The Answer is Yes. It is often both a truth and a trick. Our enemy the devil, loves to take a truth and then twist it so that we fall for it. This is a trick. This becomes a snare for us when we believe it and act on it. The very first Truth and trick happened in the Garden of Eden. We are given the story in Gen.3 .. We are all familiar with the story. What we tend to forget is that that same scenario is being played out over and over in our times and in each of our lives.
I will highlight some of these tricks as they have appeared and continue to appear in my life. Satan is the master deceiver. His delight is in deceiving and then permanently enslaving those he has tricked. Deceit has an element of truth in it and scripture is often quoted. However it is not the Whole truth and nothing but the truth. This truth is usually brought through someone or a source we have some confidence in. Sometimes I twist the truth myself in order to justify my actions.
And how does the enslavement happen.? Sometimes it is physical through drugs, addictions, culture, pride, trauma, law, guilt, my relational maturity level, or perhaps I have built my whole life style around the trick …. Satan will pretty much use anything that he knows I am susceptible to and that he can use as a trap for me.
In Trick or Truth 3 we are going to look at a tricky trick to keep me in the evil one’s trap: It goes like this: “Someone (you or I) have failed and have fallen out of grace. Perhaps sins have repeated. Therefore, one of us is no longer eligible to continue or even be in relationship. Therefore there is no possibility of reconciliation..” The unspoken word here is condemnation. The unseen condition is RM or relational maturity.
Now, it is true that relational separation is one of the most painful emotional pains that I can experience. If I am at a child level of maturity, I may be in a state of overwhelm and am not able to “get over” the pain. I will choose fight or flight to attempt to get past the pain. However, if I continue to mature, I will learn the skill of returning to joy (a place of being glad to be with you) again. And that doesn’t happen overnight. So, Satan likes to trap us in that state of overwhelm and uses my immaturity to do so. Here it is very interesting to note that it is not a sin to be immature. However I can suffer much and cause others to suffer because I am immature.
How to mature is discussed on this site.