I’ve heard stories of Mennonite old timers who would walk into a dealership, ask them to give their best price and then refuse to engage in any haggling beyond that. To them this concrete style of communication is commanded by Jesus and something I can respect. Their word was their bond. They did not play all the games. Business that is honest and done with a handshake.

What a pleasant and simple world it would be if everyone operated this way. No need for lawyers to read the fine print if everyone were an honest broker like this. But we do not live in that world. And there are those who love to exploit the trust of those born into Anabaptist religious cloisters. Every few years there’s another fraudster who sweeps through Amish and Mennonite country, selling the next big ‘investment’ and wiping out the hard earned savings of the unsuspecting—which is not to even mention those small scale “natural healing” swindles or grift seminars.

This is why healthy skepticism is necessary and discernment of character is a skill that must be learned. Born into one of these communities, I’m still far too trusting—most especially if someone starts to speak my language. “Oh, he stands up for the working class! They’re the defenders of freedom and democracy!” We fall for those who exploit us, who manufacture consent by various means, who claim to be like us and yet lack our Christian conscience. We are most susceptible to those who mimic our values as part of their deception.

Being a good or moral person can lead to being extra vulnerable. Some just lack the imagination for evil, which is wonderful innocence, but this is not optimal. Wisdom requires that we are able to read through a sales pitch and understand how propaganda works. A skilled liar plays on what you want to hear, they exploit the prejudices and preconceived ideas of any audience.  We need to be a step ahead of their schemes—which requires a little pattern recognition or small consideration of what may be hidden behind their words.

Letting Your Yea Be Yes, Nay Be Nay

Growing up, going to a public school, there was always that “I swear on my grandma’s grave” kid. Cued by your incredulous face, he would attempt to fortify his most questionable claims with this invocation of something else trustworthy.  And the whole reason for this is that their own word wasn’t good enough. And this swearing act itself would arouse my suspicions. If I can’t trust you in a small inconsequential claim—how could I ever trust your oath?

Obviously this was theatrics in Secondary school, but a manner of speech that Jesus targeted for rebuke:

Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.’ But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.

(Matthew 5:33-37 NIV)

This is repeated in James 5:12 a bit more succinctly:

Above all, my brothers and sisters, do not swear—not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. All you need to say is a simple “Yes” or “No.” Otherwise you will be condemned.

Credibility is something built over time and lost in an instant. Swearing an oath won’t fix a loss of trust. But it does basically admit that your own word is not sufficient and this suggests a deeper problem. An oath is useful in a courtroom, where it is used as a dividing line between speech that is free and misleading words you can be prosecuted for—yet what Jesus says is part of a broader push in the direction of plain and honest speech. As St Paul instructs:

Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.

(Ephesians 4:25 NIV)

Practice truthfulness.

Humanity is one team, one body, so deception is a sin against all members.

The Bible is also full of examples of the opposite of this:

Those who flatter their neighbors are spreading nets for their feet.

(Proverbs 29:5 NIV)

Everyone lies to their neighbor; they flatter with their lips but harbor deception in their hearts. May the Lord silence all flattering lips and every boastful tongue.

(Psalm 12:2-3 NIV)

Not a word from their mouth can be trusted; their heart is filled with malice. Their throat is an open grave; with their tongues they tell lies [or flatter].

(Psalm 5:9 NIV)

My companion attacks his friends; he violates his covenant. His talk is smooth as butter, yet war is in his heart; his words are more soothing than oil, yet they are drawn swords.

(Psalms 55:20-21 NIV)

In all of these cases you have those who appear to be our friends and use flowery and agreeable speech to ensnare. We naturally suspect those who aren’t like us, who say the stuff we don’t like, but we trust those who speak our native tongue and seem to share our cultural values. That’s our blind side and vulnerability. A guy shows up in a nice suit, well-groomed, and we’ll just take him as credible. We’re susceptible to those who dress up their deception in the familiar—or who feed our prejudices.

Those Who Dress To Deceive

The Bible mentions flattery, a Trojan horse and the way some use to lower our guard, but the Gospel warns about this:

Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.

(Matthew 7:15 NIV)

Looks can be deceiving.

For there are many rebellious people, full of meaningless talk and deception, especially those of the circumcision group. They must be silenced, because they are disrupting whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach—and that for the sake of dishonest gain. One of Crete’s own prophets has said it: “Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.” This saying is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, so that they will be sound in the faith and will pay no attention to Jewish myths or to the merely human commands of those who reject the truth. To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted. They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.

(Titus 1:10-16 NIV)

If it were easy to cut through the crap then there would be very little chance of anyone ever being deceived. But the worst enemies of Christ weren’t those who had openly hunted and tried to kill his followers. You knew to avoid them. It’s those who entered the church to subvert and undermine.

St Paul calls out those of the “circumcised group” and who have actions that deny the relationship they claim to have with God. Today we deal with something insidious, now embedded into several generations through propaganda and established prejudice.  We can’t see it because it hides within us, carries a familiar last name or claims to have devotion to the same values.

Many now believe it is okay to kill babies for an ethno-state.  They go to church on Sunday never realizing that they have departed from Christ:

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’

(Matthew 7:21-23 NIV)

Those who have yoked together with those who Jesus said are “of their father the devil” (John 8:44) are as doomed to hell as an unbeliever. The Covenant with Abraham was tied to sharing his faith and righteousness.  Likewise, you are not of Christ unless you obey his will no matter how “born again” you feel or how flowery you pray in front of the crowd. Enabling evil is just evil. Jesus called out the fakes who hid behind their mask of devotion and his earliest followers did the same. Stephen “cut them to the heart” challenging the Jewish leaders with a flurry of accusations—they killed him for telling the truth:

You have taken up the tabernacle of Molek and the star of your god Rephan, the idols you made to worship.  Therefore I will send you into exile’ beyond Babylon. (Acts 7:43 NIV)

Harmless as Doves, Yet…

The simple and honest are especially vulnerable to the cunning and crafty.  And it’s not always a matter of intelligence. It is about trust. It is about being a part of the same civilizational project. 

Some places you can leave front doors unlocked and not worry about being robbed.  Everyone is bought into the same moral code or same social contract, and thus respects the property and the rights of others who are partners in the overall work.  And the doors of our civilization are wide open—not turning people away is a wonderful Christian value and good.

However, this value also means many let their guard down around imposters who pretend to be like us and yet work to subvert, supplant, enslave or destroy what we’ve built.  They are a “snake in the grass” slithering, waiting for the moment of weakness to strike.  They’re the wolves who will accuse the sheepdog of being a bigger threat to the sheep while they plot to devour the flock.

Yes, an impulse towards being charitable is great, but also we need to be wary of those who do not share the same civilizational bond or social contract—this is what Jesus said:

I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.

(Matthew 10:16 NIV)

There was this horrible story about a young man opening the door to two men who were dressed like UPS delivery drivers and ended up paying with his life. The fake employees pushed into the residence, with two others who had hidden around the corner, and they murdered the young man and two women in the home—all of this happening in front of two children under the age of five.

We trust based on appearance. If the men in the story above had been dressed like a couple hoodlums nobody would open that door. There’s little chance of a very foreign looking religion or culture slipping into our communities unnoticed. But when we see something familiar or someone speaking in a way to convince us they’re on our side we do not take precautions. We let them in without considering that they could have values completely different despite their surface level disguise.

Whether the Trojan horse gift or that bright beautiful serpent in the garden—it is the job of the discerning person to sound the alarm and protect their own community or home from evil schemes. You need to be able to think like the schemers do to anticipate the deception. The first thing the wolves do is attack and try to silence the voices of those who identify them as being a threat. They will always come after the watch dog first before devouring the sheep.

Fool Me Once Shame On You

Zionism had slipped into my former Mennonite church through Evangelicalism. The church was founded near the same time a state called Israel was founded with a brutal and cruel expulsion of indigenous people. But we celebrated plucky little Israel, as if they came about by a miracle rather than being a result of a campaign of terrorism or military means. For whatever reason Palestinians didn’t matter, as just another group of backwards Arabs, and I’m guessing this is *still* the majority opinion as far as fundamentalist part of the sect I was born in. It’s just part of a disconnect between the love they profess on Sunday and the politics they accept the rest of the week.

Even if the state of Israel is a part of God’s plan does not mean we should be the cheerleaders for genocide or the justifiers of abuse of others. The “I didn’t vote for Trump to be a pastor” crowd seems to be too happy with the totally merciless treatment of the native population—including their innocent children. Apparently God’s chosen are just to be exempted from Christian ethics and can just kill as they please.

It defies every message on grace and mercy ever shared from a church pulpits. We let a wolf into the church and it has devoured our humanity in the name of a worldly kingdom.

Unfortunately Zionist ideology, their sensational end times fantasy, has caused many to abandon the cause of Christ. The old serpent has slipped through the church doors decades ago and is now preaching from many pulpits. He infiltrates the ranks, pretends to share our values as he subtly undermines them, and soon what is up is down is up—with the ‘faithful’ defending a Sodomizing pedo protecting baby killing cult of elites and calling good old fashioned conservative American values.

The worst part is when even to question the official narrative, put out by those who lied wmv will lie again, is twisted into being an ‘evil’ worse than any other. They don’t seem to get that good institutions can be hijacked or that Jesus most certainly did insult those who held positions of authority and he did it by calling them out to their faces. This idea that we must shrink away from challenging the mask of righteousness worn to fool the masses is just flat out wrong. We must call out what the New Testament writers call the synagogue of Satan:

I know about the slander of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.

(Revelation 2:9 NIV)

In the end, we either are what we say we are or we’re not. That’s what yay be yay is truly about. James warns against being double-minded, about showing favoritism, and the New Testament is full of statements which emphasize no difference between Jew and Gentile in Christ. Israel isn’t a blessing nor is it protected by the hand of God. No, they are simply willing to do the treacherous and nasty things that are completely antithetical to the teachings of Jesus Christ. We need to be wiser understanding that some will lie to gain our money or support.