GraceLife Thoughts – Neo-Paganism in the Church

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GraceLife Thoughts – Neo-Paganism in the Church

Pew Research in 2018 found that – “While eight-in-ten Christians say they believe in God as described in the Bible, six-in-ten believe in one or more of the four New Age beliefs analyzed here, ranging from 47% of evangelical Protestants to roughly seven-in-ten Catholics and Protestants in the historically black tradition.” Those four New Age beliefs mentioned in the research included belief in

reincarnation
astrology
psychics
the presence of spiritual energy in physical objects like mountains or trees

[Listen to a Podcast of this study by clicking this link.]

Are you mixing your belief in Christ with Neo-pagan and New Age beliefs? How would you know if you were? I think we can learn something from a group of Jews who lived in southwestern Macedonia during the 1st century –

Then the brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. When they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so. Therefore many of them believed, and also not a few of the Greeks, prominent women as well as men. Acts 17:10-12

The “Scriptures” the Bereans searched daily was the Hebrew Bible – what Christians know as the Old Testament. The Jews listened to what Paul and Silas said about Jesus, then searched through the Hebrew Bible to see if their “truth claims” were true. Many of the Jews did believe what Paul and Silas said. So did some Greeks, “prominent women as well as men.”

The Jews in Berea knew a lot about paganism because they lived among pagans. Pagans in Macedonia worshipped most of the same gods as other Greeks of the time. That included the “Twelve Olympians,” including Zeus, Apollo, Heracles, Aphrodite, Athena, Artemis, Ares, Hermes, Dionysius, and Poseidon. They also knew the long history that Israel had had with paganism, including the worship of even more ancient gods like Asherah, Baal, Dagon, Marduk, Moloch, Shamash, Yarikh, Mot, and Astarte. Paul’s teaching that Jesus Christ is the Son of God may have sounded like paganism to some Jews, but the Berean Jews realized as they searched the Scriptures that Jesus was in fact the long-promised Messiah of Israel – the Son of God, the Son of Man.

What I want you to notice is the word “searched.” It’s an English translation of the Greek verb ἀνακρίνω, which means “investigate, question, examine closely.” I spent much of my career as an investigative journalist, so I understand the process of ἀνακρίνω. It means observing carefully, asking many questions for interpretation, answering those questions thoroughly, making correct interpretations from the answers you get to your questions, then applying the truth to your life. If you follow the process correctly, you will come to the truth. The Apostle Paul used the phrase, “rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15) to express the same idea. It’s the process of handling the Word of God “correctly.”

[Listen to a Podcast of this study by clicking this link.]

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GraceLife Thoughts – Neo-Paganism in the Church