were very impressive
00:05:52.000 | because of the sheer size of those institutions as well as the evidences of remarkable human skill,
00:06:00.000 | I tried to turn those experiences into opportunities to testify to the truth of God and Christ
00:06:10.000 | by speaking or writing about the nature of God revealed on the walls in the mosque
00:06:17.000 | and the nature of salvation and of Catholicism as revealed in the artwork in the Vatican.
00:06:25.000 | In the final suggestion that I'll make, I want to ask,
00:06:33.000 | should you just go on talking about wonderful art, great art, without any qualification
00:06:43.000 | when that art is the product of profound unbelief and eternally destructive false teaching?
00:06:53.000 | It's growing out of it. Does that make a difference?
00:06:56.000 | In other words, in all of our conversations with people over dinner, when we come home from this trip,
00:07:05.000 | are we just going to gush about the greatness of the pagan artworks
00:07:12.000 | without any sense of brokenheartedness that such remarkable God-given human skill
00:07:20.000 | can be prostituted for the sake of destructive error?
00:07:25.000 | Let's just leave that out as though that doesn't matter at all.
00:07:28.000 | We'll just talk about great art and wonderful art.
00:07:32.000 | So many people do that about greatness in the world with no thought about, really?
00:07:39.000 | Isn't there a downside to the greatness of Hitler's leadership?
00:07:44.000 | So those are some of my thoughts about how we should use our freedom in Christ
00:07:52.000 | as we move among the artifacts of unbelief and the artifacts of common grace in this world,
00:07:59.000 | which we are always doing, not just when we visit temples.
00:08:04.000 | Yeah, thank you, Pastor John, and thanks for the great, in-time-of-the-question, Samuel.
00:08:08.000 | Keep your questions coming in to us. They're very good, very helpful, and we love reading them.
00:08:12.000 | We can't answer them all, but we will read every question that comes to us.
00:08:15.000 | You can send it to us via email at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:08:20.000 | You can find our audio feeds and our episode archive through our online home as well
00:08:24.000 | at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:08:28.000 | We now break for the weekend, and we're going to return on Monday.
00:08:31.000 | A listener simply wants to know, "Was John Calvin a Christian hedonist?"
00:08:37.000 | Interesting. John Piper has been called to take the stand to make his case.
00:08:41.000 | I'm your host, Tony Reike. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John Podcast
00:08:44.000 | with longtime pastor and author John Piper.
00:08:46.000 | Have a great weekend. We'll see you on Monday.
00:08:48.000 | [end]
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