The Adulterous Woman From Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power

Thanks so much for joining me today for a little break at Coffee Hour with Chicklit Power. I know it’s not always easy turning distractions off, but let’s do just that for a few. Grab your coffee and come on in so we can try and put the pieces of “deceived” together in the context of the Pharisees. Something tells me we may wind up recognizing a little bit of ourselves in these accusers.

So the Pharisees accused the officers of being deceived and backed their accusation up by saying no Pharisee has ever believed in Him, and also accusing the crowd – who was full of people beginning to change their hearts and minds about The Christ – saying they were accursed for they did not know the law. Now, these definitions all talk about a straying from something, such as the law, the religious beliefs, et cetera.

So what if we give these knuckleheads the benefit of the doubt by asking ourselves, “Were they just holding to what they believed?” And let’s not get into semantics about how much they lived by the law, or didn’t, themselves. By asking that question, would that give us a different and deeper understanding into the depths of their deception? It stands to reason that because they believed certain things about whom The Christ should/would be and would not be, they expected their peers to believe the same way, and when these officers made the statement, “No man ever spoke like this Man,” that released the accusations.

I can’t help but think about all the clues they had received, and the ones they missed completely. For example, when they jumped to conclusions and insisted He couldn’t be The Christ because He was from Nazareth without doing the research to find out He was born in Bethlehem. Or questioning His birth line and not doing the geneology study to trace His birth line all the way back to David. Why weren’t they able to see that they, not the officers, were the ones that were deceived?

What about in our lives, friends who get enticed away from the church? I see it happen all the time with women who are looking for love and become deceived by love. And what about within the church, those who claim to be in Him, all about Him, and do things that are contrary to Him and/or what He would do? Some even justify with out-of-context scripture bashing. What about the atheist who declares there is no god, let alone God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit? Or the New-Agers who claim there are hundreds of ways to heaven and that the god is mother earth and angels are the primary savior and answer to their problems? Or the homosexual who believes homosexuality was something God detested only in the Old Testament? I can go on and on and on with examples of people who we deem to be deceived but are they deceived just because I say so? Don’t these people in these examples believe that we, the Christian, are also deceived?

What is the common denominator here, Father? Why, oh why, are so many deceived, determined to be fixed on their false foundations, pointing the finger at others, either literally or figuratively? Does deception happen simply by and through standing for what you truly believe or does it involve something else?

I can hear something echoing ever so faintly in my heart . . .

Join me tomorrow for the answer.

Evinda