The Problem With Their Syncretisms
Culture and Politics - Politics
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, 02 May 2012
Suppose a measure is before your state legislature to build a bridge
over a river in your town. There are ardent Christians in your town who
think this is a good idea, and ardent Christians who want to leave well
enough alone. Surrounding these pro and con Christians are the
unbelievers who also, not surprisingly, divide up into for and against
camps.
Some of the "in favor" secularists want to build the bridge because
they want to make money, money, money, while the hipster antis do not
want to disturb the river god any further than we already have. The
Christians who are for and against divide up into another two groups (we
have now cut that pie into four quarters). Some of the pro Christians
fall into the money, money, money school of thought, and some of the
anti Christians wish that Jesus were a little more green friendly, like
the river god is.
But there are other Christians, both for and against the project, who
came to their conclusions in a conscientious biblical manner.
Showing posts with label Syncretism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Syncretism. Show all posts
Wednesday, 9 May 2012
Thursday, 18 August 2011
False Hopes
Counterfeit Coinage
The Scriptures leave us in no doubt why ancient Israel, then Judah lost their independence and became vassal states. Both the northern and southern kingdoms were subjugated by foreign powers, eventually passing from human history. Israel went first, then one hundred years later Judah followed.
Why?
The Scriptures leave us in no doubt why ancient Israel, then Judah lost their independence and became vassal states. Both the northern and southern kingdoms were subjugated by foreign powers, eventually passing from human history. Israel went first, then one hundred years later Judah followed.
Why?
Monday, 31 January 2011
What Does Modern Syncretism Look Like?
Playing the Harlot Once Again
We are all familiar with the noun, syncretism. It indicates a joining of contradictory beliefs or principles into a common cause of one kind or other. It is a word derived from the Greek, where it initially referred to Cretan cities, usually independent and isolated from each other, joining together for common cause, such as defeating an invader.
In the Christian faith, syncretism has at times deeply infected both Israel and the Church. At root it is a state of joining together Belief and Unbelief, so that beliefs and practices of Unbelief become stock and standard for Christian communities. In Israel, one of the most persistent forms of syncretism was mixing the worship of the Living God with respect and adoration of idols. First Israel, then Judah were sent into captivity because they refused to live exclusively for God, but wanted to have a bit of idolatry on the side. A quick reading of I and II Chronicles underscores how this was the sin of sins which finally brought down the longsuffering wrath of God upon His people. Judah refused to take away the altars on the "high places" but continued to offer worship and obeisance to idol gods, along with keeping up formal worship practices in Jerusalem. This is what the Bible calls, "playing the harlot".
Here is just one passage amongst numerous declamations by the prophets:
The pattern is repeated in the New Covenant, when final judgment fell upon Israel and Jerusalem in AD 66-70. Jerusalem was destroyed because of her syncretism: the deceitful and duplicitous attempt to make common cause with the pagan nations of the earth, siding and conspiring with them against Messiah, the King and against His people. This is made clear repeatedly in Revelation which is primarily about the judgment of God falling upon Israel and Jerusalem in AD 70, even as our Lord foretold. (Revelation 17 & 18--where Jerusalem is called Babylon, the mother of harlots.)
Syncretism did in Israel. It also marks the eventual departure of the Lord from rotten parts of His Church. Syncretism is very, very bad ju ju. But what does syncretism look like in the modern word--where secular humanism has exalted man to the place of God? In what ways is the Church guilty of mixing the Belief with Unbelief? Clearly, unless we are speaking of Hindu immigrants or superstitious Chinese and their ancestor shrines, there is no cult nor idols nor altars to mix into the Christian faith in modern secular society. Does this mean that we have once and for all dispensed with syncretism? Does this meant that secular humanism is a blessing for the Church?
Unfortunately, many within the Church, consciously or unconsciously, think so. It is inevitable, therefore, that syncretism remains a terrible curse upon the Church. This is what it now looks like: a survey amongst evangelical Christians in the UK puts the spotlight on the problem and exposes what form syncretism in the modern secular West takes.
That's what syncretism looks like in the modern world. In every ethical and social area where the pagan secular humanists have won societal control and imposed their agenda, the evangelical church shows compromise with, concession to, and agreement with the world. The inerrancy of Scripture is telling: the pagan world has slammed the integrity of the Scriptures in the West for over two centuries now: upshot--in the hearts of nearly half of evangelical Christians incense is offered to the secular rationalist gods. Pre-marital sex, abortion, women's "rights"--all these pop secular humanist causes which have captured society--have been adopted and embraced by a large component of Believers.
Syncretism is alive and well. In Israel, God called it playing the harlot, committing spiritual adultery. Nothing has changed--only the masks worn by the actors and the audience. Playing the harlot it remains.
We are all familiar with the noun, syncretism. It indicates a joining of contradictory beliefs or principles into a common cause of one kind or other. It is a word derived from the Greek, where it initially referred to Cretan cities, usually independent and isolated from each other, joining together for common cause, such as defeating an invader.
In the Christian faith, syncretism has at times deeply infected both Israel and the Church. At root it is a state of joining together Belief and Unbelief, so that beliefs and practices of Unbelief become stock and standard for Christian communities. In Israel, one of the most persistent forms of syncretism was mixing the worship of the Living God with respect and adoration of idols. First Israel, then Judah were sent into captivity because they refused to live exclusively for God, but wanted to have a bit of idolatry on the side. A quick reading of I and II Chronicles underscores how this was the sin of sins which finally brought down the longsuffering wrath of God upon His people. Judah refused to take away the altars on the "high places" but continued to offer worship and obeisance to idol gods, along with keeping up formal worship practices in Jerusalem. This is what the Bible calls, "playing the harlot".
Here is just one passage amongst numerous declamations by the prophets:
And the word of the Lord came to me saying, "Son of man, set your face toward the mountains of Israel, and prophesy against them, and say, 'Mountains of Israel, listen to the word of the Lord God! Thus says the Lord God to the mountains, the hills, the ravines and the valleys:
"Behold I Myself am going to bring a sword on you, and I will destroy your high places. So your altars will become desolate, and your incense altars will be smashed; and I shall make your slain fall in front of your idols. I shall also lay the dead bodies of the sons of Israel in front of their idols; and I shall scatter your bones around your altars.
"In all your dwellings, cities will become waste and the high places will be desolate, that your altars may become waste and desolate, your idols may be broken and brought to an end, your incense altars may be cut down, and your works may be blotted out. And the slain will fall among you, and yo will know that I am the Lord." ' " Ezekiel 6: 1--7
The pattern is repeated in the New Covenant, when final judgment fell upon Israel and Jerusalem in AD 66-70. Jerusalem was destroyed because of her syncretism: the deceitful and duplicitous attempt to make common cause with the pagan nations of the earth, siding and conspiring with them against Messiah, the King and against His people. This is made clear repeatedly in Revelation which is primarily about the judgment of God falling upon Israel and Jerusalem in AD 70, even as our Lord foretold. (Revelation 17 & 18--where Jerusalem is called Babylon, the mother of harlots.)
Syncretism did in Israel. It also marks the eventual departure of the Lord from rotten parts of His Church. Syncretism is very, very bad ju ju. But what does syncretism look like in the modern word--where secular humanism has exalted man to the place of God? In what ways is the Church guilty of mixing the Belief with Unbelief? Clearly, unless we are speaking of Hindu immigrants or superstitious Chinese and their ancestor shrines, there is no cult nor idols nor altars to mix into the Christian faith in modern secular society. Does this mean that we have once and for all dispensed with syncretism? Does this meant that secular humanism is a blessing for the Church?
Unfortunately, many within the Church, consciously or unconsciously, think so. It is inevitable, therefore, that syncretism remains a terrible curse upon the Church. This is what it now looks like: a survey amongst evangelical Christians in the UK puts the spotlight on the problem and exposes what form syncretism in the modern secular West takes.
A Snapshot of the Beliefs and Habits of Evangelical Christians in the UK
This looks like a helpful report.
91% think Jesus is the only way to God
96% attend a church once a week
77% are in small groups
83% read/listen to the Bible a few times a week
96% pray a few times a day
96% have given money to their church this year
88% strongly agree that their faith is the most important thing in their life
94% believe in creation care
83% believe in miraculous gifts today
83% agree the Bible has “supreme authority” in beliefs, views, and behaviour
71% believe it is a Christian’s duty to be involved in evangelism (58% talk about their faith to someone once a month)
62% think sex before marriage is wrong (38% believe it is not wrong).
54% believe it in inerrancy”; 32% are for it or unsure (nearly half believe the Bible has errors).
37% think abortion is wrong; 46% are straddling (unsure/disagree a little); 17% disagree.
37% strongly agree that hell is a place where the condemned will suffer eternal conscious pain; 13% agree a little with this; 31% are unsure; 8% disagree a little; 11% disagree a lot.
51% are strongly favor women in leadership; 20% disagree only a little; [71% are in favor]; 9% are unsure; 10% disagree a little; 10% strongly disagree.
59% agree a lot that homosexual sexual acts are wrong; 14% agree a little; 11% are unsure; 8% disagree a little; and 8% disagree a lot.
Hat Tip: Justin Taylor
That's what syncretism looks like in the modern world. In every ethical and social area where the pagan secular humanists have won societal control and imposed their agenda, the evangelical church shows compromise with, concession to, and agreement with the world. The inerrancy of Scripture is telling: the pagan world has slammed the integrity of the Scriptures in the West for over two centuries now: upshot--in the hearts of nearly half of evangelical Christians incense is offered to the secular rationalist gods. Pre-marital sex, abortion, women's "rights"--all these pop secular humanist causes which have captured society--have been adopted and embraced by a large component of Believers.
Syncretism is alive and well. In Israel, God called it playing the harlot, committing spiritual adultery. Nothing has changed--only the masks worn by the actors and the audience. Playing the harlot it remains.
Thursday, 27 January 2011
Douglas Wilson's Letter From America
Right in the Juicy Spot
Culture and Politics
Sex and Culture
Douglas Wilson
Monday, January 24, 2011
Inter-Varsity Press ("IVP") has released a new title, called The End of Sexual Identity: Why Sex Is Too Important to Define Who We Are (HT: Baylyblog). Reading how they have described it themselves was like playing ping pong with your junior high friends, and one of them hits the ball about five feet above the table, exactly in the middle, right in the juicy spot. Time slows down, and what can you do? No choice involved in it, really.
But why do we want to account for complex postmodern realities? That is called missing the point, for there are no longer any points to miss. Right? Actually, underneath all the pomo jargonizing, there are a couple of non-negotiable points that they insist on us not missing, while pretending they are insisting on nothing whatever.
One is that everybody must be able to get laid whenever and however they want, and the other is that they must be allowed to rail against power games while playing the ultimate power game themselves. The first item is the bait, and the second is the trap. The people doing this are really evil or really stupid.
But let us play the game for a couple more minutes. If we were still trapped in the older Aristotelian categories, then we would have to account for realities. Part of the whole point of complex postmodern cogitations was to stop accounting for realities. Reality is offputting. Reality involves a boy and a girl, who grow up into a man and a woman (more a divine construct than a social one), fully capable of having their fun time without any help from anthropologists who write for IVP, or leather merchants in San Francisco for that matter.
Incidentally, I don't think they really mean it when they resolve to abandon all simplistic moral exhortations. If any of them ever read this post, and afterwards have reason to speak to me, I would be willing to bet ready money that I would hear quite a few simplistic moral exhoratations.
So shall we avoid all "simplistic moral exhortations" when it comes to sexual identity? As Uncle Andrew said to Digory, "Ours is a high and lonely destiny . . ." It is a hard living trying to grow luxuriant flowers on that moonscape of theirs. "Orchids need atmosphere" is a simplistic truism, and we have abandoned all such. The problem is, nothing grows anymore.
So these people are reduced to the expedient of kidnapping what other people have grown. Some poor kid arrives at their InterVarsity group at college from his Bible church background, sent there because his parents were so influenced by Packer's Knowing God (IVP) when they were in college, little realizing that IVP is now putting out . . . initially I was going to make up some ridiculous title like Walking with Christ through Gender Change: How a Fundamentalist Man Became a Methodist Woman . . . but I think I'll just leave it at "IVP is now putting out."
Culture and Politics
Sex and Culture
Douglas Wilson
Monday, January 24, 2011
Inter-Varsity Press ("IVP") has released a new title, called The End of Sexual Identity: Why Sex Is Too Important to Define Who We Are (HT: Baylyblog). Reading how they have described it themselves was like playing ping pong with your junior high friends, and one of them hits the ball about five feet above the table, exactly in the middle, right in the juicy spot. Time slows down, and what can you do? No choice involved in it, really.
"Concepts like 'gay' or 'straight' are relatively recent developments in human history. We let ourselves be defined by socially constructed notions of sexual identity and sexual orientation, even though these are not distinctly biblical or Christian ways of thinking about sex."
Now anyone who thinks that this is a prelude to urging us all to start adopting more biblical ways about speaking about sex, is someone who is perhaps a tad more naive than they ought to be."And there were also sodomites in the land: and they did according to all the abominations of the nations which the LORD cast out before the children of Israel" (1 Kings 14:24).
"Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the house of the LORD thy God for any vow: for even both these are abomination unto the LORD thy God. (Dt. 23:18).
Heh. So let us abandon all these recent social constructs that have done so much to clutter up our speechifying. Let us walk away from all talk of transgendered communities, let us abandon all notions of gay orientations, and let us not have any more of this funny business about dykes on bikes. Let us return to the biblical world in which harlotry is considered a problem. Everybody happy now? No? Maybe something else is going on then. Hmmm. Let's check on what that might be."Anthropologist Jenell Williams Paris offers a Christian framework for sexuality that accounts for complex postmodern realities..."
But why do we want to account for complex postmodern realities? That is called missing the point, for there are no longer any points to miss. Right? Actually, underneath all the pomo jargonizing, there are a couple of non-negotiable points that they insist on us not missing, while pretending they are insisting on nothing whatever.
One is that everybody must be able to get laid whenever and however they want, and the other is that they must be allowed to rail against power games while playing the ultimate power game themselves. The first item is the bait, and the second is the trap. The people doing this are really evil or really stupid.
But let us play the game for a couple more minutes. If we were still trapped in the older Aristotelian categories, then we would have to account for realities. Part of the whole point of complex postmodern cogitations was to stop accounting for realities. Reality is offputting. Reality involves a boy and a girl, who grow up into a man and a woman (more a divine construct than a social one), fully capable of having their fun time without any help from anthropologists who write for IVP, or leather merchants in San Francisco for that matter.
"She unpacks how sexual identities are socially constructed in our cultural context, and assesses problems with common cultural and Christian understandings of heterosexuality and homosexuality. Ultimately, linking sexual feelings to human identity leads us to a dead end."
To wit, the dead end of not being able to follow your fellow academics to the party that promises to turn into an orgy, the one with a daisy chain involving half the faculty, a chain that actually is a social construct, come to think of it."Avoiding simplistic moral exhortation about sexual behavior, Paris argues that the Christian tradition holds a distinct vision for sexuality without sexual identity categories. The End of Sexual Identity moves beyond culture war impasses to open up new space and vocabulary for conversations with people in diverse communities both inside and outside the church."
Anybody who can read that without catching a whiff of the sulphurous pit it came from is probably on the tenure fast track, and those who keep wrinkling their nose like they are doing are never going to get tenure.Incidentally, I don't think they really mean it when they resolve to abandon all simplistic moral exhortations. If any of them ever read this post, and afterwards have reason to speak to me, I would be willing to bet ready money that I would hear quite a few simplistic moral exhoratations.
So shall we avoid all "simplistic moral exhortations" when it comes to sexual identity? As Uncle Andrew said to Digory, "Ours is a high and lonely destiny . . ." It is a hard living trying to grow luxuriant flowers on that moonscape of theirs. "Orchids need atmosphere" is a simplistic truism, and we have abandoned all such. The problem is, nothing grows anymore.
So these people are reduced to the expedient of kidnapping what other people have grown. Some poor kid arrives at their InterVarsity group at college from his Bible church background, sent there because his parents were so influenced by Packer's Knowing God (IVP) when they were in college, little realizing that IVP is now putting out . . . initially I was going to make up some ridiculous title like Walking with Christ through Gender Change: How a Fundamentalist Man Became a Methodist Woman . . . but I think I'll just leave it at "IVP is now putting out."
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