CHRIST-APP by philtierneyblog

Deception Dynamics: Lessons from a Biblical Tale

Thank you for your patience in tolerating the time that has lapsed between the last installment of this letter and this on. Other obligations interfered with my time. I left off by saying I’d write you about how to discern deception, and so I will.

Deception and Discernment

First, let me describe some of the dynamics of deception. In order to do that, I’d like to call your attention to two stories in the Bible that involve deception. One deception was successful and the other was not. There are other references in the Bible, but I think these two will suffice because of their prominence and near universal familiarity.

The first story is written in Genesis 3: 1-9:

Now the serpent was craftier than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so, they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called, “Where are you?”

Throughout history, this story has not often been taken literally, but has largely been interpreted figuratively, as an allegory, using symbolism to make its points. When interpreting stories in the Bible it’s important to be clear about how you understand them and why you choose to understand them that way. Why might you take a talking snake literally? Why might you understand it as a vessel for the devil? Might it be something else, like the projection of internal impulses?  It’s also important to be aware of what causes you to choose a particular way of understanding a story in the Bible. Is it to confirm your own previously held beliefs or to be more consistent with your experiences in life? The choice of how you understand a story will influence the sense you make of that story.

The first part of this familiar tale of the so-called “fall” or “original sin” was what I’ll call engagement. It involves external distortion, contradiction and insinuation. The distortion was a form of exaggeration – “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’” In the story, God set a boundary that the human characters could eat fruit from any tree, but one. The exaggeration was the first form of distortion. The contradiction was a form of negation and also a distortion — “You will not certainly die.” It’s not certain they’d die if they ate the particular fruit. The insinuation appealed to ambition or perhaps self-improvement — “when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” That was a mixture of truth and falsehood intertwined. The knowledge of good and evil would be theirs on a personal experiential level, but it would be different from God’s awareness of evil, which was detached and not rooted in the personal experience of it.

There’s a progression to the process of deception described in this story with each step building on the prior one. Each of those steps was part of the external dynamics of the process of deception. It involved lies, half-truths and appealed to the allure of personal ambition or improvement.

Beware whenever you hear lies, exaggerations, half-truths and appeals to your personal ambitions, no matter how compelling they may seem, because the human mind can rationalize virtually anything that seems desirable. That’s often also true when it’s cloaked in religious terms. This was a description of the external dynamics of deception.

The story also described an internal dimension to deception. People can be deceived when they’re inclined to be, when there’s something appealing about the deception. People won’t be deceived if they aren’t receptive to it. This was the internal dynamic: “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.”

Let me be clear. Albeit that the character in the story is identified as a woman, it could easily have been any human. That said, the human in the story perceived the external focus of the deception; saw and heard about it; then pondered it; thought about it; weighed the potential benefits to it; made a decision and then acted upon it. The human in the story was lured into deception on three levels. One level was basic physical need. The fruit seemed good to eat. It seemed safe. Another level of the allure was aesthetic. It looked appealing, attractive. The third level was the most important of all. It appealed to the desire for self-improvement. Some would say that the appeal was to become like God, but that’s not necessarily what the character thought. It was alluring because it seemed to hold the promise of improving the human condition of the character by gaining wisdom. The deception was successful. And that was because it all seemed good.

Rarely are people deceived to misbehave by what seems bad to us, but virtually always we’re deceived by what seems good to us. I’m not saying that deception always involves actions that are good.  What I am saying is that even in cases where actions are very questionable, violent, harmful to others or duplicitous, people perceive some good that, when rationalized, outweighs or eclipses other relational, moral, ethical, social or spiritual qualms.

Even when people choose to lie, cheat, steal, attack, gossip, defame and murder they decide to do so because of some good they perceive. People may lie to keep themselves or others out of trouble. They may cheat to gain advantage for themselves or others.  People steal because to have something they feel they or others need. People physically attack others to protect themselves or others when they feel they’re threatened. People gossip of defame others when they feel others are should be identified as culprits or to inflate their own importance in the eyes of others. People even do murder sometimes when they believe that they or others are in danger of grave harm. The destructive behavior is rationalized as a necessary means to a perceived good end.

As in this story, the allure of deception is on more than one level. The object of the deception looks good. It seems good. It feels good. We hope it will meet our heartfelt needs and will fulfill not only our inner desires, but also our sincere aspirations. Those thoughts give rise to feelings. The feelings give rise to heartfelt goals. Those goals inspire plans to achieve them. Then we take actions to accomplish what we hope to attain. That’s the interior progression of deception as it is the progression of plans for good outcomes, as well.

Beware, whenever something seems to hold the promise of material satisfaction, gut level magnetism or improved status. Always consider the question of collateral consequences. What’s the potential impact on my relationship with God, myself, other individuals and the community or habitat?

All our impulses to gain things that attract us are not negative, in and of themselves, or automatically sources of deception. They’re not. Neither are they automatically positive. They’re the way we’re put together and are natural to us. Psychologist Abraham Maslow described a “Hierarchy of Human Needs.” It closely tracks with the interior aspects of the deception in this story. People are driven to meet basic human needs, which Maslow described this way: The most basic is to meet our physical needs. The next most basic is to position ourselves to find safety and security from vulnerability. The next need we’re driven to attain is affiliation – to enjoy love and belonging. Once those are attained, we’re compelled to secure self-esteem.  And finally, we may be inclined to achieve means of self-actualization or personal fulfillment, meaning and purpose in life.

None of these needs and the inner impulses to meet them are deceptions in themselves. On the contrary most are very positive. How we meet those needs is crucial, though. Ends do not justify the means of attaining them. That’s essentially what much of the Bible is about. In the Bible God guides humans on how to meet our needs, the needs of others and our environment in the ways we were meant to live. In fact, Jesus’s teachings about the Kingdom of Heaven or Kingdom of God essentially emphasize that not only do the ends never justify the means, but in fact the means are the ends – how we meet our needs is essential.  It cannot be at the expense of God or to the detriment of other people, ourselves or the habitat in which we live.  

It’s essential to discern potential deceptions by paying attention to the telltale signs of the focus of our cravings and their symptoms. Are those signs and symptoms congruent with what St. Paul called the fruit of the Spirit – “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, long-suffering, gentleness and self-control?” (Galatians 5: 22f) Or do they manifest opposite signs — selfishness, resentment, anger, impatience, intolerance, meanness, defensiveness, hostility and impulsiveness?  If the signs and symptoms of our yearnings are what St. Paul described as fruit of the Spirit then it’s okay. God may even be guiding them. If they include the latter then it’s more likely that we’re on the wrong path for wrong reasons.

Where the characters in the story of the Garden went wrong was that the decision made didn’t appear to have involved love, patience or self-control.  Love involves trust, in this case, trust that the Creator had their best interests at heart and knew the boundary set served those interests. Love would also have involved consultation and discussion. The characters in the story might have discussed it with God before they decided to take action. Love, trust and self-control were lacking in the action taken. It’s just possible that the neglect of a decision-making process that involved both of them and God was where they got off track rather than merely the choice to eat, itself.

If a though, feeling or goal is accompanied by any of these: selfishness, resentment, anger, impatience, intolerance, meanness, defensiveness, hostility and impulsiveness, it is likely a deception and can be discerned as such.