Part 2 of a Three-Part Introduction to Deception in the Church (part 1)

 

…because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.
Therefore God sends them a strong delusion,
so that they may believe the lie.
2 Th 2:10–11.

 

There’s a pattern in deception that I’ve alluded to previously, and it’s one I’m beginning to see repeatedly in scripture. It goes something like this: We choose to believe the lie. God gives us over to the lie. And so we become incapable of seeing the Truth. We become those people Jesus spoke of, who see but don’t perceive, who hear but don’t understand, otherwise we’d repent and be rescued from our blindness (Mt.13.13-15). But because we’ve chosen blindness God grants us what we’ve chosen – he sends us a strong delusion. I think this is what Jesus was meaning when he said that whoever does not have, even what they do have will be taken away (v12). Once God gives us over to the blindness we’ve chosen for ourselves we begin to lose what little sight and understanding we had previously.

That sounds bad, but not entirely disastrous, until you realize that it’s actually the god of this age who is deceiving us. That is, it’s not simply that we’re getting things wrong, that we’ve got differing opinions, or that we’re believing things others don’t believe. It’s actually that Christians are succumbing to a deliberate and carefully planned strategy that causes them not only to question the veracity of the Bible but ultimately to be blinded and given over to deception about it. And all the while they grow stronger in their conviction that they alone see things clearly – they have the new revelation, the true perspective.

Israel was in the same situation before their exile. The priests were deceived. The prophets were deceived. And the people were deceived. Into that situation God speaks, and he tells them to ask for the ancient paths, and walk in them.

“Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.
But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’
I appointed watchmen over you and said,
‘Listen to the sound of the trumpet!’
But you said, ‘We will not listen.’
-Jer.6.16-17

Sadly, our response seems to be the same as Israel’s: “We will not”.

Is it defiance or just arrogance that we think we have a better way; that the old ways of believing, of doing, the old theologies, the ancient doctrines that have withstood the rebuttals of far better minds than ours, are no longer needed, are not even valid? Few of us dare to exclaim, like Israel, “We will not believe them!” (although an increasing number are, indeed, bold enough to jettison various undesirable passages).

Instead we merely choose another way, a better way, a more informed way, as if we’re the enlightened ones and our forebears’ doctrines and practices were primitive in comparison.

But our new ways are not better – at least, not according to God. He calls them byways (Jer.18.15). They parallel the highway for a while, but quietly turn aside and meander off.

 

My people have forgotten me,
they burn offerings to a delusion (NIV, “idol”);
they have stumbled in their ways,
in the ancient roads,
and have gone into byways,
not the highway
Jer 18:15.

Notice how God’s people stumbled in the ancient paths because they worshiped a delusion. I’m watching this progression play out in the Church today. We long ago lost our fear of the Lord, and his ancient paths are no longer to our liking, so we follow delusions and are deceived; to justify our delusion we find a stumbling block; we trip and stumble before our delusion and gladly wander off the straight road and onto the byways.

I’ll try to explain.

 

Idols and Stumbling Blocks

Some of the elders of Israel came to me and sat down in front of me. Then the word of the LORD came to me: “Son of man, these men have set up idols in their hearts and put wicked stumbling blocks before their faces. Should I let them inquire of me at all?”
-Ezk.14.3

None of us want to admit to having idols. But neither do we want to relinquish them. We’re quite attached to our idols and we don’t want to let go. So what do we do?

We find a theology that allows us to keep our idol – a theology that lets us scripturally support it. A stumbling block is any doctrine that justifies or validates the idols we have.

We reinterpret scripture and come up with some new revelation that somehow 2000 years of scriptural study and interpretation just happened to miss. We formulate or embrace a reinterpretation that fits with our preferred ideology so that we don’t have to endure the probing, purifying work of the word on our pet beliefs.

There was a standard text used in hermeneutics classes several years ago that began with the story of a woman who justified her adulterous relationship by claiming she had simply obeyed Paul and “put off the old man with his deeds, and put on the new man” (Col.3.9-10). It was a funny story at the time because it was the sort of thing wacky Christians might do, but it was so extreme no one believed it could really happen.

 

It’s happening.

 

Okay, that’s an overly simplified illustration, but the reality is actually far worse because the delusions we believe are less obviously heretical, more subtle, and far closer to truth.

What kind of stumbling blocks is the Church laying in front of itself? Love is a big one. Grace is another. Social Justice. Tolerance. Prosperity. There are plenty more. None of them are inherently bad. In fact, they’re often scripturally valid. But Christians have redefined these to mean whatever they want and then used them as a justification to bow to their gods – sex outside of marriage, pornography, equality for all, gay rights, socialism, universalism, happiness, wealth….

We create a doctrine, wrest scripture from its context, “reinterpret” it to mean what we want it to mean, or read into the text what we want it to say.

 

-God is love, so we shouldn’t judge anyone.
-God loves me just the way I am.
-A loving God would never send people to hell.

 

Sometimes the stumbling block is silence – it’s more about what the doctrine doesn’t say than what it does. Or it’s a theological solution to our offended feelings, a way to make the Bible less offensive.

God calls them stumbling blocks because although we think they’re divine revelation, they are, in fact, causing us to stumble. And they ensure we feel no guilt before God in keeping our idolatrous beliefs and practices.

If we deliberately place before our faces some quasi-truthful doctrine to justify what we want to believe, we will stumble and fall prostrate in worship, but it won’t be to the God we believe we are worshiping. And, like he did to the elders of Israel, God will say,

“Should I let you inquire of me at all?
I will not let you inquire of me.”
-Ezk.14.3; 20.31

Our stumbling blocks and idols will prevent us from hearing the very prophetic words that would have been able to save us.

 

The god of this age

See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.
-Col 2:8.

Returning to the Facebook fiasco I started with, I spent a great deal of time thinking and praying about why I had reacted to what this person had written. On the surface of things they seemed to be right, and I very wrong. But even as it was unfolding I could sense that I was being challenged by something spiritual. I was faced not with a person making a reasonable argument, nor merely an angry person making a rash statement. It wasn’t even that I was being yelled at by an ideologue wearing blinders. Some of those things were there for sure, but it was more than that.

I was confronted with the spirit of this age.

 

The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
-2 Co 4:4.

I’ll address this spiritual aspect in more detail in the next letter. For now, I want to emphasize that this deception is part of a deliberate strategy. It’s not simply that we’re buying into the prevailing ideas of our day, but that these ideas have been carefully directed by the god of this age and the elemental spiritual forces at work in the world.

Since God started warning me about deception in the Church, I’ve been amazed to see how many Christians eschew sound doctrine for whatever philosophy sounds somewhat Jesus-like.

Socialism reminds one of the First Century Church.
Marxist Communist ideology sounds wonderfully Kingdom of Heaven-like.
White Male Privilege is just what the prophets would rail against.
As long as they love each other sounds like something the Apostle John would write.
Black Lives Matter is so like Jesus caring for the marginalized.
And Grace, who can argue about grace. It’s the amazing panacea for every sin. Isn’t it??

 

These philosophies often have the appearance of godliness. Some of them are even established doctrine – but redefined, hollowed out of all original meaning, and reinterpreted to sound like the truth. In substance they are simply a deceptive human philosophy inspired by the spirit of this world. And Christians are, like the rest of society, increasingly being manipulated and taken captive by them. They are under the sway of the god of this age.

He is blinding the eyes not simply of people who aren’t Christians, but of anyone who doesn’t (want to) believe the truth so that they cannot see the truth.

How does this play out practically? We start to question the truth of God’s word. Then we reinterpret what it says and substitute our god/ideology in its place, not realizing that our ideology is a hollow philosophy inspired by the elemental spiritual forces of this world. Because we have refused to believe the truth, God gives us over to the spirit of this world who blinds our eyes so that cannot see the truth even if it is placed in front of our eyes.

This is the Church in the 21^st Century. Deceived and unaware of it.

 

Ephraim is like a dove,
Easily deceived and senseless.

In an act of Christlikeness, my Facebook friend extended forgiveness to me
– and then unfriended me.