Syncretism Begins at Home

Driving down one of the major thoroughfares in Chiang Mai yesterday I saw a spirit house.  For those of you who have traveled in Asia you know that seeing a spirit house is not unusual.  What made this one catch my eye is that it was strung with Christmas lights.

For a split second I wondered how a practicing spiritist could bring themselves to add Christmas lights to their spirit house, but upon further reflection I thought it would be quite easy.  It may be that the person thought that lights would make the house more beautiful or noticeable and was not aware of the significance of Christmas and how these lights are used as part of the Christmas celebration in many countries.  The person may know the significance of the lights, but doesn't see a disconnect between spiritism and Christmas.  Or the Christmas lights might have been on sale and lights are lights regardless of how others use them.

Then I remembered an incident with my almost four-year-old granddaughter a few weeks ago.  I had received a book from Amazon and pulled the tab to open the box producing a long strip of cardboard.  My granddaughter who loves all things Disney picked up the cardboard, now re-imagined as a magic wand, and waved it at me proclaiming that she was turning me into Jesus.  (Ah, that becoming like Jesus were that easy.)  My response was not to scold her for holding syncretistic views in her theology.  It was to simply point out that Jesus was alive and I was not him. We will work on the rest of the pieces over time.

But it strikes me how easily we add layers onto what God has said about Himself and His creation.  Sometimes we do this consciously, but quite often unconsciously.  Someone once said that God created mankind in His own image and mankind has been returning the favor ever since.  We want to create God in our image because we do not always like what we know to be true of Him or we are unaware of what He tells us about Himself.  Sometimes this adding to what God has said about Himself is deliberate and nefarious, but often it comes from a lack of understanding.  Understanding takes time and age-and-experience appropriate teaching of God's self-revelation recorded in the Bible.

It is true that God can never be known fully.  He is, after all, God.  But what God has revealed about Himself can be known, understood and acted upon.  But as the apostle Paul said to the Christians at Corinth, "we know in part" and just a few sentences later he admits, "now we see in a mirror dimly."  Paul goes on to say we will understand more fully later on, but for now we walk in the light of what we understand.
As we do that, syncretism will lessen and the view we have of God will more closely resemble the way He is truly. That is why Jesus told us to make disciples.  That is why we never stop discipling.  It is a lifelong process of continuing to adjust our understanding of who God is and who we are based on what God has said.