I have been having a lot of conversations lately around deception.

It sounds cheery doesn’t it?

I guess the reality is we live in a world where truth has become a harder concept to grasp. Our news feeds are flooded with flawed views, false facts, and sometimes plain propaganda. Videos and photos can be deepfaked, and the increased sophistication of AI makes it harder and harder to ascertain what is real and what is not. Deception seems to be harder and harder to detect.

But be able to detect it we must.

So many times throughout the Scriptures people have fallen into deception, many times without realizing, with disastrous consequences. Whether it’s Isaac giving away his blessing to Jacob, the Gibeonites with Joshua, or taking it right back to the beginning, Adam and Eve, with the devil in the Garden of Eden, we see how the Kingdom of God appears to suffer as a result.

What I want to focus on today is how we might spot whether or not we are being deceived. I’m not focusing on how we can spot a deceiver but more how can we detect deceits effects on our own lives.

What behaviours might we begin to exhibit when we are living under a cloud of deceit? Often these 4 behaviours tend to follow an order, one building on top of the other.

1 – It’s black or white – one thing I have noticed about the role deceit plays in our lives is that it removes reasonable conversation and pushes us towards the black or white. For example, when we see many of the Pharisees’ interactions with Jesus, we notice that anything and everything He does is considered evil. No one would have blamed them for being confused by how Jesus did things – it was so different from how the Pharisees had grown up in the oral tradition. I would have expected them to ask questions of Jesus while acknowledging how amazing He was. Instead, they called Him the Prince of demons, a blasphemer, a sinner, a Samaritan. They rejected Him fully and everyone and everything that touched Him. It’s black or it’s white, you’re in or you’re out, was the message they pushed. The same principle happens today. When we are deceived, we refuse to listen to reason, to anyone who might seek to question our stance. We hold no appreciation for complexity and no understanding for why another might think differently.

2 – Manipulation and Control – When we are being deceived, we tend to become very vocal and sometimes quite underhanded in how we approach the subject we are involved with. Rather than having open conversations where we can discern and learn, we instead are more likely to seek to win the debate in order to get someone over to our side (remember black and white). Questions become tricks and traps as we seek to manufacture an outcome we would prefer. Pressure and guilt often exist as we talk to those who are yet to know where they stand. Disagreement is not tolerated, and calls to have everyone on the same page become more important than they ever have. Again, we see this in full view when we watch the Pharisees’ interactions with Jesus. They used tricks and questions to try and catch Jesus out, they watched the crowd as they chose their moments to strike, and their trump card was often the power of the synagogue. They knew that if someone left the synagogue to follow Christ, the cost to the individual was high, so they liked to ensure they knew that truth. This is called manipulation and control.

3 – Lack of grace and humility – People under deceit tend to be less forgiving and feel more ‘right’ than they normally would. As I’ve already said, reason has often already left their minds, so they begin to double down on their beliefs, holding no sense of humility that they might have got it wrong. Those not under deceit, of course, will still believe they are right, but they will be able to talk about it with a humility that understands that they aren’t perfect, and of course, there is a small chance they could have been mistaken. Those living under deceit tend to show very little grace to others who are in disagreement, those on the ‘other side’. Their tone gets sharper, their frustration increases when they are faced with those who oppose your thoughts. They often personalize decisions and make it about the person’s essence rather than their actions. All in all, it isn’t a fun conversation when someone is under deceit.

4 – Ever decreasing circles – This is usually the end zone of previous behaviors. Have you ever watched someone do something that you could never have imagined them doing years before? Or perhaps watched them have feasible ideas that they would have never have entertained years previously? This is normal for someone who is under deceit. Because they have backed themselves into a corner on a particular issue, because they have sought to manipulate and control others to join them, and spent their time dishonoring and removing mercy from anyone who is in disagreement, it isn’t difficult for them to begin to do things that seem a bit crazy. Let’s return to our biblical examples, the Pharisees and religious leaders. They were a group who were totally opposed to the wider cultural context Israel found herself in at the turn of the century. They were being ruled by the Romans after years of the Greeks ruling. They had watched religious practices get diluted by the cultural gods, they were paying taxes to a foreign government, and they were watching a Caesar who was setting himself up to be a demigod. They lived in opposition to all of this and sought to dedicate their lives to God. However, they were so offended when Jesus came along that they began to lean into the Roman culture and practices in order to get rid of the one who had offended them. This is illustrated perfectly at Jesus’ trial when they are asked whether Jesus was their king. Their response was; “We have no king but Caesar,” What!!! They are acknowledging Caesar as their king? 4 years previously, I can’t imagine they would ever have entertained this thought but their hatred of Jesus and the deception they allowed to infiltrate their lives have brought them to this place. This is the work of deception!

I’m sure you may have detected more but hopefully this will help all of us as we seek to live a life of truth.