Are we all inveterate syncretists?

Someone with whom I was corresponding on the interent recently wrote, 'all I have learned, I learned from the Holy Spirit'.

As much as one might wish that were true, it isn't.

In my life I've learned from my parents, my siblings, my school teachers, authors of books, testimonies of others, my wife, and a lot more than I'd like from the school of hard knocks.

Honestly though, one of the hardest lessons I've learned is how unteachable I am! My hard heart resists the Holy Spirit far too often, there are some areas in my life where by now it would seem I should have progressed further than I have.

Here's the essential problem with the hubris implied by the initial statement: 'all that I've learned I've learned from the Holy Spirit', it oversimplifies reality to the point of error; for, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." It is the essential nature of 'having sin' that we are not so in-tune with the Holy Spirit that thats "all I learn".

And consider this: the problem that has beset folowers of Jesus Christ since the beginning is the purely human problem that we are all inveterate syncretists. Not to make this too complicated but from the time we first change our minds and put faith in Christ we only begin to UN-learn many wrong underlying assumptions about life and God. Yes, its true we've passed from death to life, yes, we are reborn of the spirit, yes, the eyes of our heart are opened and our spirit is made alive in Him, and THEN we BEGIN to extricate ourselves from the baggage of our false assumptions.

That to me seems to be a more accurate description of the reality of life than, 'all I have learned I have learned from the Holy Spirit'.

If you think you have not bit of syncretism in you, i.e., the mixing of your former assumptions about the world and about God with your current faith, you would be the first I have encountered.

Think about the two New Testament Simons: (Acts 8:13-24; Galatians 2:11-14)

Two Simons: Magus / Peter
Representing two Peoples: Non-Jew / Jew
From two pasts: roots in Magic / roots in Legalism
Having two revelations: Nature / Scripture
One failure: mixing the old with the new
One result: open rebuke

For me the two Simons stand in scripture as first-mentions, "types" if you will, of the two great besetting sins stumbling the followers of Christ since the first advent: legalism and magical thinking.

Doesn't the prophet assume the tendency to syncretism in us when he writes: "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect."?

Doesn't the lament, "My brothers, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water?" also bear testimony to this?

One might be tempted toward a false dichotomy here and say, "The scriptures to which you refer are speaking of failures of the flesh and not the mixing of the true and the false," to which I would reply, please show me in scripture where one's beliefs are segregated from the actions by which they live their lives. Aren't the two inter-dependent? To put it another way, don't the failures of action and inaction in our lives reveal faults in our undelying thinking? I think so.

To put it yet another way, we are not delivered from the world unto God by perfect understanding, but rather by the grace of God through faith in Jesus, the Messiah, which is itself the gift of God.