More frequently than ever I hear people saying out loud, “I don’t know who to trust anymore.” People don’t know if conspiracy theories are becoming realities, or if we are shadow boxing with our most magnificent fears.

Personally, I have been growing more concerned with the outright deception by our mainstream sources of information; the competing war to control narratives; the blatant distortion of facts to weaponize arguments; the silencing of opponents through character assassination and intimidation; the abuse of science’s authority for selfish gain; the use of any means necessary to clutch the wheel-of-power; the reporting of slander, deceit, and propaganda; and the closing of our public’s ears to anything that doesn’t affirm our own biases. This is not a political problem; this is a moral catastrophe, and one that every person should be concerned about.

The serpent misdirected Eve into believing a lie—and that lie being the greatest lie—that we could each create our own truth. ‘You can decide for yourself what is good and evil in your life.’ That is the sinister cloud-bank fogging over the confused minds of our nation today. We are co-opting surrogate facts to justify our own prejudices.

There is nothing left to a people that no longer honors freedom of speech and integrity of truth. The very ground we stand on, is sinking into the abyss of postmodernity. This should have been expected. We are only continuing to pull rotten fruit off of the tree that we’ve grown in America. If we teach that every man and woman is their own author of moral and objective reality then we will harvest disintegration, anarchy, and ensuing wars over whose version of truth will prevail. When every man becomes his own judge and constitution, then every man becomes the sole defender of his personal sensitivities. This is a recipe for tribal warfare, not national trust.

In our culture, ‘right’-eousness no longer makes right. Whoever can control the majority ‘makes right.’ Justice no longer wags the tail; popular opinion wags the tail. And the crowd’s flavor-of-the-month opinion is to burn down any opinion they find uncomfortable listening to. Beware, for the day they burn books is followed by a day they burn bodies. There are so many historical precedents it’s hardly worth mentioning the great revolutionary purges from the right and from the left: Nazism and the Socialist Red Terror; the ISIS purge and the Venezuelan conflagration. That is the depth of this burgeoning depravity among our own people. Our culture has a moral problem that is manifesting in enormous social contractions. There’s hardly even lipstick left to conceal the pig. It’s just the hideous filthy pig-of-power rolling over top of the people.

This is a moral problem first. The Information Age has simply given a megaphone to the war between the spirit of deceitfulness and the Spirit of Truthfulness (1 John 4:6). Both are reaching their reproduction stage before the final harvest.

This moral problem is manifesting in social and political realities. For that reason, I wanted to give a few thoughts to help us identify deception in our culture so we can continue to stand against it’s evils. When you are faced with conflicting narratives, it’s not always clear who’s the snake and who’s the truth teller.

For starters, snakes usually tell you what you want to hear, or what they want you to hear. Usually the last thing the snake wants is the harsh light of complete transparency, facts, and open inquiry. If the snake can’t stop the truth, it’ll twist it, augment it, drown it out, declare it hateful, etc. So if you smell a number of these symptoms then chances are good you’re smelling snake breath.

Snake Breath
1. Hide the Truth behind veils of non-transparency so that people can’t apprehend the Truth for themselves.

2. Control the Truth. Shut down information. Ban speakers. Boycott events. Burn books. Make the free discourse and the development of opinions illegitimate and illegal.

3. Curate the Truth. The Truth is dangerous. Only specialists and trusted sources should handle the Truth for you. The Truth needs a filter, it’s too big and too difficult for the common person to understand.

4. Change the Truth. Deceive people with fictitious figures and stories that don’t exist.

5. Add to the Truth by confusing people through alternative narratives, additional opinions, deceptive conclusions, and supplemental facts that serve an agenda.

6. Subtract from the Truth by excluding facts inconvenient to the agenda and steering people away from conclusions alternative to the preferred narrative.

7. Radicalize the Truth by labeling it hateful and making it isolating to believe in it.

8. Assassinate the character of the people who give alternative opinions so that the public no longer finds them as a trustworthy source.

9. Intimidate people who believe in the truth. Make it socially or physically dangerous to stand up for the truth.

10. Divert people’s attention from the Truth. Keeps the public looking at distractions, while the event of importance is being concealed from view—the magicians slight of hand.

11. Undermine the Truth by affirming it out of one side of your mouth and then sabotaging it with your actions. 

Spiritual Thoughts
Here are some additional thoughts from the Apostle John’s letter in the Scriptures. These are much more spiritualized and philosophic than the previous list of practical indicators.

1. “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.” 1 John 1:5 (see also 1 John 3:5)

Premise #1. God is perfect in truth. (and is the source of all scientific and moral truth in the world.)

2. “I do not write to you because you do not know the truth but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth.” 1 John 2:21

Premise #2. God’s truth is perfect and does not lie. (If something is misleading it is not God’s truth.)

3. “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” 1 John 1:8

Premise #3. No one lives perfectly in God’s truth.

4. “This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood…(whoever knows and affirms God’s truths.)” 1 John 4:6

Premise #4. God’s truth is the standard by which we discern truth from falsehood.

5. “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God.” 1 John 4:16 (see also 1 John 4:7-10)

Premise #5. The source of God’s truth is His Love, as demonstrated and defined in Him.

6. “Whoever loves his brother lives in the light (of truth)…but whoever hates his brother is in the darkness…the darkness has blinded him.” 1 John 2:10-11.

Premise #6. Living outside of truth leads to confusion about what is love and what is truth.

7. “The man who says, ‘I know him,’ but does not do what he commands is a liar and the truth is not in him.” 1 John 2:4 (see also 1 John 3:9, 23; 1 John 4:21; 1 John 5:3)

Premise #7. In order to be truthful, mankind is bound to affirm and adhere to God’s truth and love.

8. “Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ…no one who denies the Son has the Father.” 1 John 2:22-23; (see also 1 John 4:2-3; 1 John 5:10-11)

Premise #8. In Jesus we perceive God’s perfect love and perfect truth.

Summary of 1 John 
There is an objective source of truth in the world and that source is God. He has defined and demonstrated perfect love and perfect truth in His own son Jesus who came and sacrificed his life for ours. We can only know God and God’s truth by affirming His truths given to us, and practicing His Love demonstrated for us.

Final Conclusion:

There is a great spiritual and ideological battle for our nation. The antidote is spiritual. But there are very real political implications to this spiritual warfare. These are the times to be alert and engaged. We are fighting spiritual and ideological battles with the tenacity of a lion, but we are loving people with the gentleness of a lamb.

Tags: truth, deceit, deception, lies, snake, agenda, conspiracy theories