Syncretism

I was born in the late '50's and grew up in the '60's in a Christian home. I had some sheltering from the storm around that was "the '60's," but I did see the shifting landscape. While my Christian school teachers warned against the evils of "sex and drugs and rock and roll" and my church youth group leaders warned against going to see films like "The Exorcist," we watched the sexual landscape shift from '50's wholesome to '60's "free love." But here was the most disturbing observation. Barely had the '70's begun when the church began to embrace the culture. Oh, not officially. Not on the face of it. They still warned against sexual sin and looked down their noses at "shacking up" where people lived together with the benefits of marriage and none of the commitments, but in among the church people it wasn't necessarily so. In the mid'70's in my last semester of high school my Christian girlfriend told me on one date, "I wouldn't mind going all the way with you." Now, in the early '60's this never would have happened. Christians sinned, of course, but it wasn't considered a good thing and it wasn't considered right and we didn't talk about it. But she was right there, having learned at the feet of the '60's that sex didn't require marriage, and she was offering it to me. Because the church was embracing the culture. Welcome to the "new normal."

We live in transitioning times (double meaning). As recently as 2008 California voted to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. As recently as 2013 transgenderism was considered a disorder. Gay relationships were tolerated (back when "tolerance" meant "tolerance"), but not embraced and celebrated. Today society at large does not merely tolerate these. They "tolerate" them with the new tolerance that says, "You will allow it and you will approve it and you will like it ... and you'll let us push it on your kids." Like the "free love" culture of the Sexual Revolution of the '60's, a small group of people have pushed a radically new view of sex onto a society at large and prevailed, and now to even consider disagreeing is called "hate."

From a Christian perspective, in a world dominated by the god of this world (2 Cor 4:4), the prince of the power of the air (Eph 2:1-3), this isn't a surprise. In a world where the mind is set on the flesh as a matter of course, hostility toward God is a given (Rom 8:7). It's to be expected. The disturbing part is that, once again, the church is moving to embrace what God condemns. Divorce is on the rise among Christians. Marriage is harder to define for Christians. Pornography has become more acceptable among Christians. Sexual sin of all stripes is becoming normalized among Christians. As in so many other cases time after time, people in the church draw their values and perceptions from a culture intent on opposing God rather than the instructions God gave us, even coming to consider those instructions as wrong and evil (Isa 5:20-21). We lose our anchor that God's Word provides and begin to think that the unnatural is natural (Rom 1:26-27) and that calling it out is not love (Heb 12:6-8) and wrong is right. Suddenly John's warning about those who "went out from us" (1 John 2:19) takes on new impact. Suddenly it becomes abundantly clear why the Jews in Isaiah 52:11 and Christians in 2 Corinthians 6:17 are called to "go out from their midst, and be separate from them." And some in the church will object ... to a command from God.
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In case you were wondering, syncretism is the union of different or opposing principles or practices, particularly in religion. Like merging Voodoo with Catholicism to produce Santeria. Like replacing "Thou shalt nots" in Scripture with "Thou shalt" as desired, such as replacing "Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?" (1 Cor 6:9-10) with "It's hate to suggest such a thing."