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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Written by Derek J. Brown |
Monday, July 11, 2022
Because we are sinful and because we live in a fallen world with fallen bodies, we must face up to the reality that spiritual dryness will come again. That is why the psalmist says that the Word of God restores his soul (Ps. 19:7). That it was in need of restoring implies that his soul was no longer in a happy, satisfied state—it was in need of refreshment. Knowing this and recognizing potential causes of spiritual drought can help us to weather seasons of little or no rain.

If you have been a Christian for any amount of time, you know that spiritual passion, sight, and affections ebb and flow. At times our sense of spiritual realities can be strong and vibrant. Other times our hearts feel like lead weights, and we find ourselves longing for God to visit us once again and bring refreshment (Ps. 85:4-7). These seasons are usually referred to as times of “spiritual drought” or “spiritual dryness” and find intimate expression in many of the Psalms.
David often cried out to God in times where his soul seemed like dust, and he yearned to be refreshed by the presence of the Lord (Ps. 13; Ps. 63). Other psalmists expressed their longing to have their parched souls be replenished by the Lord (Psalm 42). Those who have tasted of the goodness of Christ know what it means to be without that taste; it leaves us pleading, “light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death” (Ps. 13:3).
Spiritual drought, though a persistent and unwelcome visitor, is not something with which we must constantly live. There are Biblical means by which we can, by grace, put ourselves in the way of refreshment; we can be restored to once again feel the joy of our salvation. But this can only happen if we are able to discern why we might be experiencing spiritual dryness, so we can take the appropriate action. With this in mind, I would like to suggest a few reasons we may be experiencing a season of spiritual drought and provide the correlating remedies.
1. Unchecked Lust
Peter’s warning could not be more explicit: “Abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul” (I Pet. 2:11). Impure thoughts and freshly cultivated fantasies will only dull our sense of spiritual things; this is what Peter means when he tells us that lust “wages war against the soul.” Harboring lust defiles our conscience, feeds our sinful flesh, and withers our spiritual vitality.
If we are experiencing the ravages of spiritual drought, it may be because we are entertaining our minds with lust and feeding our sinful desires with suggestive movies, magazines, internet sites, or by simply visiting the local mall. The only remedy called for here is sincere confession and repentance (Prov. 28:13; I John 1:9). In order to find our souls once again enthralled with the joy of our salvation, we must confess these sins and turn from them (Ps. 51:1-12), resolving to no longer make any provision for the flesh (Rom. 13:14).
2. Pride
Jesus, in confronting the Pharisees’ desire for self-exaltation, provides a valuable insight as to how pride relates to faith. The Pharisees were unable to see the truth and beauty of Christ, because they were infatuated with their own glory and loved receiving praise from men. Jesus asks them, “‘How can you believe when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?’” (John 5:44). Saving faith was hindered by their pride.
And although this passage speaks specifically of pride obstructing saving faith, I think we can safely apply this principle to our lives as Christians: pride kills faith in Jesus. If we are nurturing self-love—seeking praise and appreciation from our friends, our congregation, our professors, our supervisor, or those who read our blogs—we will find out very quickly that “God opposes the proud” (James 4:6). Our souls will shrivel as we fill them with the glory that comes from man. On the other hand, turning from ourselves and our reputations to exalt Christ at all costs will bring about spiritual renewal since “[God] gives grace to the humble.”
3. Love of Money
There is also a direct correlation between our attachment to stuff and our ability to see the glory of God. Jesus connects our physical gaze with our spiritual sight in Matthew 6:19-23. Christ instructs us to store up lasting treasures in heaven rather than temporary riches here on earth. Whether we do this or not will have a significant impact on our affections, for “where [our] treasure is, there [our] heart will be also” (Matt. 6:19-21).
Jesus continues, “‘The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness’” (Matt. 6:22-23). In other words, if we are fixed upon the glitter of earthly riches, the brightness of God’s glory cannot shine into our hearts, and we will only suffer spiritual thirst, not saturation. The solution here is to start taking our eyes off earthly riches. This is often helped through prayer and by regular and consistent giving to our churches, faithful gospel ministries, the poor, and to those in need. Isaiah 58:10-11 is encouraging in this regard,

If you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. And the LORD will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters do not fail.

4. Lack of Bible Reading, Meditation, and Prayer
When we neglect Bible reading, meditation, and prayer, we are cutting ourselves off from essential nourishment for our souls. It is impossible to thrive spiritually without feeding our minds and hearts with God’s Word. Psalm 1 reminds us of the benefits of meditation:

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, or stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the sear of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither, in all that he does, he prospers (Ps. 1:1-3)

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The Incarnation is the greatest gift ever given in the history of the universe. God, the Creator of the universe, distinct from his creation, is so great that he cannot be wrapped up by our limited human minds, yet in the manger, God was wrapped up as the gift of himself to us, in the person of his Son, the Redeemer of sinful creatures. This immense God humbly entered human culture via a baby in an animal feeding trough. He humbled himself for our benefit. This should be our attitude to others as we humbly speak the gospel that defends binary sexuality and also offers us a place at the wedding feast of Jesus Christ. 

I can remember when public Christian witness was a welcomed contribution to the life of the culture. In my recent article The Fourth Phase: Persecution? I mentioned Aaron Renn, who describes three phases of the relationship between the secular culture and biblical Christianity. He notes the general acceptance in the 1960s to general opposition today. I have lived through that period, since I saw the enormous influence of evangelical Christianity when I came to study in the US in the 1960s. In its adamant rejection of God the Creator, today’s progressivism illustrates the chasm between two opposing moral systems of social justice in the culture; between biblical faith and wokism. Both compete for the same ground. This is perhaps why Christian cultural witness is now so confusing for Christians. Politics has become religious and, in the main, religiously anti–Christian, ever ready to “cancel” traditional biblical morality.
Progressivism attempts to normalize what was once considered abnormal behavior. It seems to be succeeding. Christians must be ready to live in this new situation, just as the early Christians, who lived in Rome, were surrounded by an overwhelmingly degenerate culture. Imagine the President of the United States publicly marrying two men, one as his wife and one as his husband! That is what the Emperor Nero did during the time of Paul. Imagine a Vice President as a lesbian witch.
From Abnormal to Normal
Our leading politicians openly endorse Drag Queen Story Hour readings for children. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), a professing Roman Catholic, posted a clip on Twitter in which she declares that drag queens are “what America is all about.” A Department of Energy whistleblower’s letter notes that a drag queen, Sam Brinton, had been picked as a Deputy Assistant Secretary at the DOE “over other more highly qualified candidates.”[1] Brinton is a self-proclaimed “kink activist” (dog fetishes are his specialty), who belongs to a drag queen group known as the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.[2] The administration sent Brinton to a diplomatic function for a Bastille Day celebration at the French Embassy in Paris. He proudly appeared in his dress and heels together with the first trans-woman Admiral, Rachel Levine, father of two grown children. The public worship of scandalous, unbridled sexuality is waved aloft around the world as an emblem of our newly enthroned US morality. It’s all perfectly normal.[3] We have normalized LGBTQ+ sex, drag, pornography, abortion, and a host of newly named iniquities. It has recently become known that Yoel Roth, chief of Twitter’s “Trust and Safety board” determining what was published and what was silenced for the general public on Twitter, including the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, was a gay practicing drag queen.[4] In the same vein, a well-known drag artist, Marti Cummings, invited to the White House to celebrate the new law on gay marriage, celebrated his invitation to the event by tweeting, “To be a non-binary drag artist invited to the White House is something I never imagined would happen. Thank you President and Dr. Biden for inviting me to this historic bill signing. Grateful doesn’t begin to express the emotions I feel.” One of his tweets about children is so degrading that I only dare put it in a footnote.[5] Open decadency has climbed into the highest seats of power in the country.  
Christian parents are quickly realizing that their children are in danger and under attack. One California teacher boasted about a “queer library” she keeps for her class. It contains sexually explicit content, including kink and orgies, as well as information on BDSM (bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, and sadism). She claims that these books help students to “figure out who they are.”[6]
In the recent Children’s and Family Emmy Awards, sponsored by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the winners’ acceptance speeches overwhelmingly promoted pro-LGBTQ content and other far-left concepts. Hosted over the course of two nights, the event was intended for an audience of children ranging from “infancy to age 15.” One quarter of the awards featured characters or stories involving sexual preference or gender identity. One winner, the Disney-owned series “Muppet Babies,” received the award for Outstanding Writing for a Preschool Animated Program. One episode in that series puts a heavy focus on “Gonzo-rella,” a male character, Gonzo, who decides to identify as “non-binary,” to wear women’s dresses, and to use “they/them” pronouns.[7] Our ruling elites are recasting sin as virtue and virtue as sin, daring us to object. Kurt Schlichter bluntly and sarcastically suggests a way of reacting: “America, We Can Choose Not to Tolerate Weirdos: Time to stop accepting the idea that we need to pretend weirdos are not weird.[8]Unfortunately the situation is not amusing. At the highest level of leadership, we find a determined agenda to make the weird normal.
Christians must find a way of speaking in the public square, especially to the LGBTQ sexual ideology. Knowing and honoring God is at stake, and gay sex, says Paul, is unnatural; against nature. Progressives howl in rage if you say they are grooming children. But they are. Why are pedophiles and their sympathizers allowed to run rampant in our society? Victor Davis Hanson, a guest lecturer at Hillsdale College, proposes ten political ways to save America, but the closest he gets to sexual issues is the phrase: “Like it or not, the nuclear family remains the bulwark of the American nation, which will not survive if current fertility rates of below 1.7 children per woman continue to diminish and age the population. The government must incentivize childbearing and child raising.”[9] Even our more conservative politicians will not save us from cultural sexual degeneracy and demographic collapse. Even Ex-President Donald Trump has emerged as a social radical, which we already knew he was. At a reception at Mar-a-Lago for the gay Log Cabin Republicans on December 16th, 2022 Trump received a standing ovation after delivering an enthusiastic affirmation of gay rights. “We are fighting for the gay community, and we are fighting and fighting hard.”[10]According to Gallup, 55 percent of Republicans and 71 percent of Americans overall support same-sex marriage. In normalizing homosexuality, our culture is determined to follow the example of ancient Roman culture. That culture eventually collapsed, of course. Apparently “conservatives” do not see the problem. Can Christians join the happy chorus?
Standing in the Gap for our Children
Statistics show that COVID-19 lock-downs and closed schools have caused many school children to suffer psychological problems, including suicidal thoughts. Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network, which studies educational issues. Among the problems seen among children learning via the internet was “anomie,” that is, “no law.” In thinking about this issue, Strand follows American sociologist Robert K. Merton, who pioneered the sociology of deviance, based on Emile Durkheim’s theory of anomie. Following Merton, Sand describes this situation as
the breakdown of law…a breakdown of the ties that bind people together to make a functional society…Periods of anomie are unstable, chaotic, and often rife with conflict because the social force of the norms and values that otherwise provide stability is weakened or missing.[11]
Sand remarks that anti-racist classrooms have devolved into little more than a series of “scoldings, guilt-trips, and demands to demean oneself simply to make another feel empowered. And of course, the schools’ forays into intimate sexual areas are also doing great damage.”[12]
Changing laws about male and female, which have lasted for thousands of years and are confirmed by human biology, can surely be described as creating a situation of anomie, of unsettling lawlessness, to which Christians must speak, even at the risk of cultural rejection, for the sake of human beings and for the honor of God.
But speaking out is costly. Paivi Rasanen, a 27-year member of the Finnish parliament, has been accused by government prosecutors of hate speech, for comments she made on three occasions about gay people. Mrs. Rasanen denies the charges and stands by her words, which she says are based on the Bible.[13] In America, Christians may also be charged for hate speech, incendiary language, or of speech leading to intended or even unintended violent actions. Their words are considered to be an encouragement for real-world violence. Christians must speak carefully, while still speaking truth.
In denouncing gay ideology, Christians must find a discourse that avoids emotionalism, moralism, hatred or bigotry, while reaching to the heart of the issue. There can be no contempt for gay individuals. A homosexual or trans person deserves respect and love as a unique and complex fellow human being, made in God’s image. God extends love to any who will come to him in repentance. In the original Fall, every human being apart from Jesus himself, is tainted by sin. In addition to the basic respect we owe every individual, we must also be keenly aware that many have known much suffering and hurt by early sexual abuse, rejection, confusion and even from heartless, dismissive expressions of judgment from misguided believers. Christians cannot forget the gospel context in which there is a priority for the communication of God’s forgiving love, of which all human beings stand in need. If God is rich in “kindness, forbearance and patience…that lead to repentance” (Romans 2:4), so must be God’s people. We must love our homosexual friends.
Millennial Christians are leaving the church in droves over this issue and need a clear statement of the truth from their elders. To understand sexuality, we need to hear not a judgmental, but a holistic, ontological account of what the Bible says about sexuality. If you worship God, you will believe that he is the Creator—an external, intelligent, personal God. According to Scripture, the world is the work of an external Creator who caringly made it but is separate and different from it. We have a hetero-cosmology (a binary worldview based on otherness and difference), not a homo-cosmology (the nonbinary blending of all things). Homo-cosmology has nothing to worship except the creation itself, since it rejects the God who made the world and put distinctions within it. As the Apostle Paul argued, we worship either the Creator or the creation (Romans 1:25).
How have these two fundamental worldviews worked themselves out in recent culture with regard to sexuality? People now speak of non-binary spirituality and non-binary sexuality. They are clearly related. Non-binary spirituality believes everything is God and that there is no divine, separate Creator. Non-binary sexuality holds to androgynous sex, in which there are no ultimate sexual distinctions. Binary, distinction-making thinking is the foundation of the gospel, in which God the Creator, totally other from us, in his Son, identifies with created reality, dies to pay the price of sin, but remains distinct from the creation. Binary sexuality witnesses to this truth in its own way, since we are made in God’s image, distinctly male and female.
Some this Christmas will stand next to a pagan priest of Satan, rather than worshiping the newborn King. We should not be surprised. The early church witnessed this in the pagan cities of the Roman Empire. Some of the Christians had once participated in such ceremonies, but the power of the gospel is unquenchable.
We may think that our culture has wandered far from binary gospel truth, but as I drive around in late December, I see our neighborhood festooned with bright lights telling me it is Christmas. Christmas means the worship [Christ-mass] of Christ. Though it has largely been stripped of its true message, the Christmas celebration is still a major event in our cultural history. Let’s use this so that people hear the good news of God, which, in turn, is good for the culture. The Incarnation is the greatest gift ever given in the history of the universe. God, the Creator of the universe, distinct from his creation, is so great that he cannot be wrapped up by our limited human minds, yet in the manger, God was wrapped up as the gift of himself to us, in the person of his Son, the Redeemer of sinful creatures. This immense God humbly entered human culture via a baby in an animal feeding trough. He humbled himself for our benefit. This should be our attitude to others as we humbly speak the gospel that defends binary sexuality and also offers us a place at the wedding feast of Jesus Christ.
Have courage. We are on the winning side.
Dr. Peter Jones is scholar in residence at Westminster Seminary California and associate pastor at New Life Presbyterian Church in Escondido, Calif. He is director of truthXchange, a communications center aimed at equipping the Christian community to recognize and effectively respond to the rise of paganism. This article is used with permission.

[1] https://www.frontpagemag.com/bidens-nuclear-drag-queen-stole-womens-clothing.
[2] David Strom, “Biden’s transgender DOE appointee is charged with a felony,” Hot Air, Nov. 28, 2022.
[3] https://www.frontpagemag.com/this-thanksgiving-the-nation-was-grateful-for-abortions.
[4] http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/free-speech/joseph-vazquez/2022/12/17/fbi-files-musk-releases-new-docs-exposing-twitters.
[5] “Kids are out to sing and suck D!” https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4116181/post.
[6] https://nypost.com/2022/12/04/teacher-claims-queer-library-with-bdsm-themed-books-helped-kids-figure-out-who-they-are.
[7] Eric Lendrum, “First-Ever Emmy Awards for Children Heavily Pushes LGBT Content,” American Greatness, (16 Dec, 2022).
[8] SeekAndFind, Townhall, 12/15/2022, https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4116528/posts
[9] Victor Davis Hanson, “10 Steps to Save America,” American Thinker, 18 Dec, 2022, “Cut the Debt, Secure the Border, Tap Natural Resources, Oppose Discrimination, Disrupt and Reform Higher Education, Revive the Armed Forces, Fix Voting. Drain the Swamp, Upend the Welfare State, Restore Norms.”
[10] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/16/celebration-same-sex-marriage-mar-a-lago-00074441.
[11] Larry Sand, “Losing a Generation: School-related cultural upheaval is taking a serious toll on children,” December 19, 2022, https://www.frontpagemag.com/losing-a-generation.
[12] Art.cit.
[13] https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/finland-s-bible-tweet-trial-should-trouble-us-all.
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