Greetings!
How many times do you find yourself in a situation where somebody said something, particularly a family member, your emotions were aroused and thus letting the rejecter rule you?
Pure idolatry is what this is. By allowing the opinions of others to rule us vs. that of Christ, we inadvertently place them as “god” of our lives. This act agitates the boundaries of idolatry. Many times on a regular basis. Early on in my studies of mankind playing-god, I discovered how the self-life is formed. You know the gig – walking after the flesh, instead of walking IN the Spirit.
In Genesis, we discover this principle:
“Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, "Indeed, has God said, 'You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?" The woman said to the serpent, "From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.'" The serpent said to the woman, "You surely will not die! "For God knows that in the day 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 tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.”
(Gen 3:1-7 NASB)
The root deception
was in Satan tempting Eve to “be like God.” If any being knew the secret to getting people to play-god, it was Satan. He also knew that this was not possible unless Eve was detached from the Godhead. This became his motivation & mission. He presented the Truth in such a twisted way that she would evaluate things from an external perspective (
the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes
). As soon as she shifted her focus from BEING the fruit to the fruit, she fell into the likeness of the serpent. I am fairly certain that she immediately felt the separation from God and became overwhelmed with loneliness, which ultimately led to her seeking out Adam for comfort. Misery truly does love company.
Realistically, Satan has one thing going for him.
Each and every time he sets a temptation before us, it is through the modality of “being happy.” Something he is completely void of experience. Out of this deception, fallen mankind began thinking that God would not want His children to be unhappy or uncomfortable. Thus, the root deception is born. With this seed firmly planted, when God’s children suffer from divorce, loss, illness, betrayal of friendships or simple rejection from others, a mindset on the flesh pursues options of depravity. Even though most authentic Christians know the doctrinal error in this stinky-thinking, their happy-flesh drives them forward – committing deeds of the flesh, while hoping their actions will produce happiness and comfort.
Satan finds great pleasure in “God’s children” changing the Lord’s doctrines to match their morbid desires. My guess is nothing could please him more. This deception is what moves a “believer,” or should I say “Christ-follower,” from the absolutes of God’s Truth to relative truth. It is in this that we find the deeper meaning of playing-god, resulting in a mini-god culture.
Beliefs grant us the privilege of making choices that form culture.
Since culture is the formable environment that protects belief, a self-feeding cycle is established for people who set their minds on fleshly ideations. This, of course, macerates the authentic Church from prospering, resulting in the ever so present lukewarm Post-Truth church. While the authentic Church matures the doctrines of releasing Christ from within, the me-me society deludes the absolutes of God’s Word through their self-as-god modalities. Since statistics reveal that the me-me culture is overpowering the authentic Church, both in numbers and beliefs, the Church is doing a slow-fade into church history. Again!
The answers are in the absolutes.
God was quite serious when He said, “
for if you eat from the tree in the middle of the garden, you shall die
.” In my mind, it is likened to saying, “
for if you adopt the beliefs of the Tree of Knowledge, which is in the middle of society, you will die.
Satan remains just as cleaver today as he was in the garden, but with more experience. Here is the reality check of the two trees.
Eve was already in the image of God, but Satan wanted her to be in the graven image of himself. Since Satan’s headquarters is titled the Tree of Knowledge, it reveals two things. First, he is brilliant in knowledge. Second, it is through his own knowledge he will deceive, primarily perpetrated by way of his knowledge of the Holy. In fact, this is the base camp for all that he does.
His deception was and is simple. If he put the emphasis on what God said, with a reverse twist, mankind is apt to cave-in, particularly with self-proclaimed “Christians.” This is exactly what happened to Eve, then Adam, and then for all generations to come. Eve’s identity was already perfect – being formed in the image (identity) of God the Father, Son & Holy Spirit. In the world of modern psychology, we consider Satan’s pivotal move “reverse-psychology.” The Tree of Knowledge was the graven symbol of the image (identity) of Satan. He simply was unable to darken their worldview to form a dark-culture for him to rule until mankind joined his dark place. Through God’s sovereign plan, he was allowed temporary success.
The Tree of Life was the eternal symbol of the image (identity) of God the Father, Son & Holy Spirit. What we have before us is the first war over the identity of the human soul. Since the Tree of Knowledge is based on satanic human logic and wisdom, we then are faced with the issue of self-logic vs. logic, or wisdom, that comes down from above. Check this out:
“Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth. This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy.”
(James 3:13-17)
The clever twist of reverse psychology
that our enemy uses is through what we people-helpers call,
transference
. Satan understands that humans typically won’t come to him directly, nor should they. Since submission to him is essentially accomplished through human choice, his method of manipulation comes by way of setting up logical choices based on his Tree of Knowledge. This is when people openly adopt his graven identity. But here is his clever twist, he makes use of the knowledge of the Holy to create what I call, second hand Christianity. Once people are duped into second hand Christianity, pluralism (mini-gods) is certain to evolve. Remembering, the mountain that contains these mini-god pathways – leads directly to him. He counts on this single deception. The bottom line, he conducts an act of transference, projecting his motives & objectives onto the human soul for a human decision, based on what the people think is self-identified logic. Since the self-life (flesh) is of his domain, he is completely satisfied with secondary credit. Meaning, the human gets the self-life credit for making a demonic decision. How is that for Godological logic?
Once the human is entangled in human logic, the enemy knows it will form (automatically) flesh-patterns within the self-life. When the individual is consumed by the earthly, natural & demonic elements of the self-life, the enemy’s objective in having humans playing-god (idolatry) is complete. The results being, the individual begins the downward spiral of self-deception, thinking not only of being god of their own lives but believing they are truly significant outside of the indwelling Life of Christ.
For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.
(Galatians 6:3)
Each of our decisions
that promote the self-life produces a false sense of “being somebody.” This activates God’s mission of “dying daily.” When people attempt to determine with their own minds as to what is good or evil, Satan is there waiting to give us the fruit of living-death, which always puts God on the outside of the equation. Believe it or not, even hearing the Truth and following what you know is right is playing-god unless it is Christ in the believer doing the doing. There are millions of “Christ-followers” following the rules and principles of Christ but remain deceived as to authentic salvation.
How many times have you
been in a discussion where you pressed someone to live by the standards of God? They disagree with you and you begin forcing God’s opinion onto them. As you might guess, this too is playing-god. If the enemy cannot access God’s children directly, he certainly will benefit by tempting each to force Holiness onto others. Forced Holiness is the Law. The Law arouses sinful passions (Rom. 7:5). As soon as this formulated principle is activated, Satan has his playground. Mandating Holiness is not only playing-god, it also produces idolatry. It literally forces the disciple to submit to the one playing-god vs. submitting to the indwelling Life of Jesus Christ. An authentic discipler should always have the objective of leading others to the indwelling Life of Christ. Not unto themselves.
“Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death. But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter.”
(Romans 7:4-6
)
One of my loudest “wake-up calls” as a minister was depicted within this passage.
Here are the practical details regarding the “root of deception.” Unless Christ in the believer is fulfilling the laws and guidelines of God the Father, ministering to others is pure self-life management. Only the Spirit can bring conviction upon another. Only the Spirit can use the Law as a tutor to lead that person to Truth. Keep in mind that Truth is a person – Jesus. When we attempt to steal the role of the Spirit, we assert ourselves as God, which usually ends in more resistance and debates. Christian debates are the absolute worst form of playing-god known to the Church. Christendom is filled with so-called “Christians” pressing the Truths of God to a people that have no way of determining such Truths as truth. Most true indwelt Christians understand that if the Spirit does not bring understanding to the receiver – they won’t “get it.” By ignoring this principle, most assuredly, we end up debating spiritual forces (Eph. 6:12). One of the key elements of our “root of deception” is the erroneous activity of making use of earthly (knowledge), natural (common-sense) and demonic (satanic influence) wisdom to debate the ideologies of God. This madness only accomplishes Satan fulfilling his objective, playing-god.
Playing-god is nothing short of
expressing our beliefs of what WE believe God means by WHAT He says – through using verbiage & methods that normally signifies the opposite of releasing the mind of Christ. It sounds good, but it has a covert mission of leading the receiver into more self-life beliefs and methods.
If indwelt Christians could see the spirit of the world and comprehend just how debating, arguing their point or belaboring their views, is nothing shy of play-god, we would instantly understand the “why” as to the divided church? Anyone who debates the “powers of darkness” (demons) are either acting as fools or are minimally unsaved.
Releasing the mind of Christ is our absolute solution.
Figuring out the “how” becomes Christ’s activity through abiding in Him, releasing one decision at a time.
