sawthelight wrote:
It seems that worldwide Christianity is the supposed religion of truth.
John 8:32 quotes Jesus as saying that "the truth will set you free" which indicates that Christianity is supposed to be the religion of truth.
Does that mean they do not use deception at all whatsoever?
According to 2 Corinthians 4:2, it seems that Christians do not use deception at all:
Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God.
However, that is negated by the fact that Christians in fact
DO USE deception for the cause of their religion:
Finally, a spirit came forward, stood before the Lord and said, ‘I will entice him.’
22 “‘By what means?’ the Lord asked.
“‘I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouths of all his prophets,’ he said.
“‘You will succeed in enticing him,’ said the Lord. ‘Go and do it.’
23 “So now the Lord has put a deceiving spirit in the mouths of all these prophets of yours.
It seems apparent that God
DOES use deception and allows his servants (both spirits and humans) to go around deceiving people as has been the case before.
Is this religion no different from Islam where Muslims endorse Taqiyya (the use of deception)? It seems that a religion that preaches the truth should abide by the truth without falsehood or deception. So how can Christianity be considered the truth if they use deception?
Truth is synonymous with deception?
Are we all being deceived to submit to Christian dogma so we can give the Christians an endless supply of donations in time and money? That is the pay off for the deception, no?
The first passage you point to, which was,
Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God.
This passage can be found in 2 Corn. 4:2, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with, "Christians not using deceit." If you were to go back and read this passage in it's context, you will clearly see that the word "WE" refers to Paul, and Timothy, since they both are the authors of this letter, which you can see by returning to the beginning of the letter when it says,
1. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,
So again, the word "WE" does not refer to Christians, but rather to Paul, and Timothy. This becomes clear when we arrive at verse 5, where it says
2 Corn. 2:5- For we do not preach OURSELVES (Paul and Timothy) but Christ Jesus as Lord, and OURSELVES (Paul and Timothy) as YOUR (the Corinthians) bond-servants for Jesus’ sake.
My point becomes even more clear when we read verse 12.
2 Corn. 4-12-
So death works in us, (Paul and Timothy) but life in you, (Corinthians).
The point is, you have referred to a passage, claiming that it supports the notion that "Christians do not use deception." However, as you can clearly now see, it says nothing whatsoever concerning such a thing. There is a tremendous difference between, the authors claiming that, "Christians do not use deception", and claiming that they themselves, "did not use deception" when they were speaking to the Corinthians.
This is a classic example of someone pulling a passage of Scripture out of it's context and forcing a meaning upon it, that is clearly not there. Or it demonstrates, a lack of actually reading the whole of the context, and simply assuming what must be being communicated, because if one were to read the whole context, what you suggest could not make sense at all!
If there is a passage of Scripture that makes the claim that, "Christians as a whole do not use deception" then I am completely unaware of it. However, if there is, you would need to go find, and use it, as opposed to this one, because as you can see, it makes no such claim.
This is why, if one is going to use Scripture, then one should ensure they use it correctly, so as to save us all, at lot of time and effort.
Now as far as the other passage you refer too from 2 Kings, I am not going to elaborate all that much, other than to say, if you were to actually read the whole context here, you would clearly see, the people who were to receive the lying spirit, had already set their mind to what they wanted to do, and did not want to receive anything that would be said to the contrary. Therefore, God simply turned them over to what they desired.
It is not much different to what I did to my own son, a couple of years ago. He was insistent on buying a certain car, and wanted, (or rather needed) my blessing. I warned him against it, but he continued. Therefore, I turned him over to his desire, being certain he would regret it.
All of the above is the sort of thing that continues to convince me that, many of those who are opposed to Christianity, were at one time Christians themselves, but they have no idea how to read the content of the Bible. This causes them to completely misunderstand the content of the Bible, and to reject things according to this misunderstanding, as clearly demonstrated above!