Understanding Deception

Your perception of reality is the reality that you live in, even if that reality is not real. A person who is deceived, is a person who had believed and altered their life based upon a lie. A manipulative person is someone who understands both the truth and the lie. They dislike the truth and distort it into a lie so that someone who once followed the truth now follows a lie.

Sometimes we deceive ourselves. Someone who begins feeling fatigued and unwell for a season keeps telling themselves nothing is wrong. Eventually they see a doctor who wishes they had come in sooner to deal with the cancer that is now in its last stages. Denial of the truth leads to death.

Sometimes we lack understanding and become deceived. A mechanic may see our lack of understanding and use that to charge us fraudulently for repairs that are unnecessary. A lack of knowledge leads to loss.

Sometimes we are emotionally wounded and refuse to deal with the pain in our hearts. We close the door to hearing anything related to the source of pain. Because we refuse to consider that which may hurt for a season, we allow the source of pain to distort our present reality. The window of our pain becomes a doorway of deception.

God says there are ways to see deception at work in our lives.

“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. ” (1 John 1:8, NIV) If you cannot see your own shortcomings, you are deceived. I thank God that there are people who love me enough to help me see my shortcomings when I cannot.

If we live for our own passions and desires, we are deceived. If there is hate in our lives, we are deceived. “At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. ” (Titus 3:3, NIV)

If you can only talk about something, and not have your life match your words, then you are deceived. “For there are many rebellious people, mere talkers and deceivers, ” (Titus 1:10, NIV)

The Bible says we perish and suffer loss because we do not want the truth. There is an “evil that deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. ” (2 Thessalonians 2:10, NIV)

Until we begin to acknowledge the truth that our lives are not being lived in the reality and the prosperity that God desires, we will never emerge from the deceptive reality we live in and walk into the true reality God has for us. Change will come when we believe that there is a better reality than the one we are living. When we can honestly say, I do not like this part of my life, then change can come in.

As I watch the rhetoric, there is something that is true. Both sides cannot be right. How do I assess who is telling the truth?

The words of truth will be spoken by those who live the truth. A lawmaker cannot be a lawbreaker. A leader must also be a follower. Those who say they have the truth will be able to walk in love towards those who lack the truth. The truth carriers will not be in bondage to their emotions, their addictions and their temporary desires. The knowledge of the truth will have empowered them to overcome. They are able to live for more than just the present moment.

Character matters. What you believe is reflected by what you do. Who you are tomorrow is the result of what you believe and do today.