Denial, Deception, and Hyprocrisy

I had lunch with an old friend earlier this week. He is both chronologically older than I am and we have known each other for over 35 years although we have not seen each other for much of that time. The meeting was encouraged by a mutual friend who thought we might benefit from talking to each other.

We were catching up on each other's lives and trying to discern why we might be having lunch at all. We discovered that we are both engaged in substance-abuse recovery ministries although we had gotten there by different doors. This blog and the religious spirit in the Santa Maria valley came up during the course of the conversation. I briefly explained my concept that a religious spirit is the same spirit that challenged Jesus through the religious leaders of His day. After asking a few questions for clarification, my friend seemed puzzled that anyone would not believe there is a religious spirit here. (Of course that is what I have been saying all along, as you know.) His assertion was that the entire church is affected by religious spirits. I certainly have no quarrel with that viewpoint. I only know that my focus is to be the one here.

Christian author Os Hillman writes, "The religious spirit can best be defined as an agent of Satan designed to prevent change and maintain the status quo by using religious devices. The religious spirit seeks to distort a genuine move of God through deception, control, and manipulation. This spirit operates out of old religious structures and attempts to maintain the status quo, favoring tradition over a genuine, intimate relationship with God. It influences believers to live the Christian life based on works instead of grace. Similar to the Greek way of thinking, the religious spirit depends on human effort to acquire spiritual knowledge and favor from God." Assuming Os is right, we can see the fallacy a religious spirit perpetrates, especially in the last sentence. Spiritual knowledge is not acquired or learned by an act of our will. It comes directly from the Holy Spirit into our spirits, bypassing our minds all together. As our minds are renewed (Romans 12:1) we learn how to incorporate those spiritual deposits into our daily lives.

It has taken me so long to finish this post that in the interim, I have been invited into a closed, Facebook group called TrueBelievers. The basis of the group is that they believe the rapture is going to happen on May 21, 2011. Aside from the obvious question there, after reading some of the posts in the group I could not resist questioning one of their teachings, just one mind you. Last time I looked, there were over sixty comments to my post. As you might guess they were overwhelming negative toward me. I was criticised, accused, and bashed for being Pentecostal, for believing we learn things from each other and from books, and for actually inviting Jesus to be Lord of my life rather than letting Him do all the work. Yes, I do know how ridiculous that sounds. I have never considered a theological education to be a liability, but I have found that some people do not agree with me on that. For whatever reason, some folks consider all theological education to be a bad thing. My experience is that sitting under the concentrated teaching of a group of people more knowledgeable and spiritual than I am has paid great benefits over the past decades. It has given me a framework upon which to hang the things the Holy Spirit is teaching me without going cuckoo as some people from my past have. In case you are unfamiliar with the term cuckoo, it comes from the Greek meaning way off base. (Yes, that is a joke.)

This is beginning to sound like a ramble and I have not even mentioned the glorious visit with my chiropractor today. All I was going to say about that is that I am glad he went to school to learn his profession. I went into his office in some pain and left feeling much better. (In case you need your hand held on that one, it refers back to the first statement in the previous paragraph.

Whenever we deny spiritual realities, we open ourselves to be deceived. By definition, one does not know when one is walking in an area of deception. The deeper into deception one moves, the less one believes oneself to be deceived until the deception becomes the truth for them. A person following a lie as though it were the truth becomes the only truth that exists for them. When that person gains any kind of following, it looks as though he or she has been right all along. In fact, sometimes the truth is 180 degrees from their reality. Of course I am over-simplifying. Virtually no one is 180 degrees off in more than an area or possibly two, and many are not off nearly that much in any area. The point is that we do not know unless we have people keeping us sharp as iron sharpens iron. (Proverbs 27:17)

The bow on this post is that when we are wrong, thinking we are right, our whole life becomes a lie. Though we do not recognize it as such, hypocrisy has worked it's way though the whole lump of our life. Our yes becomes negative and we have unwittingly made it impossible for truly Spirit-led believers to say the Amen to our words. (2 Corinthians 1:20)