Some Bibles have little headings at the start of a chapter. My heading for this chapter would be:

If ya can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. 🤷‍♂️

Or – Israel falls for a psy-op. 🥸

Psy-op is short for “psychological operation.” It’s a military term for a tactic whereby you mentally manipulate your adversary to favor your purpose.

Let’s see if we can break this down so we can learn from Israel’s mistake.

When the thing you’ve been told to drive out and destroy is trying to trick you into letting it stay, here’s what it might look like:

1. BELIEVABLE ☑️

You gotta hand it to the Gibeonites, they had nothing to lose so they took a longshot coming up with their story complete with theatrical props. They had the evidence prepared to prove their claims.

The flesh and the forces of Evil aren’t going to look like something bad. That’s way too obvious. The arguments to support the claims will appear valid. Lies will absolutely appear to be the truth. Go ahead – examine the worn out shoes and the crusty bread. It’s real! You will not be able to tell that it’s a trick by just looking at the evidence.

2. EMOTIONAL 🥹

The Gibeonites played to Israel’s pride and compassion.

🤩 Gibeonites: “We’ve heard about you! You’re famous! Your God is famous! We’re not a threat to you great, amazing, awesome, powerful people. We are just lowly servants and we live so far away from you we won’t ever be a problem. We just wanted to make a covenant with such amazing champions. Maybe some of your might and greatness will rub off on us lowly servants. I mean look how poor and pathetic we are.”

Could ya possibly slather any more butter on that bread? 🙄🧈🍞

The trend in education today is “social-emotional learning.” Now, I’m all for little humans learning to handle their emotions in a healthy way and get along with others, but there is a danger of teaching children: “Don’t think with your head, feel with your heart.”

Here is an excellent podcast interview about social-emotional learning (SEL) and its potential dangers. (This is a controversial topic. If you are a teacher or have a child in school, I encourage you to watch this with an open mind. Pop it open then save it to “watch later” if you can’t right now.)

Marketers and advertisers are masters at emotional manipulation. Sob stories and passionate calls to take up this or that cause abound in our society. Be wary of things that get you whipped up into an emotional fervor. Frightened and angry people are easy to manipulate. But so are people whose compassion is not checked by discernment.

3. SIMPLE 😌

A deception will not look like a deception. People who are deceived have no idea. That’s what makes it so dangerous.

“So the men took some of their provisions, but did not ask counsel from the Lord.”
‭‭Joshua‬ ‭9‬:‭14‬ ‭ESV‬‬

The choice for Israel’s leaders seemed like a no-brainer. “Why should I pray about this little decision? It’s not so complicated that I need to ask the Lord for help. I got this.”

Well…

People who get scammed have no idea they’re getting scammed, otherwise scamming wouldn’t work. And if you are being scammed by Satan, you won’t have a clue either. Unless…

HOW DO YOU AVOID BEING PSY-OP’D?

SPIRITUAL DISCERNMENT.

The first step in developing spiritual discernment is to be a born-of-the-Spirit, spiritual person.

“Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, in order that we may know the things freely given to us by God, things which we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual things to spiritual people. But the natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he is not able to understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. Now the spiritual person discerns all things, but he himself is judged by no one.”
‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭2‬:‭12‬-‭15‬ ‭LEB‬‬

The “natural man” – mere human intellect and sensory awareness – cannot receive the wisdom and words of the Holy Spirit. They do not make sense from a strictly human perspective.

Like – how does it make a lick of sense that you can march around a city and blow trumpets and shout and the walls (that are so thick there are houses inside them), will just fall down?

How does it make any (human) sense that believing and trusting what Jesus did on the cross is enough to bring your dead body out of the grave?

To the world, it’s ridiculous. But the Kingdom of Heaven has its own logic that the unregenerate cannot process.

I could keep you here all day with stories of times that I encountered something – a person, a ministry, an organization, or even a place or an object – that didn’t feel right in my spirit; only to find out later (sometimes years later) that there was something sinful or demonic or otherwise evil going on behind the scenes. There is NO WAY I could’ve known that based on observation and popular opinion alone. Knowing something without knowing how you know it might be what the Apostle Paul called the “word of knowledge” in 1 Corinthians 12:8.

There have been times that I was the odd duck out. 🦆 Everyone was raving about some popular Christian author, speaker, ministry, or artist and I just couldn’t get excited about it and wouldn’t get on board. Then we all find out later there was corruption and sin in that ministry.

Some of y’all know exactly what I’m talkin’ about and you have plenty of stories too.

If you’re gonna follow Jesus, you might as well go ahead and embrace being unpopular. Real saints are peculiar people. We’re a bunch of odd ducks. 🦆🦆🦆🦆

Lacy’s blog Christian T-shirts:

1. Just a regular Christian.
2. Odd Duck (maybe I could make a deal with Duck Commander to use their camo) 🤔😆

Another gift listed in 1 Corinthians 12 is the “Discerning of spirits.” The Holy Spirit gives this as a supernatural gifting. This isn’t “women’s intuition” or “emotional sensitivity” or “gut instinct” any other natural proclivity that a human can have. If it was, you wouldn’t need the Holy Spirit to give it. Spiritual gifts are spiritual, not natural. And Paul tells the Corinthians that they should “earnestly desire the greater gifts,” implying that the Christian may ask the Lord for gifts. And when He gives you even the smallest thing, use it for His glory and be faithful in it and He will entrust you with more.

The epistle of Hebrews challenges believers to grow to full maturity because the spiritually mature have developed discernment.

SIDE NOTE…

Y’all, I guess I’m on the wrong side of 40 because every once in a while I get flyers in the mail trying to get me to enroll in a program for “mature Americans.” 🙄

Now, I like to think of myself as being slightly more mature than the average middle-schooler going around disguised as an adult, but I’m hardly ready for silver sneakers yet. Maturity is more about behavior than age.

Just felt the need to clarify.

Back to Hebrews…

“For someone who lives on milk is still an infant and doesn’t know how to do what is right. Solid food is for those who are mature, who through training have the skill to recognize the difference between right and wrong.” Hebrews‬ ‭5‬:‭13‬-‭14‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Part of developing spiritual discernment is regular training to develop the skill of making accurate judgments between good and evil. This training is compared to chewing meat.

Milk does not have to be chewed. You just swallow it.

The leaders of Israel totally swallowed the lie from the Gibeonites. They didn’t chew on it at all.

Did you know that most of our common digestive woes – heartburn, bloating, indigestion, overeating, etc can be fixed jsut by chewing properly? Here’s an ARTICLE on that which you may find helpful. Or convicting. 😬

Recognizing the difference between right and wrong is part of discernment. And it’s a skill that we can prayerfully develop.

Let’s all try to slow down a bit. Pray for discernment. I think it requires humility and a lack of personal agenda. If I have something to prove or defend it will skew my perception. We tend to see what we want to see when self is involved.

We desperately need discernment in this age of psy-ops and propaganda. Let’s not be hasty to take sides or come into agreements with things we haven’t properly vetted and (most importantly) brought to the Lord for counsel.

Two books I highly recommend if you want to understand the psyop/propaganda world we live in:

1. Propaganda
   • This one is the granddaddy. It was the guide for much of the statecraft and “news” of the 20th century. When you read it you’ll understand where commercials and ads came from. But, more importantly, you’ll understand how a government or group can control the thinking of an entire nation without the nation’s knowledge or consent.
2. Color, Communism, and Common Sense
   • This was written by a black man who was drawn into socialism and communism for a time. He explains the playbook for communist revolutions. When you’ve read it, the headlines make way more sense.

I think they should be required reading. Be on guard, friend. Don’t just assume that what you see is all there is to something. Don’t just look at the crusty bread and dried up wine skins and think, “Yup. That’s legit.” Inquire of the Lord. He knows what’s really going on and no amount of theatrics can fool him.

Go forth and be an odd duck today. 🦆