True conversion is demonstrated by turning from known sin and renouncing known evil. Sure, sometimes this can take a while as the new Christian comes to understand what Scripture teaches, and then makes further moves away from a sinful past. But sometimes God shines his light on the newly converted soul right away.

We live in a culture that no longer believes in truth and absolutes. People are quite happy therefore to mix and match their religious and worldview components in any way they please, no matter how contradictory or mismatched they might be.

So spiritual and religious pursuits for most folks today becomes much like a visit to a smorgasbord: you pick and choose what you want to consume, and simply ignore or reject that which is not to your liking. These folks are not concerned about truth or intellectual consistency. They simply want to run with whatever feels good to them.

This combining of various divergent and often completely contradictory religious beliefs and practices is what is known as religious syncretism. One dictionary definition says this: “Noun: the amalgamation or attempted amalgamation of different religions, cultures, or schools of thought: ‘interfaith dialogue can easily slip into syncretism’.”

As I say, this is how most people in the West operate nowadays. But anyone who actually has read the Bible knows that syncretism is just not on. Plenty of texts can be appealed to here. One passage I came upon just moments ago in my daily reading is quite representative. Leviticus 18:1-5 says this:

And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, I am the Lord your God. You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes. You shall follow my rules and keep my statutes and walk in them. I am the Lord your God. You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them: I am the Lord.

The other day I wrote a piece about one religious syncretist who thought her love affair with witchcraft was fully compatible with Christianity. She was dead wrong of course. And in that piece I mentioned the biblical response to such matters: billmuehlenberg.com/2022/01/31/look-within-and-be-deceived/

One passage I featured was Acts 19:13-20. I want to look at this text in a bit more detail, so here it is again:

Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists attempted to pronounce the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “I command you by the Jesus that Paul preaches!” Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this. The evil spirit answered them, “I know Jesus, and I recognize Paul—but who are you?” Then the man who had the evil spirit leaped on them, overpowered them all, and prevailed against them, so that they ran out of that house naked and wounded. This became known to everyone who lived in Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks. Then fear fell on all of them, and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified. And many who had become believers came confessing and disclosing their practices, while many of those who had practiced magic collected their books and burned them in front of everyone. So they calculated their value and found it to be 50,000 pieces of silver. In this way the Lord’s message flourished and prevailed.

A number of things can be said about this. One is the radical nature of Christian discipleship.

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