PERCEPTION AND DECEPTION
© Hubert Krause  Oct 16, 1999
The Church of God in Williamstown
WEB SITE: http://www.alphalink.com.au/~sanhub/index.htm

THE NEED FOR PERCEPTION
To God we are known:

We of course do not know ourselves as God would have us understand our true selves—although perhaps some of us may think we do. Therefore God tests our hearts so that we may come to know what He knows about us: We also need to constantly examine ourselves, what we feel, think and believe, and how and why we act as we do. How well do we evaluate our own hearts and motives when it comes to thinking and judging correctly, and how perceptive are we in discerning error that may present itself to us from inside or out, in whatever form it appears? What are the criteria we use to evaluate and make judgments about what we hear and see?
It's easy to believe what we want to believe. Our perspective can very quickly be distorted, our ability to correctly discern overridden by emotion. Logic and clear thinking can be rapidly relegated to the garbage bin and in the process we may end up being misled. Let us examine an instance of this which led to grave consequences for ancient Israel in the wilderness.

PERCEPTION DISTORTED
The spies commissioned by Moses to explore the land of Canaan gave two reports, or perhaps a report in two parts, upon their return. The first was apparently given by all twelve of them:

The first report was quite factual, speaking of the goodness of the land but also of the strength of the inhabitants and the large and fortified cities, points which Moses had asked them to investigate (Nu 13:18-19). However, the reaction of the people to it was one of utter consternation. Fear set in, and the other spies, in their second report, now showed their true feelings: Fear caused them to embellish their first report and to exaggerate. The realities of the situation were suddenly misperceived. The people of the land were now not only strong but "stronger than we are". All the inhabitants were all of a sudden "of great size" and they themselves were as "grasshoppers" compared with the descendants of Anak. The land of milk and honey had become a land that "devoured" those living in it. Furthermore, the ten spies now linked—deliberately or otherwise—the sons of Anak with the Nephilim, destroyed by the Flood (although the name no doubt lived on in reference to men of great stature and strength), evoking yet more fear. The result was open rebellion against God and His anointed leaders, and a readiness on the part of the people to head back to Egypt.

In similar manner, fear or other negative emotions, or perhaps our past experiences, or even blind faith or acceptance can distort our perceptions and cause us to come to wrong conclusions about what we hear and see. If unchecked, they can even lead us to be deceived. Christ condemned a generation which was able to correctly forecast the weather but which lacked the same perception in spiritual matters. "Why … do you not judge what is right?", He lamented (Lk 12:54-57).

MERE WORDS?
So let us take some cues from Jesus Christ about this matter of perception:

Christ indeed knew men with the knowledge of God and saw the imperfections of this belief in Him that was professed, and expressed, no doubt very vocally by some, by those who witnessed His works. Words spoken are not always the true expression of what is in the heart. How well do we understand this?

Christ's use of parables to proclaim the message of the Kingdom illustrates the principle that you can hear or listen to words but not really perceive or discern the intent of what is being said:

Mark's account then adds this admonition: In other words, the amount of profit—in the case of the parables, spiritual profit—you derive from what you hear is directly proportional to the attention you pay in your hearing. So let us take some more cues from the manner in which Christ heard and saw, and then made judgments.

THE PERCEPTION OF JESUS CHRIST
Prophetically, the process by which Jesus Christ judges, through the power of the Holy Spirit, is described in this way (some inserts provided by me):

It is of course the eyes and the ears that are used to make judgments; but it is a question of how one sees and how one hears, is it not? So how did Jesus Christ see and hear—and judge—while He walked on the earth? Christ knew what was in their minds. Was this some automated process or did He use His mind, empowered by the Spirit of His Father, this Spirit of power and sound-mindedness, (2Ti 1:7), of wisdom and understanding? Just how did he perceive their thoughts? Let's notice what Mark's version of this event adds: So Christ was aware in spirit as to the motives behind the words which were spoken. He, who "knew what was in a man", was also uncannily perceptive. Yet another instance illustrates this: When the Pharisees and Herodians sought to trap Jesus in His words, notice how He saw through their evil intentions: All three Greek words translated as "know" in these verses are elsewhere used in the New Testament to refer to the knowledge, perception or realization human beings come to through the use of their minds. The question is therefore: how much of Christ's "knowledge" of men and their motives in his earthly dealings with them was acquired by perception? It has perhaps been fashionable in come circles to attribute all of Christ's perceptive insight to the full measure of the Spirit available to Him (Jn 3:34), almost as an automated process, as though He, whose example we are to emulate, somehow no longer needed to call upon His own mind, His own powers of reasoning, His ability to evaluate facts correctly. Jesus Christ learned, did He not (Lk 2:52; Heb 5:8)?

SEEING AND HEARING CORRECTLY
At the Feast of Tabernacles in John chapter 7, Christ was taken to task for healing a lame man on the Sabbath by Jews whose rabbinic interpretation of the law of circumcision of Lev 12:3 made an eighth-day circumcision which took place on the Sabbath supreme over the Sabbath itself. They thus failed to perceive God's true purpose for the Sabbath, and Christ rebuked them:

Or, as Paul put it to those members of the Corinthian Church who still disputed his apostolic authority and who stood to be deceived by certain false teachers who professed to be more 'spiritual' than him: For these people, Paul's apostolic commission should have undisputedly validated by the fruits—by the facts—when properly perceived, considered and evaluated. As he had earlier pointed out to them in his epistle: To make a right judgment, we thus need to evaluate correctly what we see and what we hear, do we not? And we need to be prepared to look below the surface if necessary.

HUMAN MISPERCEPTIONS
It is human to allow our own emotions, impressions of people and past experiences to cloud our assessment of what we hear and see and to then come to a wrong conclusion because logic, discernment and clear perception have been overridden. The striking examples of their Master did not always rub off on His disciples. Let's note some instances of this:

Mark's account adds: Christ rebuked His disciples not so much for having failed to understand His metaphorical use of the word "leaven" to describe the corrupt teaching of the Jewish leaders, but because they imagined that a shortage of food would be a worry to Him! What about all those miracles? Their hearts were "hardened", almost as if they did not want to understand. They focussed so much on their false assumption that Christ was complaining about their not having brought sufficient bread for this journey that an important lesson was going right over their heads. A good example of a decided lack of perception! They had the living Word of God there with them and should reasonably have known better.

Yet even when Christ taught His disciples plainly, without parables, there were problems!

Mark's account of this says that Christ "spoke plainly about this" (Mk 8:32), that is, He was quite open about this now explicit teaching about His forthcoming death (although He had previously made incidental allusions to it, e.g. Mk 2:20). It may have in fact been prompted by Peter's acknowledgement of Christ's Messiahship, which had apparently taken place just before this incident (Mt 16:13-20; Mk 8:27-30; Lk 9:18-21), and for which Christ praised him for having accepted this revelation from God about His Son (Mt 16:17). We can assume that the rest of the disciples therefore also acknowledged this, Peter being so often the spokesman for the group. Convinced though he was of Jesus' Messianic status, Peter contested Christ's assertions concerning His future to His face! Yet had His Master ever spoken falsely or taught wrongly? Notions of suffering and rejection, however, did not fit into Peter's pre-defined concept of Messiahship. "You are wrong!", he protested vehemently. He was most severely rebuked by Jesus, who promptly discerned the source of Peter's words, and the outburst occasioned a lesson about self-denial and the cost of discipleship (Mt 16:24-28; Mk 8:34-38; Lk 9:23-26). Poor Peter! In a similar vein, when he asked Christ for an explanation of the parable about clean and unclean, he and the other disciples were met with the resounding response: "Are you still so dull?" (Mt 15:15-16, NIV). Again, he should have understood, but his perception was faulty.

Peter did well to speak his mind, yet the infallible Son of God should have, at least in the fullness of time, been seen as an absolute reference by His closest followers. Instead, we are told that Peter, one of the two disciples who came to the empty tomb after Christ's resurrection, still did not understand that what Christ had so long taught about His resurrection was correct (Jn 20:9)! Yet these same disciples had seen Lazarus resurrected from the dead!
So one may have directly from God awesome understanding, such as Peter had about the nature of God's Son, but still have these truths enshrouded with misperceptions. However, let us also not forget that it was this same Peter, who some time later, was able to—promptly, it seems—perceive the deception of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:3). Some powerful lessons about spiritual perception had obviously been learnt.

Unlike Christ, we are fallible, and we seek evidence for what we believe, and rightly so. We need to question, to reference at times what we hear and see. Blind faith is a recipe for disaster, as has been our experience, and likewise is blind acceptance of everything heard or seen. It's so easy to forsake logic and common sense, to settle for the first thing your eyes and ears tell you, or to default to preconceived notions, in the process ignoring realities that should be an integral part of the evaluative process. How acute is our sense of perception?

Christ many times used the expression "he who has ears to hear" (Mt 11:15; 13:9,43; Mk 4:9,23; 7:16; Lk 8:8). In Luke 8:18, He stated "Therefore take heed how you hear". Revelation warns the churches that it is "he who has an ear"—that is, an ear to listen, to listen correctly, with perception and discernment—who will understand what the Spirit of God imparts to the Church (Rev 2:7,11,17,29; 3:6,13,22; see also Rev 13:9).

THE SPIRIT OF ERROR
In a Corinthian Church rich in spiritual gifts, to some was powerfully given the gift of spiritual perception, the ability to discern the spirit of error:

In listing this gift after that of prophecy, which is primarily the inspired proclamation of the Word of God, which strengthens, encourages and comforts (1Co 14:3-4), it seems reasonable to conclude that this gift of the discerning of spirits would serve to help distinguish true prophecy from the false.
And the possessor of this specific gift was to use it in accordance with God's set purpose: So we would assume that such a gift would be valued and referred to by the whole Church. Yet we all need to be developing this ability, for such an attitude is demanded of all of us. Notice again how prophesizing—the inspired proclamation of the Word of God—is linked with the need to test, or discern the truth or otherwise of a prophetic utterance: The exhortation is that the people of God must not uncritically accept—or reject, for that matter—spiritual teaching, but must be careful in all matters to distinguish the good—the correct—and hold on to it. In this way, every kind of evil, including error, will be avoided (1Th 5:22, NIV), and deception will not ensue.

So do we uncritically accept all that is said to us, publicly from the pulpit, or personally? If so, we may well be at the very least misinformed, at the worst deluded or deceived. It requires perception and discernment of spirit, of attitude, to pick up error if it is present. Notice Paul's instruction to the Corinthian Church:

Yet how many of us even today still hold to notions of infallibility on the part of the speaker communicating the Word of God to us publicly or privately? We must constantly validate the spirits: GUIDELINES TO PERCEIVING CORRECTLY
So in order to determine the true from the erroneous we must judge critically, be perceptive, be discerning. Several guidelines have been given. Let's conclude by re-emphasizing and expanding upon two of these. Solomon offers us some good general advice to think about before making up our minds about something we may have heard and in turn speaking about it: Now obviously the matter has already been heard; Solomon's point is that it has not been heard in its entirety. The principle here warning of prejudiced or thoughtless verdicts by judges applies also to each of us in the Body of the Church: First impressions can mislead, words listened to but not cross-referenced can result in deception, while referencing what is heard may prove a case has two sides to it. We come from a Church culture where we have been taught neither to question nor to cross-reference, either those in authority or even one another, since we are all brethren in the Church—as though it were somehow sinful to question one another to seek clarification! Yet the Scriptures tell us that the human heart is deceptive (Jer 17:9) and warn us against unreserved trust without first putting to the test against the Word of God what we hear and what we see. As James admonishes us: Now the wolf, at least in the first instance, is more likely to be hungry than malevolent; so false prophets, at the outset, may well be self-deceived rather than wantonly deceptive (Paul warned Timothy about imposters "deceiving and being deceived" [2Ti 3:13]; the course of deception is a progressive one). Even so, the warning still holds true. Just as good fruit stands out, so must words be matched by deeds, by lives which accord with godliness. We are very familiar with these verses and with this precept given us by Christ. Do we apply this principle of being perceptive to fruits in our dealings with one another or do we assume Christ was referring only to false prophets and to evil deeds?

In Mt 12:33, Jesus also told the multitudes that if the tree was made good, then its fruit would be good also. Notice also what Luke adds to Christ's imagery of the tree:

He then links this lesson of the tree producing good or bad fruits with words spoken according to the intent of the heart: So fruits are not to restricted to deeds. Do we listen to people's words, those unpremeditated words which often reveal so much about the intents of the heart? God does, for Christ said that our words will either justify us or condemn us (Mt 12:37). Do we apply discernment and correct reasoning if warning bells start to ring in our minds? Words can deceive the hearers if perception is not applied. Note the wise counsel of Elihu, re-echoing what Job had previously said (Job 12:11): A sensitive palate can identify a multitude of different foods. How discerning are our ears? How do we listen to and take in what is said to us? There are a myriad of forms of words which can disguise error. Paul warned the Church against deception through the use of "empty" words if they were not properly discerned or referenced by the hearers: And also against deception through "persuasive" words: 1Th 2:5 speaks of "flattering" words—words used insincerely—which can mask covetousness, which is idolatry (Col 3:5). By contrast, 1Ti 6:3 (NRSV) stresses "the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ" as the standard for godly teaching, the same pattern of "sound words" Paul urged Timothy to hold fast to in faith and love (2Ti 1:13).
So let us all ask ourselves again: how do we listen to words?

CONCLUSION
Christian love must not be devoid of perception, of spiritual discernment. It is our safeguard against deception:

It is not a blind love; we must even know who our enemies are if we are to love them as God would have us. We love with perception, leading to true understanding, not with mere sentiment.

So how perceptive are we?

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