Episode 2: Sniffing Out Hypocrisy and Deception

More thoughts and a list of ideas

As I was working on today’s episode, I was trying to come up with some ideas for myself to kind of keep in the back of my mind. You know, things that might help me remember makarios.

So here are some of the things that are helping me sniff out lies. As you look through them, please please please please please don’t let them become rules to practice. Also, if you have any other ideas, please let me know.

They aren’t hard or fast rules, and by no means am I the end all be all expert on this.

Ideas for living with discernment and opposing lies:

• Don’t get lazy. No platitude prayers or out of context verses - when you want to know something, know it. Don’t just say something because you heard it somewhere. Do your homework. Spend the time. Actually ask God to show you. Dig.

• Know who Jesus was and what he was actually like. And then when you see something you can ask if it compares to Him and actually ask if it matches His persona.

  • Like how He included women and honored them and went against what the culture of that day was doing in regard to women.

• Be aware of confirmation bias. If it is from the news, there is a very good chance it is biased. There are websites like allsides Media Bias Chart (https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart) They started rating media bias back in 2012, and you can find a list of U.S. political news sources rated according to their biases so that we can “easily identify and consume different perspectives.” Because the truth is – everything is biased but it is hard to know which way is leans sometimes — especially if you live in an echo chamber.

• Don’t try to do God’s thing or be God or keep His promises or let someone else be God or try to let someone else keep a promise that God made. In other words, pray and actually mean it.

And here are some things that I think would help keep us from BEING hypocrites (they all come from James chapter 1 where he wrote about being true to yourself):

• Be quick to listen, slow to speak.

  • I.e. if there’s a political assassination, don’t automatically assume you know who is responsible. Take a beat. Breathe. Even when it’s hard.

  • When the world goes wild and blames the wrong people for said political assassination. Even when it takes everything you have to not react.

• Slow to become angry.

• Righteous life God desires (it doesn’t come from man’s anger)

  • But I assure you, there is such a thing as righteous anger. There is a time.

• Get rid of all moral filth and evil.

• Humility

  • Be searchable. Like an MRI. Willing for God to literally see every part and know all.

  • Humbly accept the word planted in you.

• Keep a tight rein on your tongue.

• Look after orphans and widows.

• Keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Lastly, I promised a link to the the tiny feet story. And so… https://www.hh76.org/additionalmedia/preciousfeethistory.pdf

While we’re at it, here are some links to the research I did on the violence done during 1984 on abortion clinics… https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/000293789190346S

This is an interesting read from November, 1984 that I hadn’t read before recording Episode 2. It has some interesting perspectives from both sides of the issue, including both non-violent and violent protestors as well pro-choice advocates…https://www.nytimes.com/1984/11/05/us/violence-increases-against-abortion-clinics-in-84.html