What is it about humans which causes them to resist truth, and reject correct thinking processes? God designed a primary and logical pathway for thinking which involves the various logical components of the soul advising the soul's Heart, which forms conclusions and decisions then sends out expressions from the soul. Recall that the Heart is not the Emotion as is often erroneously stated, but rather the thinking engine of the soul which interfaces with the outside world and with God. The logical advisors to the Heart are the Mind, Conscience, Memory, and for the believer it also includes the human spirit which processes and stores spiritual information. God is the source of logic, and He has given it to humans as a gift. But there is a lifelong battle in the soul of each person over which advisors the Heart will listen to when making decisions, whether it will be the logical advisors or the Sinful Nature backed by an out-of-control Emotion, which are an illogical duo. The logical advisors are normally aligned in opposition to the Sinful Nature, with its sinful tendencies and lust patterns, which seeks to gain the upper hand as an illicit advisor to the Heart.
The issue of truth rejection or acceptance plays a major role in human thoughts and beliefs. While there can be many reasons for occasionally rejecting truth, there are two overarching factors which cause persistent truth rejection, namely, existing core beliefs which do not align with truth, and distortions in the thinking processes. When a person has distorted existing core beliefs, new thoughts and beliefs which oppose them are difficult to accept unless existing beliefs are first rejected or set aside. People therefore will reject truth and reality mostly because they have previously formed core beliefs based on falsehoods which are the antithesis of truth, and once they become firmly established are hard to change. And it is the core beliefs which are most important among all beliefs since they determine what will be accepted as true in the future, since a comparison is made with existing beliefs, and especially core beliefs, when new information is being considered. Core beliefs strongly influence how a person views the world, spiritual issues, other people, and so on. Therefore changing incorrect core beliefs often takes a personal crisis or disaster. As previously noted, beliefs are powerful things. The second main factor which affects truth acceptance is distortion of the thinking processes. We have discussed how the Sinful Nature is the primary culprit here. Internal soul distortions make it difficult for a person to think clearly, especially since arrogance and emotion become involved when there are strong soul distortions generated by the Sinful Nature. Attempts to convey reality and truth to such a person will be met with resistance due to their inability to think clearly and rationally. We will expand further on this issue over the next several chapters, and also look at the mechanisms people use to deflect and avoid truth and reality.
When people allow their Emotion to join the Sinful Nature in a revolt against the soul's Heart, alternate pathways in the soul are formed which by-pass the logical advisors as the source of logic and truth. This usually starts slowly and builds over time. Under such conditions the Heart's ability to come to logical conclusions become degraded due to overwhelming influence from the Emotion and the Sinful Nature, so the expressions of the soul increasingly come from the Sinful Nature-Emotion alliance instead of from the Heart and Mind. One result is arrogance, which is the biggest blinder of people. It is a destructive sinful attitude which is a direct product of the Sinful Nature-Emotion alliance. And Satan's Cosmic System constantly promotes distortions and lies, feeding this alliance. The result is rejection of truth in favor of Cosmic System lies, and the longer this continues, the more locked-in it becomes so that the person eventually lives in a state of unreality.
There are many lesser reasons such as misunderstandings and indifference, but our discussion relates to persistent and intentional refusal to accept that which is true. And our definition of truth for this discussion is both that which is fundamentally and clearly true or reality in a general sense, and also truth from the Word of God. Of course we recognize there are gray areas, but that is not a matter of truth and reality vs. lies and unreality, which is what we are discussing here. We do not live in a perfect world, but there is truth, and there is reality.
Humans have many forms of ideology which oppose truth. Secular higher order beliefs have grown dramatically during the past few decades. Many believe their politics, social beliefs, or cause are the highest form of human enlightenment of thoughts and beliefs, although they may have no basis in truth for those beliefs when they oppose truth and reality. Such people look down on Christians for believing in God and believing in what the Bible reveals. To them, they have evolved way beyond the need for God. They either deny God or say He cannot impose rules on them. They believe in themselves as a god who can control their own destiny. When an ideology is accepted it is powerful and persistent in its drive toward the goals of that belief system. Good or bad, moral or immoral, constructive or destructive, ideology will drive behavior in compelling ways. But attempting to avoid God has never been a strategy for long term happiness. That is because alternate beliefs which deny or avoid truth and reality cannot make sense of one's life, or understand what God has designed.
The involvement of Emotion along with strong lusts yields an arrogance of life which can make a person believe anything, especially about themselves. Arrogance is the biggest blinder of people, and it is a product of the Sinful Nature-Emotion alliance. Look at Satan, who told himself he could "be like the most high God" and really believed it, and tried to overthrow God. Put into perspective the human politicians, economists, social reformers, and endless lines of arrogant self-important people promoting causes in opposition to actual truth, and you can see that when it comes to combining the Sinful Nature with Emotion, anything and everything in the realm of beliefs, no matter how outrageous, becomes possible. And lies from such people are more likely to be accepted as true by the masses of people than the Bible. But why? Once again, combining the distortions of the Sinful Nature with the non-thinking Emotion will inevitably lead to the inability to accept the truth of either reality or God's Word due to the blinding effects of arrogance. And when truth and reality are rejected, all that remains is varying forms of untruth and lies. Unreality and lies will be accepted as true by someone, somewhere, and often by a lot of people everywhere. Again, just take a look around at the state of the world. When a maximum number of people in a society reject truth, all that is left for them to believe is the lies.
More recently a new form of thought and beliefs has emerged which has spread like wildfire, and is based on building up self as having a more "progressive" form of beliefs, then showing hated for those seen as lesser humans for holding to traditional beliefs. People who see themselves as advanced humans due to progressiveness of their thoughts and beliefs hate the non-progressives. Then super-progressed people hate those who have only semi-progressed in beliefs. And on it goes. Such people view themselves as thinking higher order thoughts and having higher order beliefs, but they actually engage in a very ancient practice of low level, and often criminal, thoughts and beliefs. This practice started with the fall of Satan and his demons, who set themselves up in opposition to the truth based on Satan's lie. The lie is how Satan got his start, as he is called "a liar from the beginning." (John 8:44) The current form takes pieces of self-righteousness mixed with pieces of pseudo-science mixed with pieces of half-truths and outright lies, all under the oversight of emotionalism linked with the Sinful Nature, and calls it progressive thought and beliefs. The absurdity is apparent to all others, but to the progressive initiants all they can see is superiority of self as an advanced life-form. In other words, a lie.
We have seen how the enemy of reality in thought and beliefs is the Emotion aligned with the Sinful Nature, over-ruling the Mind and Heart to suppress thought and beliefs related to reality and truth. The result is what we have today, a society of people who hate and lie and deceive and manipulate to get what they want, at the expense of innocent others, all due to the misguided self-delusion that they have progressed beyond formerly acceptable, but now outdated, beliefs. They set one group against another to create strife and discord. Into this discord they exert themselves as power brokers and power seekers, in order to gain control over others they see as inferior. In this society and under this set of thoughts and beliefs there is no truth and nothing honorable. Only hatred, self-promotion, greed, power lust, and lies. And Bible truth is one of the things such people hate most strongly. In contrast the Bible emphasizes love as the basis for thinking, making Christianity the only belief system based on love.
Other methods of denying and rejecting truth involve falling into Cosmic System fallacy traps. These can include the fallacy that all opinions have equal value, so that the opinion of every person must be valued. That assumes there is no truth. The truth is what must be valued, not opinions. Of course, people who believe what is false should be encouraged to see why the truth is better. That is why the gospel needs to be the first message to such people since it is the starting place for all truth. But opinions either line up with truth or they do not. Opinions which are opposed to the truth are lies, and should be treated as such.
There is also a method of denying truth which says that if someone who is generally on the side of truth fails in some way, then all their beliefs are wrong. This is the "hypocrisy" fallacy of denying truth, whereby someone is labeled a hypocrite and therefore everything they say is unworthy of one's attention. This is often used on Christians, who are all sinners, but are often labeled hypocrites for being believers yet continue to sin. All believers sin, and are forgiven, so this fallacy focuses on a non-issue to distort and deny truth, especially the gospel of salvation.
Then there is the related fallacy of "same-same," which says that for every lie there is someone on the side of truth who has at some point been associated with something which appears to be, or even actually is, false or untrue. This fallacy states that lies and truth cannot be sorted out since they are all mixed together, and since they cannot be perfectly sorted out, nothing can be viewed as reality or truth. God rejects relative comparisons as the method of separating truth from lies. Truth is truth, and lies are lies. Using distorted comparisons is an effort to confuse humans into relative thinking, and make them think everything is just same-same, meaning no right or wrong. This is one of Satan's most powerful tactics, and we see continually how so many fall into the "same-same" trap and are confused into thinking that the truth cannot be sorted out from lies, making right and wrong, and truth and reality, all irrelevant.
Then of course there is the "it's all relative" fallacy whereby people seek to deny there is any truth at all, and therefore no right or wrong, so no one can declare anything unacceptable. Under this fallacy everything is relative, and no belief system is superior to any other. But the Bible declares there is truth, and also that there is non-truth and/or lies, and that there is right and wrong. Philippians 4:8 says "Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things." Note the emphasis on thinking. And this verse makes the phrase "it's all relative" entirely false. "It" is not all relative. There is truth, and there are lies.
There are others, but these serve to illustrate various methods of denying, disregarding, and distorting the truth. It is worth repeating John 8:44 which says "You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies."
We have discussed how the soul's Emotion can revolt and take the side of the Sinful Nature, aligning in opposition to the logical advisors, making bad decisions more difficult to avoid. This leads to feeling and reacting one's way through life rather than thinking one's way through. We will continue to expand on this important point because it is key to understanding most human dysfunctions in thoughts and beliefs. The Emotion does not think, so it merely responds or reacts to either the Heart backed by the logical advisors or else to the Sinful Nature. The Emotion was designed by God to respond in pleasure to the Heart in alignment with the logical advisors of the soul, however the Emotion can also misalign with the Sinful Nature. This makes the Emotion the wild card of the soul, sometimes aligning with the logical advisors, and sometimes aligning with the Sinful Nature. When the Emotion become the near permanent ally of the Sinful Nature, the two combine to overwhelm the Heart and essentially stage a coup, taking over the thinking process and making it illogical in the affected areas. And since the Sinful Nature is the ally of Satan, the person becomes allied with Satan's Cosmic System which at its core is a system of lies and illogic, and is opposed to God and truth.
This is how the Emotion can create instability inside the soul when allied with the Sinful Nature, and if severe enough it can result in overall mental instability and eventually mental illness. The Emotion of the soul is meant to respond to what the Heart concludes, not to advise it, so the Emotion is not one of the logical advisors to the Heart. When the logical advisors are set aside in favor of the Sinful Nature which has gained the alliance of the Emotion, logic and truth become victims, and lies can be easily accepted. This most often happens as a result of seeking continuous pleasure at the expense of responsible behavior, which trains the Emotion to revolt and support the Sinful Nature. As pleasure and "fun" become the main goals in life, responsible actions can take a back seat, at least in some areas of life, or maybe in broad areas. And since unbelievers have no human spirit, the Sinful Nature's influence is harder to avoid and therefore can more easily become the dominant influence on their Heart.
When the Heart of the soul is taken over by the Sinful Nature backed by the Emotion, the logical advisors of the soul, including the human spirit for the believer, are mostly shut off from influencing the Heart, while the Sinful Nature and Emotion take control of the soul. This locks in a cycle of arrogance in the soul, which grows like a cancer if not stopped. Over time even the logical advisors become corrupted, as the Mind and Conscience take on distorted patterns and lose their logic and good standards. At that point, rejection of truth is not only possible, but rather becomes locked-in as the norm. This can be isolated to certain areas of life, or it can be broad-based, so it does not mean they cannot properly apply what they have learned about specific subject areas like math, engineering, sports, welding, teaching or such since that information can be applied apart from emotional interference if the person chooses to do so.
Therefore the Sinful Nature aligned with the Emotion sets up roadblocks to truth. The primary logical advisors of the Heart are by-passed, and the soul must use alternate pathways to form its expressions to the outside world. These "alternate pathways" explain why such divergent views are not only possible, but entirely "logical" to the person firmly holding illogical views. The Sinful Nature teamed up with the wild card Emotion becomes the primary alternate pathway for expressions, and one of the main keys to understanding the issue of truth reception vs. rejection. And at this point the Heart has already been trained to be a compliant slave instead of being in charge of the soul, as it succumbs to arrogance, making it a dictator instead of a soul leader. Therefore the Sinful Nature and Emotion end up doing the "pseudo thinking" for the person. In reality it is not thought at all, but rather Cosmic System emotional expression from a soul under the dictatorial control of the Sinful Nature supported by a fluttering Emotion, which results in a soul consumed by arrogance which is unable to think logically or see the truth.
Trying to change the Mind of someone locked into this condition using facts and logic is futile, since facts and logic must go through the logical advisors to the Heart, which have been by-passed. The distorter of the soul, the Sinful Nature allied with the Emotion, attempt to block logic in the Mind. The Emotion exhibits reactions instead of normal responses. The human spirit is also shut down as the Heart refuses to process spiritual information into and out from it. This is the meaning of "hardness of Heart" in the Bible, since the Heart is hardened off as the primary mechanism of logical integrated decision making as God designed it to be. "They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts." (Ephesians 4:18) Hardness of the Heart is a Bible analogy showing a loss of logical thinking processes, whereby the Heart of the soul is barely able to pump a logical information flow through the soul. Logic in the Mind and good decision making by the Heart are blocked, thinking processes grind to a halt, and the Sinful Nature-Emotion alliance takes over.
When a person gets into this hardened status in the soul, the Emotion can block the ability to believe even what the person would like to believe. The Mind would normally look at truth and see it as worth believing, but the Emotion comes in and blocks acceptance. It substitutes an arrogant reaction for thoughts in the Mind, and the Heart is also stopped from making good decisions. And a reaction is not a thought or belief, simply a rejection, somewhat like a two year old child who only seems to know the word "NO!" This happens to believers who start out on the right path in their spiritual life but then stray from it. Maybe just a little at first, or maybe a strong reaction due to some shock like the death of a loved one. When spiritual thoughts arise they are immediately rejected by the Emotion. As the cycle continues, this reaction becomes more firmly set, and eventually no spiritual belief is even possible. Even if that person wants to turn the issue around and get back to living a spiritual life, it is very difficult due to the Emotion reacting against any attempt to do so, and the arrogance which has taken hold in the soul. So also with unbelievers who get into an emotional reaction state. As they get older they may begin to think about their own death, and would like to explore salvation by faith in Christ. But their Emotion is too firmly entrenched in an arrogant reaction state, which prevents the person from being able to consider the salvation message. This is why early consideration of the gospel message is important, before the soul becomes hardened.
Although totally illogical, Cosmic System lies make sense to someone who has a soul controlled by the Sinful Nature-Emotion lock on the soul. This often results in a dual personality, sometimes mild or sometimes resulting in neurosis or psychosis. So a person under hardness of Heart generally does not reject all truth from all sources, but typically chooses certain areas of life as a focus where they turn off their rational lie detector. Therefore this status is not necessarily all or nothing, so it can either be isolated to certain subject areas or it can be widespread. There can be pockets of logic if the person has built up strong standards in certain areas, but the soul is still able to easily reject truth in the affected areas. If this continues long enough it usually will become broad-based, often with some specific areas of interest becoming all-consuming with an associated passionate approach to illogical expression. This is also where mental gymnastics come into play, using irrational tools such as denial, dissociation, compartmentalization, and self-delusion instead of logic to enable the person to believe the unbelievable.
The Emotion backed by the Sinful Nature prevents rational thinking, while at the same time enabling illogical mental gymnastics, even among people who pride themselves as being superior in "knowledge." But their knowledge is ultimately arrogant foolishness. The Emotion cannot think so it becomes a domineering queen which reigns over a dysfunctional soul directed by the queen's Rasputin in the form of the Sinful Nature. The Heart can only think and make good decisions by integrating the inputs from the various logical advisors such as the Conscience, Memory, and so on, but when it is by-passed by the Sinful Nature allied with the out of control Emotion, the person literally cannot think clearly about certain subjects, but can only emote within the cosmic system jumble of pseudo information and lies. The combined Sinful Nature and Emotion end up doing the "pseudo thinking" for the person. But in reality it is not thought at all, but rather pure Cosmic System emotional expression from an arrogant soul which is out of control and under the near-total influence of the Sinful Nature. Because of this, humans are capable of the most heinous thought distortions imaginable, even if they are still capable of being logical in certain specific areas, such as their working life.
The person who emotes their way through life will especially reject the truth when it comes to issues which relate to God and other important information which Satan opposes, and that is another key to why truth is rejected. Satan tries to interfere with people seeing God as the source of truth, but what is less understood, Satan also interferes with important areas of life which God has ordained for an orderly society under which people can make decisions about God and His plan. These areas include nations, politics, economics, the media and many other issues since Satan wants to distort them and entice individuals and groups of people to join Satan's side while opposing God's plan and His rules for nations, society, authority, human interactions, and so on. Politics often becomes an all-consuming passion for illogical expression since it is an area which Satan tries desperately to influence, since it is associated with power, and Satan constantly seeks to influence those with power. Therefore Satan especially focuses on gaining advantages at certain strategic areas of life where power exists, such as politics and the media, since they are some of the most efficient and effective ways for Satan to broadcast lies into the general population. Satan is the "father of lies" and Satan's Cosmic System is fueled by lies. So the primary areas of truth rejection often begin with God and spiritual truths, and are followed by other areas where Satan has specific interests in influencing the course of history by breaking down the orderly functioning of societies.
Remember why this matters to Satan, that he is highly focused on changing the outcome of his sentence to the Lake of Fire. Satan has few remaining options, so he tries to affect the outcome of human history in an attempt to prevent God's prophecies from coming to pass, trying desperately to show God to be a liar just like Satan, therefore no better than Satan. Satan's blasphemous plan may not look like a rational one, but he has already failed at all his primary plans, so at this point distortion of truth is one of his few remaining options to somehow attempt to prove God is unfair or a liar. That is why the world is so full of lies, because Satan is entirely focused on destroying truth wherever it exists, especially among believers who seek the truth of the Word, but also among unbelievers in areas where Satan can influence the future course of history to his presumed advantage. Therefore Satan directs his lies toward the human race as he attempts to alter his decreed outcome. Most people of the world are inside Satan's Cosmic System, and are therefore influenced by that system to promote Satan's lies, even though they would be shocked to understand that issue.
And when this combines with the internal influences from the soul with a hardened Heart under the control of the Sinful Nature and backed by the out of control Emotion people can gravitate toward a lie no matter how convincing the truth may be. Nothing can be proven to a person under such circumstances. Logic is replaced by whatever feels right. The Sinful Nature takes over to determine what is "right" so that wrong easily becomes right to that person as the Conscience becomes distorted. If the soul is out of control, dominated by the Sinful Nature in alliance with the Emotion, they look arrogantly at the truth and call it a lie, and look at a lie and call it the truth. The longer they do so, the easier it becomes. The soul develops untruthful ruts into which the next thoughts fall and ride along uninterrupted by rational thinking. This is the ultimate answer to why different people look at the same information, conditions or circumstances and draw opposite conclusions. It is the answer to why people reject the truth in favor of the lie. It is the answer to why the Cosmic System is so popular among people. It is also the answer to why so many people will spend eternity in the Lake of Fire apart from God. Namely, that a hardened Heart under the control of the Sinful Nature backed by the out of control Emotion causes people to gravitate toward a lie no matter how convincing the truth may be.
This brings us to a central point about how salvation is accepted, and also how truth is acquired from the Bible. God requires both to be by faith, and only by faith. Faith is belief. Recall that is what this book is about. Faith accepts from God what we do not deserve, including salvation and our spiritual life. Faith believes that God, as the source of the Bible and salvation, is worth believing, that He is trustworthy, and that He tells the truth. Faith is the only method authorized by God for acquiring spiritual information, and avoids merit and works by the recipient. Faith is the only fair way for God to provide salvation, and also spiritual information afterward, otherwise smarter people would have all the advantages. God specifically excluded salvation by the senses, by deep thinking using rationalism, or any form of proof since these are based on merit and individual effort. God made salvation fair to all by basing it on faith in Jesus Christ, not by intellectual effort, because some people are smarter, grasp issues quicker, see more clearly what others do not see, and can prove things using intelligence-based methods easier than others. Using such merit-based processes as a means for salvation would be patently unfair, since some would have inherent advantages over others. Therefore only the smartest and deepest thinkers would be saved. God rejects such unfairness.
Instead, salvation is by faith only, and the message of salvation can be easily understood by anyone who is willing to listen and consider it. God does not allow His plan for salvation to be proven, and therefore requires that it must be accepted only by faith. The faith of the person, which is belief, is apart from any work or merit. Therefore humans can take no credit for any part of salvation, leaving all the credit to Jesus Christ the Savior. He did the work. He gets the credit and glory. And therefore salvation is a free gift from God. Humans must first think that salvation is by faith in Jesus Christ the only Savior, and then must believe it to be saved.
Beliefs come from thoughts, so thoughts and thinking precede beliefs. We think it, then we believe it or reject it. Our life is about choices, for or against God, for or against truth. Without that belief, everything else is simply muddling through life in a manner which ultimately has no meaning beyond death.
OK, that was intense. It is time to have some fun. Let's discuss dreaming.