Smoke and Mirrors

How to defeat the adversary when he tries to use
our own best aspirations against us

Angels are very smart. Man is said to be just "a little lower" than the angels. Lucifer, in heaven, convinced numerous angelic beings that he was right and God was wrong, and led them into a rebellion the result of which shall be their eternal destruction. In the end, Jesus has foretold that even the elect are at risk of deception. Was our Lord just trying to scare us? Or was He warning those who would live at the end of time to beware of even the most innocent and right-sounding messages?

The New Decision-Making Schema

You see friends, many among us have never realized just how smooth the devil is. We've acquired a taste for that warm and squishy religion surrounding us on every side. We don't think that God would allow us to be deceived. Not us. We have special protection. Just focus on Jesus and everything will be all right.

But the very words of our Lord were, "Take heed that no man deceive you" (Matthew 24:4). He never said, "Focus on me and everything will be all right." Our Lord was a realist. He knew the wiles of the devil, saw them in action, experienced them Himself. But we dwell in the unreal world, a world manufactured by television and music saying "don't worry, everything will be alright;" where no problem is so deep that it can't be resolved in 90 minutes of videotape by cardboard cut-out heroes. Then we walk into the church, you see, and we are taught that everything is OK as long as its buttered with the name of "Jesus."

Not so fast.

Brothers and sisters, when we leave this sanctuary today, I pray we'll be harmless as doves, but more able to comprehend the wisdom of serpents. Jesus said our eternal life was at stake. We need to know how to defeat the adversary when he tries to use our own best aspirations against us.

(I hope you haven't) seen any of the current crop of television commercials? If there is one thing that too many of us are up to date on, it's the latest in audience-influence technology--the latest schema in decision-making. Its all aimed at how you think you will look and feel when you are driving that new car, or walk out of the store owning that new gadget. Trouble is, the same methods have found a ready home in some of the sermons and publications coming before our minds. Your thinking is definitely behind the times if you even contemplate making an ordered-list of anything; chaos and spontaniety is the current wave. Rationality is out. No fair, says the devil, comparing the present benefit with the final price. We are sold with the sizzle.

Our foe specializes in using our own best emotions against us. He presents an article on some topic that would make demons shudder at its immorality, then weaves about it a tapestry of compassion and emotion and caring and love. And suddenly, because you feel such empathy/sympathy for the people in the story, you're supposed to put your hands up and fork over your moral wallet. All because your feelings have been moved; because you've been taught that when you hear the right words of a sad, sad story, you are supposed to roll over and give comfort--even if it is immoral.

This Has Been Tried Before

Nor is this a new strategy by his satanic majesty. He tried this on Jesus in the wilderness temptations. You'll recall the story, how the first temptation was for Him to make bread, and the second was to throw Himself down from the temple. Do you remember the third? Turn to Matthew 4:8-9, for there we find it:

Again, the devil taketh Him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth Him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and saith unto Him, All these things will I give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship me.

What do you think Satan showed Jesus? "The kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them" as Satan would govern, or as Jesus would have envisioned it? Would Satan's version of the world and all its kingdoms have pulling-power with Jesus? Would Jesus be attracted by a world in which selfishness reigned, the powerful ruled, and the poor were exploited and trodden down?

No, we can be sure that Satan portrayed before Jesus a triumphantly moral scene. A world strewn with churches and joyous worshippers singing, happy people smiling, a peaceful green-banked brook flowing with godly activities among the people lining its banks; no hospitals, no suffering, no morticians or dentist's drills, no death, no taxes. Satan must have presented a picture as close to what he thought Jesus would have wanted as he could. The only problem was that in Satan's pleasant pictures there stood no cross, no atonement, no final punishment for sin. Laying out his lavish feeling-oriented visual sophistry before Jesus, he said "All these things will I give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship me" (Matthew 4:9). And how would Jesus bow down before him and worship were Lucifer burned up in final destruction? No. Satan presented a smoothed-out styrofoam pathway around the cross and around the existence of sin.

Apart from that one fatal flaw, how must the portrayal have looked to Jesus? We needn't guess. In vision, God showed Ellen White just what Jesus saw. Listen to this from Desire of Ages, p. 129: "Satan caused the kingdoms of the world, in all their glory, to pass in panoramic view before Him. The sunlight lay on templed cities, marble palaces, fertile fields, and fruit-laden vineyards. The traces of evil were hidden. The eyes of Jesus, so lately greeted by gloom and desolation, now gazed upon a scene of unsurpassed loveliness and prosperity." What was he shown? The unsurpassed beauty of a world in which "the traces of evil were hidden."

Satan was attempting to use Jesus' own righteousness-loving emotions against Him. He hid the flaws of that world, even the traces of evil. He made it tempting, inviting, desirable to One in whom beat a heart aligned with righteousness. The harsh realities of a world caught up in sin were set aside and in its place a fantasy realm was presented. But how does Satan fare when approaching us with this same temptation? "With the same temptation Satan approaches men, and here he has better success than with Christ. To men he offers the kingdom of this world on condition that they will acknowledge his supremacy. He requires that they sacrifice integrity, disregard conscience, indulge selfishness" (Desire of Ages, p. 130).

Have you ever thought about that--how easily we acknowledge Satan's supremacy? Just a small sacrifice of integrity, just a slight inattention to our conscience, or but a small indulgence of selfishness, and Satan purrs. He loves to score points.

Yes, we can feel good about being "compassionate." But might we, without meaning to, walk away feeling good, but having sacrificed moral integrity, conscience, or indulging our selfishness?

Using Our Emotions Against Us

Consider how Jesus reacted in the case of the rich young ruler. When the young man ran up to Him and asked Him, "Good master, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?" (Matthew 19:16), Jesus might have replied within the framework where popular Christianity would have placed Him. "Hmm," He might have thought, "Now here is somebody I can work with. He's young, he has means, is so pliable, so ready to follow. True, he is overly attached to his material things, but if I work with him, if I walk with him and give him time, he may get over that and become strong for the kingdom. If I ask too much of him, he may walk away sad and never return. I'll go part way, meet him where he's at, and thus I may save his soul."

Do you know in fact, that the Bible says that when Jesus looked on this earnest young man bowing down before him, and had questioned him--do you know how Jesus felt? Mark tells us: "Then Jesus beholding him loved him" (Mark 10:21). Jesus felt compassion and affection for this person. But He didn't bend. Instead, He laid upon him the single camel's-back-breaking requirement, "sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor . . . and come, take up the cross and follow Me" (Mark 10:21). And you know the outcome. "And he went away grieved, for he had great possessions" (Mark 10:22).

To you or I it might sound harsh, unrelenting. But the facts are that:

Christ made the only terms which could place the ruler where he would perfect a Christian character. In accepting and obeying them was the ruler's only hope of salvation" (Desire of Ages, p. 520).

Yet we are tempted to think that by gently tweaking our integrity, just slightly disregarding our conscience, or just barely indulging selfishness, as long as it is with a good motive, somehow it excuses us from the fact that we are being bought. Because we "don't like conflict," or don't want to feel "uncomfortable," or come off as if looking "unloving," we misunderstand the exchange that we are making. The devil is smooth and knows that by the use of just such smoke and mirrors often he can urge us across the line into a position where we subtly muffle our integrity. We don't speak out because we don't want to appear unloving. The light of God remains hidden while the ambiguous gray tones of compromise settle round-about us. And somewhere in the darkness a Satanic smile gleems.

A Triad of Testing Truth

First Corinthians 13:5-6 helps us today. Three statements help us to know how to defeat the adversary when he comes seeking to use our own best aspirations against us. When we are tempted to sacrifice--however microscopically--integrity, conscience, or to indulge our selfishness in return for a glowing inward sense of compassion, here we find help. Consider these three thoughts:

[Love] thinketh no evil. (1 Corinthians 13:5).

[Love] rejoiceth not in iniquity. (1 Corinthians 13:6).

But [love] rejoiceth in the truth. (1 Corinthians 13:6).

Love Thinks No Evil

One who has true compassion--the same compassion as Jesus had--will not be first in line surmising that a wicked motive lies behind a word or statement or action. In the absence of other evidence, such an one will do their utmost to think well of the motivations and purposes of others. Yet to "think no evil" is not blindly to ignore reality. Our world and even the church contain some bent upon certain projects and partaking of some motives not always in the best interest of the kingdom of God. And they have acted. History, in their case, often shows a trail of action against the best interests of God's people. Whether misguided projects, unsound counsel in written matter, decisions, the result of which are dilutions of the churches positions--"thinking no evil" of one who has pushed their destructive agenda forward is false charity.

To "think no evil" is not to ignore what's already there in the open daylight--particularly if no indications of repentance or change of direction are evident. Jesus didn't ignore the self-destructive love of the rich young ruler for his possessions. He gave him a remedy. It would have been no charity towards him--no help or compassion or love towards him--had He quietly ignored the problem. It would have given license to the rich young ruler, who would have continued on his pathway to destruction without the intervention of Jesus' telling him, "one thing thou lackest."

Love Doesn't Rejoice in Sin

Often forgotten is another point--that love "rejoiceth not in iniquity." Love is not blind--not biblical love. When it sees something destructive, it says "go and sin no more." God is love and Jesus is God and Jesus says "go and sin no more." The compassion spoken of in Scripture sees nothing in sin that it rejoices in, nothing that it can approve. Biblical compassion disapproves all moral departures. Sin is destructive to God's people, and so anything that leads into sin is painful to YHWH. Should an item be published, for example, that leads to sinful practice--biblical love, knowing that such thought leads to sin and sin to destruction--abhors that trap of intoxicating words. Again, true compassion does not read such words or hear such messages in forensic stoicism. Some can so word a statement, that when understood in its most literal sense it doesn't lead where it does as it is actually intended. But all this is casuistry and emptiness. The Holy Spirit is never fooled. He knows the trend of every message that leads to perdition, even if on the face of it it is called a "thought provoking" piece.

Many things are published today that begin in supposed innocence, but lead to destruction. Such materials have been not influenced by the Holy Spirit. Jesus said even to hate someone is the same as murder, even to lust for someone is the same as to commit adultery. Surely He never meant that to publish that which only leads to eternal destruction is any less powerful for evil than where it takes its reader.

Love Does Rejoice in Truth

In direct contrast to its not rejoicing in sin, is the fact that biblical love does rejoice in truth. And I think I know why. Look at John 17:17. Jesus prayed, "sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy word is truth." How important is the role played by truth and sanctification? Hear the Spirit of God speaking through Ellen White:

The followers of Christ are to form characters in harmony with the principles of His holy law. This is Bible sanctification. Great Controversy, p. 469.

Again:

The Scriptures show plainly that the work of sanctification is progressive. When in conversion the sinner finds peace with God through the blood of the atonement, the Christian life has but just begun. Now he is to 'go on unto perfection;' to grow up 'unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.' Great Controversy, p. 470.

And in Christ's Object lessons, p. 384: "The sanctification of the soul by the working of the Holy Spirit is the implanting of Christ's nature in humanity." Love rejoices in truth because the truth sanctifies, resulting in a people in harmony with God's law, having Christ's likeness of character implanted within.

Such lofty results call to mind the question: What effect would we then expect the new passion-based, emotion-based decision-making schema to have on us? Working exclusively upon the emotions, it leads its adherents to sacrifice integrity, disregard conscience, and indulge selfishness. What we believe either sanctifies or toxifies. It either makes us more like our Lord, or more like our adversary. How unspeakably regrettable it is when what shows up in print today de-sanctifies rather than truly leading to holiness.

The Test

Nevertheless, in Scripture God has provided our help. This threefold test can be applied to what we read or hear or speak: Love thinks no evil, refuses to rejoice in sin, but insists upon rejoicing in truth. If an idea can't stand when put to this test, it may be a trap leading to destruction. It may be a subtle attack designed to ever so minutely remove you from your principles. Jesus said, "Take heed that no man deceive you!"

In the interest of your soul, I repeat those words to you again here today. May God grant us love and acceptance toward all--saint and sinner, but never, never at the expense of the truth as it is in Jesus--who is the Way, the Life, and let us never forget, even the Truth.

Note: If the thoughts suggested above have been a help to you, you may also wish to read A Toolbox for the Times, which catalogues several more of the lint-like mind-traps and code-words in use today.