just say ...abracadabra

There is something that I particularly enjoy about watching a skilled magician deceive me with ease. I love to be amazed by the simplest tricks that challenge my understanding of what I believe I am seeing. Somehow there is this fundamental disconnect in my understanding of reality that happens in a blink of an eye. How easy it is for us to be deceived by others even when we know it and are on alert to the clues of the magician. God was keenly aware of our ability to be deceived as it is a major tool Satan uses to destroy our lives. There is a real basic design flaw within us. We have struggled with the consequences of being easily fooled for a really long time. From the very beginning of our presence on earth, Satan has been the greatest deceiver ever. We know that and we are constantly reminded to be on guard against deceptions of the enemy. God speaks to us throughout the Bible warning us over and over to be alert to various deceptions that can masquerade themselves. However, even worse than the deception of Satan and others is how easily and frequently we can deceive ourselves. In a recent blog, VirtueOnline, Ted Schroder, states,
“Self-deception is a shadowy phenomenon by which we pull the wool over some part of our own psyche. We put a move on ourselves. We deny, suppress, or minimize what we know to be true. We assert, adorn, and elevate what we know to be false. We prettify ugly realities and sell ourselves the prettified versions...We become our own dupes, playing the role of both perpetrator and victim. We know the truth - and yet we do not know it, because we persuade ourselves of its opposite. We actually forget that certain things are wrong and that we have done them. To the extent that we are self-deceived, we occupy a twilight zone in which we make up reality as we go along, a twilight zone in which the shortest distance between two points is a labyrinth.....A moment's reflection reminds us that self-deception has long been a growth industry. Why do alcoholics and other drug users typically go through years of self-denial? Why is the revelation of incest an astonishment to people who are living right in the middle of it?...Why do battering husbands offer minimizing and euphemistic accounts of the beatings they administer, and why do battered wives sometimes accept and repeat those accounts?" Jesus calls such self-deception 'hypocrisy'. Under the guise of doing good, of polishing one's image, vices masquerade as virtues. We learn to present something falsely, to make our presentation credible, and to avoid exposure. Even Satan masquerades as an angel of light (2 Cor.11:14) in order to look merely plausible. Evil appears in disguise. Hence our need for the Holy Spirit's gift of discernment. Hence the sheer difficulty, at times, of distinguishing good from what is evil. As sinners we try to keep up appearances. We are acutely sensitive to what others may think of us. Hence the constant attempt to explain, to justify, to rationalize, and to scapegoat evil. We want to appear to be good people.”
That desire to appear to be a good person is what gets us into so much trouble. We work hard to maintain appearances and to fool people much as a magician does. Our energy is spent creating a false reality where our faith is never engaged. We become only hearers of the Word and are single mindedly focused on image and our ability to exert influence. This is not what God intended. In James 1:22-25 it says, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.” It is clear we are called to be doers and goers and not to sit idly by, not putting our faith to work in a risky way and living out of the confining boxes that have become our churches. This is where the real magic happens…when we serve others and advocate for social justice for the oppressed. Sawing a pretty girl into two halves or making an elephant disappear pales in comparison…anybody can do that…