Tripping

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? -- Jeremiah 17:9

As you may know, the name “Jacob” means “supplanter”, i.e., “tripping up insidiously by the heel”.  Jacob went so far as to deceive (with his mother’s help – probably a whole other study) his own father in order to obtain the blessing he desired. 

There is always a danger and a snare that we risk deceiving ourselves as we attempt to obtain desired blessings from God.  To deceive God is impossible – and we realize that, for the most part.  Instead the heart hides from its intentions and refuses to accept and acknowledge its own motives and desires.  We justify our actions and do our best to make them sound noble, generous, and merciful.  All the sickness gets projected outward to those around us, the “system”, society, or even to God who is too harsh or demanding or judgmental or whatever it may be.

Jacob – and we are all Jacob – cheated his brother and fled from his justifiable anger.  But we have to wonder if Esau was all that bent on murder.  There’s no doubt that Jacob deserved a sound and solid whipping.  When the brothers meet after 20 years, Esau isn’t even concerned about that, and Jacob had found one more deceitful than himself in Laban at whose hands he had suffered. 

Often, when we deceive ourselves, we live in fear because something deep inside tells us we have acted perversely.  In fact, it could be that fear and dread are among the most common and sure signs that we have tried to fool ourselves.  If I find an area of fear in my life, I should look closely at it.  If I face it, I may find myself undeceived, as Jacob was.  It was on his way to deal with his deceptive heart that Jacob met the Angel of the Lord and wrestled with Him at ford of the Jabbok which he renamed Peniel for he had seen God face-to-face. 

As they struggled, the Lord asked a question of Jacob:  And he said to him, What is your name? And he said, Jacob (Genesis 32:27).  That is, he said, I am the deceptive one, the supplanter, the one who surreptitiously trips my brother from behind.  When God had the confession and the heart exposed, He could make a change:  Then he said, Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed (Genesis 32:28). 

Or, as John told us:  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9).  Tell the truth.

The Expendables

And Elijah said to them, Seize the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape. And they seized them. And Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon and slaughtered them there.  – 1 Kings 18:40

Dealing with our delusions requires a radical approach.  The idols that we create in our minds and the thoughts that support, protect, and empower them cannot be dealt with in whack-a-mole fashion.  There are too many of them.  Elijah was up against 450 prophets of Baal and another 400 prophets of Asherah.  Thinning the wolf pack is not going to solve the problem.  Sure, they will drop back and hang out in the brush for a while, but they’ll recruit and breed more and probably come back stronger than ever.

All-or-nothing is the way to go.  I have a feeling this is how God works a lot of the time.  He lets us suffer the consequences of our vain pursuits, allows us to hit rock bottom, as the AA’ers say.  This drought was extreme, three years with no rain.  Israel is forced to face a grim reality.  The same thing happens to us as individuals.  Reality intrudes on our comfortable illusions.  Our faith in the “priests of Baal” and our Baal itself begins to show signs of wear and tear.  Fissures appear.   Meanwhile, the truth hammer continues to fall. 

God confronts us and challenges us.  This is the key to breaking free of our illusions.  There has to be something real to replace the false.  We are going to believe in something because that is the way we are made.  Faith is always reaching out, always feeling for that connection.  If the false prophets are eradicated and the false god exposed as a lie, it has as an opportunity to connect to the Truth. 

Just as He did undeniably before all Israel on Mount Carmel, the Lord can pull back the curtain, let the light in, and reveal the dead, hollow uselessness of what we have been serving.  Nevertheless, those people would never have responded to Elijah’s call to seize and slaughter the false prophets merely because Baal had been exposed as a lie.  They had to see not just that Baal could not answer by fire but that the Lord could and did. 

I often meditate on the scene in Exodus 20:18-19 where the children of Israel were witnesses to the presence of God:   Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off, and said to Moses, You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.

Sometimes we want a level of plausible deniability in our relationship to God.  We want a buffer, a middle man who can be questioned and with whom fault may be found (as Israel often did with Moses).  The raw feed, so to speak, of a direct encounter with the Holy One blows away our defenses, the wall of little dishonesties that we hide behind.  Those who demand a “Damascus Road” experience before they believe are, perhaps, the most deceived of all.  If we refuse to see the Lord with our eyes open, we will have to find Him blind.  

Perhaps this is why prayer is such a struggle for people like me.  It's not that God isn't hearing me so much as, if I stay at this too long, He might start talking.  That really is my problem.  I get some great idea and when the end of the day comes, Jesus is there waiting for me.  Sometimes He doesn't even have to say anything.  He just looks at me, and I know I have been entertaining one of Baal's prophets.  The Sword of the Spirit comes out and another head rolls.  Ah, well ...

Who Do You Think You're Fooling

Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. -- Galatians 4:8

Those who reject God are not escaping some servitude or slavery.  They are not free to think and do as they please.  The great deception of the world is that I can, as “Invictus” says, be The master of my fate/ The captain of my soul.  We are never without “gods”.  If we lack knowledge of the true God, we are drawn to follow the false ones, as Matthew Henry says, adding then:   Those who forsook the God who made the world, rather than be without gods, worshipped such as they themselves made. 

Paul expresses the same idea in Romans 1:25 in speaking of those who … exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator….  And, again, in 2 Thessalonians 2:11, we learn those who chose to remain in ignorance and deceive themselves will be sent “a strong delusion” by the Lord Himself that they may be locked and held captive by that which is false.  Only in Christ do we have peace with God and liberty.   

For this reason, among others, we do well to remember that our struggle in life is a spiritual one.  The creatures of flesh and blood that would oppose us, do us harm, and otherwise oppress us are themselves deluded to a greater or lesser extent.  Do not fear them.  At the end of Fargo, Marge chides her prisoner for his bloody crime spree saying it was for a few dollars.  You can look at the men who have held the title of “leader of the free world” over the last hundred years, and, aside from a couple of exceptions, they are mostly small, shallow men, perhaps clever, some decent enough, but not anyone you would want your child to emulate.  Most sought power and adulation to fill the emptiness in their souls, thinking that by ruling over others, they might find freedom.  It never happens.  They, too, sell their souls for false, vain promises and illusions.  Do not envy them.  The bill is due, and Mephistopheles knocks.

Communion and the Verdict

But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged.  But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.  – 1 Corinthians 11:31-32

Does knowing God begin with knowing ourselves?  Or do we know ourselves because we know God?  I have had those weird dreams where I am unclothed in inappropriate situations.  If I am willing to look honestly at myself, put aside my persona and lower my shields to stand naked in the light of truth, there is no need for judgment on God’s part. 

That’s a lot more than saying I’m a horrible person, which is pretty easy.  If I’m not careful I can turn my faults into a brag.  It does make for some good stories.  We need to shine the light into the dark corners of our hearts, into the locked chambers whose doors we usually refuse to open.  If I want communion, I must allow exposure and face the shame of, not just the wicked things I’ve done, but of the wicked self who was behind them.  

Our true chastisement is losing the presence of God.  By exploring and thoroughly searching past our actions and words to our motives, by being demanding, exacting and severe toward ourselves without hiding behind excuses and rationalizations, we come to see plainly the weakness of the Law.  I am not able, in the flesh, to please God.  The paradox is that we have to give up, but we can’t give up too soon. 

It’s a strange thing.  You know, from the first, that you can’t win.  At least, we know it mentally because it’s right there in plain sight, in the text, in church doctrine, on the lips of everyone sent to teach us.  Still, most of us, I suspect, take quite a bit of convincing at the heart level.  We have to bang our heads against reality more than once – my head is rather hard, to move from an intellectual acceptance to a solid and certain conviction.  Self-examination, self-judgment, and self-discipline are part of the process, and I’m not sure there’s any shortcut allowed around it.  Perhaps there are some who work it all out in a one-time flash of insight and transformation at the mourners’ bench.  I’m not one of those.   Like an ogre or an onion, I find that I have layers of stupidity that have to be painfully peeled away one at a time.  Somewhere under there is Christ. 

Gatekeepers

But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. -- 2 Corinthians 11:3

Deception, especially, many times, self-deception, is what keeps us in bondage and denies us the love of God and the peace, joy and righteousness that is the fruit of the Spirit.  I don’t understand why I want to deceive myself.  All of us, at some level, want to know the truth, but the truth transforms us, often to the extent that we feel we are losing control of our lives.  It is almost like dying. 

How is our deception maintained and reinforced in the face of truth?  For one, a deceived person seeks out the like-minded.  We find those who are saying much the same thing we have been saying to ourselves.  We develop cliques and cults.  Of course, there’s nothing wrong with the Cult of the Raccoon, but not all are so truth-seeking and beneficial.  To be freed from deception, we have to have questions and doubts as well as faith and answers.  Deceivers are apt to offer us assurances when we need challenges.  False teachers and false prophets, regardless of the realm, will demand that we put our skepticism and cynicism aside.  Truth has no fear of the skeptic. 

Jesus did not condemn those who struggled with acceptance of Him.  He offered them the truth and challenged them, and us, to do the will of God:

So Jesus answered them, “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me.  If anyone's will is to do God's  will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority.  The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory, but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood (John 7:16-18). 

The will of God is not entirely a mystery.  It has been made plain in the Law.  If we are striving to live right, as those who stood around Jesus that day claimed to be, and serve God rather than exalt ourselves, the doctrine of Christ will resonate with us. 

It is as though the world, the flesh, and the devil have imprisoned us behind a wall, fenced us in.  The Law leads us to the gate but the keys remained in the devil’s hands.  Our obedience was like a pass that we presented to the gatekeeper thereby obtaining a temporary exit and a degree of freedom.  After a while the failures and sins in our lives would once again imprison us. 

Christ offers more than temporary freedom.  The Cross took the keys out of the hands of our enemy and put them into the hands of our gracious Lord who loves us and seeks always that which is best for us.  Having paid the full price of our freedom, there is never any reason for us to allow ourselves to be locked up again.  All the Lord asks of us is truth in our inner being.  If we will own and acknowledge our faults and failures, He will forgive us and enable us to let them go.  It is only when we insist clinging to our sin that we find ourselves locked down – for our own good. 

This is the danger that Paul warns against.  If we find ourselves back in bondage, the deceiver will tell us that we must pay him to get back out.  Since he is no longer the gatekeeper, not only do we owe him nothing, he couldn’t let us out if he wanted to.  As a result, we serve the devil for nothing and remain in bondage, ever more confused and frustrated by our failure to obtain liberty. 

The answer is to go to the right One and tell Him your troubles.  What He tells you, you will know is the truth:   I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture (John 10:9).