In general, scholars today teach that in last several centuries the West has changed from a pre-modern world, with religious belief predominating culture during medieval times, to the modern, with the Enlightenment and Baconian empiricism dominating culture, meaning observable science became the prominent arbiter of truth, to the present post-modern period, in which the prevailing thought is that there is no absolute truth.
As the Book of Ecclesiastes teaches, there is nothing new under the sun (Eccl. 1:9). The following illustrates how present post-modernism is really old syncretism wrapped in different philosophical packaging.
During the days of the kings of Israel, King Ahaz of Judah constructed an altar based on one he saw in Damascus which stood alongside the altar of Jehovah. Thus, there were two national gods and religions at once (read 2 Kings 16:10-14)! This confusing, ambiguous religious proposition meant there were two different belief systems, worldviews, and national gods which the culture was to worship simultaneously. Thus, there was no absolute truth because there was no absolute god.
Second Kings 17:29-33 also shows how honoring more than one god in a culture leads to further religious erosion, ambivalence, ambiguity, and confusion. These verses show how Israel’s polytheism progressed to the point in which each town had their own god that was worshipped along with Jehovah.
This old syncretism (which liberal theologians today agree with when they say that all sincere religious people will go to heaven, not just Christians) is part of the new post-modern belief in which any god, religion, or belief that works for you is “true” since there is no absolute truth. Truth (not just beauty) is now in the subjective eye of the beholder.
Even during the polytheistic Roman Empire where many gods were worshipped, Pontius Pilate said to Jesus in John 18:38, “What is truth?” With this statement to the one absolute Lord, Pilate thus echoed one of the main mantras of post-modernism today.
This historical perspective shows that America must come back to favoring its Judeo-Christian beliefs or else our nation will go the way of all past nations that had no overarching belief system and tried to prosper by satisfying everyone. The destruction of Israel, Judah, the Roman Empire, and even the modern nations of Western Europe are directly tied to the polytheism they espoused when they turned their backs on the one true Lord and Potentate. Even Roman culture after the conversion of Constantine never truly espoused Christianity since the majority of the populace never experienced true inward regeneration. Some even brought statues of their pagan gods into Christian temples and practiced a syncretistic form of religion combining Christianity and pagan worship. (They got away with it by calling them after the names of the saints like Peter, Joseph, Mary, John, etc.)
In today’s America our new syncretism is called multiculturalism. When Judeo-Christian values were rejected, American culture needed to replace its transcendent values, morality, and purpose with something else: an overemphasis on race, ethnicity, and multiculturalism, which might possibly topple our great nation. We are now experiencing a cultural cacophony which will lead to a Tower of Babel experience (Genesis 11) that will continue to stop our progression as a nation until we become another Third World nation in another 30-50 years! Any nation without an overarching ethos built on moral absolutes will eventually fail.
We can have an overarching ethos built on the Ten Commandments, like we did until the turn of the twentieth century, without dissipating religious liberty for all and without forcing Christianity upon the population.
In conclusion, an oppressive institutional/political religious system led to modernism, bland modernism led to mysticism (spirituality), mysticism led to post-modernism, and post-modernism has led to polytheism (the worship of many gods). Post-modernism also leads to moral relativism, which then leads to anarchy (like the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11), which ultimately leads to totalitarianism, or central control under either the state or a dictator. For example, Vladimir Putin of Russia has recently consolidated central control in the midst of the chaos and anarchy of the breakup of the Soviet Union and the failed laissez-faire policies of Boris Yeltsin.
America has a choice: either turn back to its Christian roots regarding constitutional law and its educational philosophy or face more and more anarchy because of the breakdown of morality, family, and a lack of excellence. Without God the Savior, a strong messianic state that exercises powerful central control will continue to grow in order to stop the anarchy that comes from the irresponsibility of its citizens, who drink from the fount of a godless system of entitlement. This is in contrast to Christianity, which espouses hard work based on the laws of sowing and reaping, individual responsibility, and a civic government that both protects freedom of religion and respects its Judeo-Christian heritage.
