different

When you come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations.

Deuteronomy 18:9

God expected Israel to live differently from the way the Canaanites lived. Verses ten and eleven go on to list the occult activities of the Canaanites:

• child sacrifice
• divination
• fortune-telling
• sorcery
• spiritual medium activity
• necromancy
• seances to hear from the dead

All of these were evil spiritual activities that God warned His people to avoid. One reason He was driving out the Canaanites was punishment for giving themselves wholly over to these demonic practices. 

Instead, the Israelites were to be completely different. And God really always expects that sort of commitment from anybody He has delivered. This isn’t a “weird” different, but rather it is a “holy” different. It can be easy to do the first. I know I lived for a while in my youth in a Christian sub-culture that pushed the “weird” different: crew cut, suit-coat jacketed guys and long skirt, long-sleeved young ladies all looking quite different, decades behind in style, from the 1970s and 1980s culture of my teens and twenties. But all those “conformed to Christian sub-culture” kids still had our share of problems because the heart change of “holy” different got confused with the enforced legalism of the “weird” different. For instance, there were illegal drugs available in every Christian school I attended… I knew where to get them had I wanted to do so. There was plenty of other rebellion against the enforced “weird” culture.

It wasn’t until some mature Christians really helped me read scripture on my own and follow Jesus with a personal passion that 1) I grew to understand what true sanctification/growth in faith looked like. It had very little to do with suits, ties, and haircuts. 2) I made my own convictions to reject the evil around me to follow “righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14:7). And that joy, that surprising real change of heart, was greater than the evil culture and its disillusioning and unsatisfactory lifestyle. It still is.