Proverbs 14:16 A wise man fears and departs from evil, but a fool rages and is self-confident.

Friedrich Nietzsche stated, “They muddy the water, to make it seem deep.”
Everyone has a philosophy. Even if you believe in nothing, that belief is a philosophy. I’ve had a few philosophical discussions over the last few weeks. Every other day I was running into people who had strong and varying views of what they claimed the truth was. The deeper the explanations of belief these people expounded on, the muddier the waters got. They seemed to be talking about God, but it was vague. As my friend Scott says, “What is said in vagueness, stays in vagueness.” 1 John 4:1 Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see if they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
All I could hear was a whole lot of syncretism going on. There was an amalgamation of different religions being put into the blender of supposed thoughtfulness and the mixture was coming out frothy in explanation and insipid in taste. A patchwork of cherry-picked theories to suit their own spiritual agendas was their foundational cornerstone of belief. They seemed to be making it up as they went along. Fickle interpretations did abound in speech and thought, plus they had no problem gainsaying God’s clear instructions or God Himself.
One of the trains of thought was that Jesus came to teach us how to save ourselves. This implied there was no need for the blood of Jesus that takes away the sins of man, nor the need for Jesus as a personal saviour. All we have to do is save ourselves by looking to Jesus as an example of virtue and learning to be the same through attained consciousness. Really? How can I save myself without a saviour taking residence within my soul of which is of a fallen nature and must be reborn?
How can I become born again as a new man or a new creation entirely without God setting and fulfilling the conditions of my salvation? 2 Cor. 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come! How can I do this myself, within my own godless abilities? If it were possible to save myself, then why would God have sent Jesus to the torturous cross?
Was the Crucifixion just something for pseudo-philosophers to draw examples of self-righteous tips on how to save yourself? No! The Crucifixion was a serious plan the Godhead hid in Christ to save mankind from himself and eternal death! I can only be saved through Christ and not of myself. The only thing that is of my own volition is my personal choice of receiving God’s gift of Jesus as my saviour. Even within my own choice of accepting that Jesus Christ is Lord, it is still the Lord who saved me and not myself.
Another discussion that was presented as deep profoundness was that the whole Bible was only a spiritual example to draw inspiration from and not to be taken literally. I thought to myself, “Would they feel that way about the commandment Thou shall not murder if they were being confronted by an axe murderer?” I am sure at that moment they would want the pragmatic reality of that biblical law to be real and honoured as literal. Titus 3:9 But avoid foolish debates, genealogies, quarrels, and disputes about the law, because they are unprofitable and worthless.
We live in a world that has offered a smorgasbord of philosophical thought and has supplied the false teachers that dispense the rhetoric that goes with the said philosophy. Truth is truth. There are some who claim that there are many truths, but Jesus was the only one to say, “He is the truth.” Jesus did not say I will show you a way or path to truth, or there is a truth to follow, or you might like this truth if it is convenient with your belief. No saints. He said, “He is the way, truth, and life.” John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man comes unto the Father, but by me.
Syncretism seems to be the religious flavour of choice these days. Take the best and most convenient feel-goods from different religions and make your own to suit a personal lifestyle whether God approves or not. After all, when you are saving yourself anything goes because it is personally chosen for the satisfaction of the moment. The upshot is their foundations of truth erodes with whatever is trending at that point in history, and a syncretist person rewrites his or her own convenient belief to act on along the way. Living in those shifting thoughts is living in absolute uncertainty and the absence of God Himself, even though the word god is thrown around. Prov. 14:12 There is a way which seems right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. Living in this philosophical quicksand will not last.