Father of Lies

I don’t care what anyone tells you, if you read the Bible at all, you’ll find there is a Devil named Satan. The fact that many God-believers think the little red dude with the pitchfork to be fairytale, can’t hold a candle to a good read of Jesus’ teachings. Sure he’s not little, not red, and not pitching a fork, but real, he is. In fact, you can’t really make sense of Jesus’ worldview without this big hairy ex-angel.

When you realize that the name Satan, Devil, Diablo, actually means accuser in the Bible-time languages, things come into focus fast. His full name is accuser of the family. I bring this up, because I know for sure that I have trusted in this accuser’s lame accusations, and never for the better. Yes, and this is how Satan influences you and me.

For sure he can’t literally touch us. He can’t mess with our lives. Really, he’s pretty limited. We can’t see him, hear him or even smell him, so really we’re pretty limited too. The big problem is that Satan can suggest and impress his accusatory lies on our minds and if we trust in them, they will slowly rip us down—not because he can, but because what we think, we become. Satan knows well how our brains work.

Messing With Our Minds

He doesn’t lie to us like in the movies, perched on your shoulder all red with a grin. No, he slips it first person right into your thought highway, and you lob onto it as your own insight and truth. His only way in is to mess with your mind.

The cheap thoughts go something like this. I’m not cute, thin, sweet, young, old, smart, smooth, hip, strong or cool enough. The more sophisticated one’s are a bit harder to spot. I’m not sure this will work out. It’s just too good to be true. I don’t deserve this. What about all the other people in this office? I think this might be slipping through my hands.

Shaped By Our Thoughts

When you drink those little thoughts up like they are reality, the direct result is that you then begin to live that way. We are, when all is said and done, fully shaped by the thoughts or lies we believe. A good way to say this, is that the world we walk in is guided by the world we think in. That means that if I don’t think I am or can, I won’t. It doesn’t matter if Satan can’t touch me; I’m following him around like a shaggy dog on a chain of bogus facts.

What makes matters even worse is that Satan may actually try a little harder. He may have a multi-faceted approach to your demise. While he’s got you feeding on the lie that you can’t, he could be making cue cards for your friends, cue cards that are word for word what he whispers in your head. It is no accident when someone speaks in agreement with the dark words we think and fear.

Father of Lies

It could even get worse than that. Satan might be romancing his lies into the mind of one of your unsuspecting authority figures. People like your parents, teachers, vice-principle or employer. All that has to happen now, is you act a bit like the lie you’ve chewed on—not difficult to pull off—and bam, they spit out those defeating words, and bam, you strike out. You don’t even make it to first.

It’s an outrage. No wonder Jesus warns that Satan is the father of Lies. You and I are loved. We are chosen and children and all that. So what’s going to mix us up and get us off-kilter? A sinister lie that in any way shape or form says we’re not loved and we don’t belong. An insinuative feeling that knows we are kidding ourselves if we think we’re really matter.

“Not Enough”

This is how I know Satan is alive and well. I know because the “you don’t fit” lie is everywhere. Just watch two hours of T.V. and you’ll be well on your way to trusting that lie. Every eight minutes your show is intercepted with commercials. Every commercial has two main themes. You are not enough and you need this to make you be enough. The “this” they’re talking about is usually financially out of range for the average working-class American. It is clear we can’t be enough so we sink a little lower.

Now I know that all those T.V. crews can’t be evil. They’re hard-working union guys who pay their mortgages. But that doesn’t change what is going on in our heads when we watch what they’ve created. I’m sure the makers of those Jaguar commercials can’t be all bad. But when they tell me to be lily white and thin and wear these ridiculous cocktail dresses to be their it girl, I have to wonder, who exactly is feeding them this stuff? Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Clarissa Worley Sproul writes from the Pacific Northwest.

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