Deception Projection (and Protection!)

This very narrow, very specific aspect of Bible memorization will no doubt differ from person to person but I’ve found it to be most effective to do so while watching or listening to something in the background (mainly news-focused shows or live events for reasons I’ll discuss in the future), so for today’s Bible memory session I was watching a (wacky) trial being televised from Florida.

Most of the commentators and commenters kept saying how “long” and “boring” and “brutal” the day had been, but frankly I found it “fascinating factor six”, to paraphrase Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary.

Specifically, it was fascinating to watch the murder conspiracy defendant take the witness stand.  Always high drama and tension when that happens, producing not only great TV but also probably the pinnacle of sociological observation fests.

This particular instance was even better than most in that “everyone and his brother” knows the defendant is guilty since the evidence previously put on by the prosecutors was, well, overwhelming.  And yet the fellow concocted an obviously reverse-engineered “story” which “just happened” to “answer” or “explain” (in intricate, all-encompassing detail) every single damaging piece of evidence against him.  I literally can’t recall a time that it was more obvious that someone was lying through their teeth.  And it didn’t help that his entire testimony was totally scripted  by him and his attorney and delivered accordingly in front of the jury.

I hope he reads Revelation 21:15 ASAP, before it’s too late… lying is a low-down, terrible, horrific thing.  Yet as I’m sure you’ve noticed, it has become more and more rampant in society over the past decade or two in particular.  Yes, it has always been with us, literally, since the Garden of Eden… but not to this extent, never so widespread.

And blatant.

And, in the vast majority of cases, obvious.

But not to those who do the lying.  It’s crystal clear that they first deceive themselves and then, like clockwork, try to deceive others. In other words, they project their own deception and “gullibility” onto other people, onto the public writ large.

Another stunning example of this is an unrelated murder case working its way through the courts, also from Florida, wherein a woman is awaiting trial for killing her boyfriend by (wait for it) zipping him up in a suitcase and letting him suffocate overnight and then staging the whole scene and story she’d soon be telling two detectives.  (AGE-APPROPRIATE/TRIGGER warning:  please don’t allow children or subject-sensitive people to watch the video of that interrogation but if you’d like to see exactly what I’m talking about, in action, you may click here.)  Another case in which a person is O-B-V-I-O-U-S-L-Y lying through the teeth yet, due to “deception projection”, doesn’t realize how see-through it is to other people.

Far too high a percentage of people have become like toddlers playing “peekaboo”, who cover their own eyes and thus think that because they can’t see other people then other people can’t see them.

But you know what was even far more concerning, far more of a societal “red flag” today than seeing that defendant lie, and so obviously, yet still try to convince the jury that he wasn’t?  It was the fact that, when the host who was live-streaming the trial asked the audience to note in the comments section if they believed “even HALF” of what the defendant was saying, a (frighteningly) large number responded that they believed him and swallowed his constant lies not just in part but in whole.  Making me wonder if his ploy will work and produce a mistrial by hung jury.  (We’ll find out in the next few days.)

It breaks my heart and saws my spirit to see how undiscerning  so many in society sadly have become.  But thankfully I and many others have found the perfect solution, an amazing antidote:  the Bible!  And especially Bible memory, i.e., ingesting and internalizing the Bible which is not only “living and active/powerful” (Hebrews 4:12) but also the epitome and indeed very essence of truth (John 17:17).

May we always be careful to tell the truth ourselves, and also be discerning when others don’t.

And may we never, ever, even for a moment, lose sight of what a true treasure we have in the Bible!  It is indeed “a lamp unto [our] feet, and a light unto [our] path.” (Psalm 119:105)

 

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