America the Delusional

From sea to shining sea...

Many people in our country are so determined to believe lies they have become delusional. A delusion is a solidly entrenched belief based on falsehood. Their wrong-headed beliefs are in no way subject to change, even in the face of massive evidence to the contrary.

In some extreme cases, delusional thinking can lead to mental illness. Sadly, many people have been indoctrinated by schools, the media, culture, and even some so-called churches to the point of automatically rejecting the truth.

(Please understand I am not talking about people diagnosed by a health professional who, through no fault of their own, suffer from a genuine mental disorder.)

These delusions, displayed by many on the political left, include fear of unavoidable climate catastrophe, belief in critical race theory and assumption of white guilt, safe and effective Covid vaccines, and support for the liberal agenda. Such delusions are characterized by irrational beliefs that defy normal reasoning and will remain in place even when overwhelming proof is presented to dispute them. These delusions can often result in feelings of anger and paranoia, which only act to worsen their spiritual condition.

People can easily become deluded because they want to believe lies. They are gullible because they are willingly blind to the truth. They have no interest in knowing the truth, just as they have no interest in hearing the truth of God. If they ever did begin to seek the truth, there is a chance they’ll discover they have been deceived. They hate the truth, preferring to seek only information that validates their beliefs. Truth has become hate speech to them. Their pride makes it difficult for them to admit they are wrong.

Confirmation bias is the tendency to process information in a way that validates and confirms one’s already existing beliefs. Research has shown that people with confirmation bias tend to actively ignore information that contradicts their long-held opinions. They will choose which websites to read, vigorously ignore viewpoints they don’t support, and immediately shut down communication they don’t want to see or hear. They will seek only input that supports their already existing views, blocking any actual evidence that conflicts with their deeply held opinions. Confirmation bias is often strongest when emotionally charged issues are involved, like politics, religion, or abortion. Confirmation bias thrives in the absence of critical thinking skills.

How else would delusional city, state, and federal officeholders who seem to take pleasure in wickedness get elected?

Critical thinking involves analyzing facts and suppositions to form a reasonable judgment. It is characterized by a skeptical, unbiased evaluation of factual evidence versus opinions and falsehoods.

Critical thinking is rational thinking. A lack of critical and rational thinking skills leaves a person open to being seriously deluded and deceived.

Author Robert A. Heinlein said this about critical thinking back in the 1980s…

“There seems to have been an actual decline in rational thinking. The United States has become a place where entertainers and professional athletes are mistaken for people of importance. They are idolized, and their opinions are sought on almost everything. They take themselves just as seriously… after all, if someone is paid a million a year, their opinions on foreign affairs, morality, and domestic policies must be important too, even though most of them prove themselves to be both ignorant and foolish every time they open their mouths.”

This growing lack of critical thinking skills reduces a population to being easily manipulated by sound bites, headlines, and repetitive messages.

One example of this during the 2020 U.S. presidential election was the constantly repeated sound bite “Orange Man Bad”. These three words were repeated over and over again to instill both fear of, and hatred, for Donald Trump in the minds of voters. It was similar to the repetitive Nazi narratives of the 1930s and 1940s based on fear and hatred of Jews. “Orange Man Bad” was the same manufactured fear and hatred that drove foolish and naive German people to engage in unspeakable evil during World War II, including seizing property, destroying livelihoods, and sending millions of Jews to death camps… All based on a single lie.

The irony is that the Nazis represented a far greater threat to the world than a few million Jews could ever have. They succeeded for a time because they were very good at controlling people with fear, resulting in an irrational hatred of the Jews.

Hatred of truth has caused and continues to cause much suffering in our world… past and present. We are warned over and over again in the Bible about how hatred and bitterness can destroy us. Hate is like a poison that eats one up from the inside out. It can suck the joy out of life, poison one’s soul, make people physically or emotionally sick, and destroy relationships.

Hating the truth long enough can cause one’s conscience to become misinformed and their heart to be hardened. Truth haters will then continue believing lies as a matter of choice. But eventually, God will send them ‘strong delusion’ to ensure they will continue accepting the lies that condemn them.

Just like the hardening of the arteries is a physical illness, the hardening of the heart is a spiritual sickness. Consider the case of Pharaoh found in the Book of Exodus. In the biblical account of the Jew’s exodus from slavery in Egypt, Pharaoh hardened his heart toward the true God because he thought himself a god. As a result of his willful unbelief, God hardened his heart, sending him a deluding influence so that he would not believe what was true despite the evidence of the ten plagues. The same is true today (truth does not change). God will, and does, harden a person’s heart by sending them a strong delusion so that they believe the lies of Satan, which will condemn them.

So, what is the source of all this delusion for so many people these days? God is most likely judging America because of the over 60 million abortions since 1973 and rampant sexual sin... This is not my opinion... We find it in at least two places in Scripture:

24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator... who is forever praised. Amen. 26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. 28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind so that they do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. 32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. (Romans 1:24-32)

“10 and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. 11, For this reason, God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false, 12 in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness.” (2 Thessalonians 2:10-12)