DISCERNMENT, WISDOM, AND DECEPTION

 

 

We flourish or flounder relative to the things we believe. Every spiritual blessing is imparted through what we believe and know about our Lord (2 Peter 1:2-3).

 

Consequently, our welfare depends upon discerning fact from fiction, what the Bible teaches from what it doesn’t teach. Here is an example of how one renowned politician distorted Scripture for his own perverted purposes:

 

·       "My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before in the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.... When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom to-day this poor people is plundered and exploited." (Adolf Hitler, in his speech in Munich on 12 April 1922)

 

Actually, Hitler hated Christianity and persecuted Christians. He was even able to co-opt many of the churches to support his national and racial policies.

 

How was he able to get them to close their eyes to even the worst forms of oppression? He posed as a champion of righteousness, twisting Scripture to bolster his claims.

 

Why did segments of the Church believe him? They either didn’t know Scripture or didn’t care about it. In either case, Christ wasn’t first in their lives. Instead, their desires and fears held the reigns at a great expense to all.

 

In contrast, our God is a God of truth. To follow Christ is to exalt the truth. There is nothing in the Bible that would have us compromise the truth. It is the truth that frees us (John 8:31-32), the truth that demands our allegiance (John 4:22-24). It is the light of the truth that is meant to judge our lives (1 Corinthians 11:30-32). It is unto the truth that our desires and fears must submit (Proverbs 3:5-7).

 

When we seek for God’s wisdom above all else, He will grant it (James 1:5; Matthew 6:33) so that we are not slain by the cunning of deception:

 

·       Get wisdom, get understanding; Forget not, neither decline from the words of my mouth; Forsake her not, and she will preserve thee; Love her, and she will keep thee. Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom; Yea, with all thy getting get understanding. Exalt her, and she will promote thee; She will bring thee to honor, when thou dost embrace her. (Proverbs 4:5-8 ASV)

 

To live without the wisdom of God is to embrace instability and naïveté. To counter this, God gave the Church with pastors and teachers:

 

·       so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ. (Ephesians 4:14-15)

 

Growth depends upon truth, but what about the signs and wonders of former ages? The Israelites had experienced these in abundance—the ten plagues, the parting of the seas, manna— however, they continued to rebel. Indeed God still miraculously delivers us, but expects us to walk patiently in faith:

 

·       …we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. (Romans 8:23-25)