Modern Day Syncretism
“For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.” - Exodus 20:11
“But not really...” - Hillsong
“It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed.” - Exodus 31:17
“But not really...” - Hillsong
“Then God said... ‘And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.’ And it was so.” - Genesis 1:30
“But not really...” - Hillsong
“[Jesus] answered, ‘Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female,’” - Matthew 19:4
“But not really...” - Hillsong
“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin,” - Romans 5:12
“But not really...” - Hillsong
“For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.” - I Corinthians 15:21
“But not really...” - Hillsong
“Evolution is undeniable,” says Joel Houston, worship pastor at Hillsong NYC, son of Hillsong founder Brian Houston, and songwriter of “So Will I (100 Billion X)”, a worship song featuring the lyric:
“All nature and science
Follow the sound of your voice
And as you speak
A hundred billion creatures catch your breath
Evolving in pursuit of what you said
If it all reveals your nature so will I”
So now it’s become not only fashionable, but somehow worshipful to acknowledge and praise God for something His Word teaches He did not do.
(I would be interested, as well, to learn how the theory of evolution reveals the nature of a God “with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change,” as James 1:17 states.)
When Aaron made the golden calf that Israel worshipped while Moses was on Mount Sinai, the people claimed, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” Aaron continued by making an altar before the idol and proclaimed, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to Yahweh.” (Exodus 32:4-5)
The Israelites were not rejecting Yahweh with their idolatry. They were fashioning other gods to worship along with Him. They were not being strictly pagan. They were being syncretistic. They were *combining* pagan religion with worship of the one true God. Yahweh later told His people through Isaiah that, “I am the first and I am the last, and there is no God but Me.” (Isaiah 44:6)
God has told us a great many things about how He created our universe. Modern atheistic concepts of science reject these things, as well they should since they don’t even claim to believe in God or the Bible.
But for Christians to try and unite the two is dangerously naive, at best. Christ told us we cannot serve two masters. You cannot worship Yahweh and the golden calf. Claiming that the Bible is the Word of God but it also happens to be completely wrong about the things only God Himself was around to witness is probably a position Christians should reconsider. (Claiming it’s all a metaphor doesn’t really help, either, when you realize that holding such a position requires Christ Himself to have knowingly propagated a myth as if it were actually true.)
“We agree with the Bible about Christ and salvation but disagree with it when it talks about how life came into being and how old everything is,” seems an awful lot like modern day syncretism. Do we truly want to consider science, which is admittedly incomplete, revisionist, and operating completely under the constraints of flawed human understanding and capability, on an equal level with the revelation of God Himself? (The entire history of science is one of wrongness, self-correction, more wrongness, more self-correction again, and so on.)
Jesus said, “If I have told you earthly things, and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you of heavenly things?” in John 3:12.
We would all do well to seriously consider His question.