A Refuge in Deception

Imagine taking refuge in a cardboard box for protection from a category five hurricane. That would be beyond the pale of good sense. The drama of human history is an unending lesson in the folly of self-deception. Human beings have a seemingly incurable penchant to believe their own lies. Ancient Israel is one sad example of this. God had given to His covenant people the promise that He would protect them from predator nations. The one stipulation was that Israel was to obey His commandments. It was not that complicated. Trust God. Don’t put confidence in the power of other nations to do what only God can do. Did Israel listen? No. Instead she formed an alliance with Egypt to protect her from a powerful and dangerous Assyria to her north. This was a futile exercise in seeking refuge in a deception. Israel became intoxicated with the prospects of Egypt’s military might. It was an exercise in seeking refuge in a cardboard box of self-deception. This is folly of the highest order for several reasons.

The prophet Isaiah exposed Israel’s political diplomacy for what it was, namely, unbelieving self-confidence. In the first place it was an attempt to create policies contrary to reality. Secondly, it was a doomed effort to build a security system out of human values. And, thirdly, this support system was a house of cards. Edward J. Young describes it this way; “They (Israel) were skillful in deceit and treachery of all sorts, the art of dissimulation and secret intrigue and anything else that belonged to the methods of false diplomacy and common politics.” For it was Isaiah who said, “we have made lies our refuge, and in falsehood we have taken shelter” (Isa. 28:15). The witness nation was living in a cardboard box of a false sense of security. How easily we can do this.

One of those cardboard boxes of self-deception is the popular lie that a God of love would not send anyone to hell. Fallen human beings distain the idea of divine judgment and will believe anything that provides avoidance of it. The doctrine of hell is offensive to modern minds and is not allowed into any thoughts about life after death. As a result gods are constructed who will accommodate truth-dodgers. But one truth unrelentingly towers above the little thoughts of self-deceived sinners. Jesus will not let us off the hook. He said, “He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (Jn. 3:18). The cardboard box of a God of love without wrath is incinerated in the presence of the blazing holiness of an all-powerful God. The only safe place is in Jesus Christ, who because of God’s matchless love was delivered up to death for us all. He is the only place of refuge when the howling winds of God’s wrath blow at the last judgment.

God is not a malleable being who can be shaped to suit our own desires and interests. In his book, Ten Lies About God, Erwin Lutzer, pastor of the Moody Memorial Church in Chicago, has identified a variety of ways in which people make God whatever they want Him to be. One of these card-board box gods is “the God of my health and wealth.” Some Christians find this god to be quite attractive. He bears a striking resemblance to the consumerism and entitlement mentality of Western civilization. Lutzer appropriately says, “How can we believe in such a God when Jesus said, ‘Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head” (Matt. 8:20)?

Another god in this pantheon of idols is the “God of my emotional need.” This god has a large following in our therapeutic culture. One of these self-constructed deities makes much of us, is there for us, and views sin as simply a lack of self-esteem. How convenient, a god who “exists to give me the unconditional acceptance I deserve.” There is much talk in our day about “unconditional love.” There is certainly a sense in which God sets His love upon His elect in a way that He does not upon others (Eph. 5:25). But in the words of Don Carson (The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God), “God’s discipline of his children means that he may turn upon us with the divine equivalent of the ‘wrath’ of a parent on a wayward teenager. Indeed, to cite the cliché ‘God’s love is unconditional’ to a Christian who is drifting toward sin may convey the wrong impression and do a lot of damage.”

God is love. But we must not attempt to refashion this precious truth into an image that suits our interests and imagination, as seems to have been done in William Young’s best seller, The Shack. A lesser god is one who is the creation of a finite mind. The God of the Bible is revealed in all His perfections. He is the one who is of infinite worth. When the storms of life come at us in all their ferocity, will your confidence be in a cardboard box or in the “God who is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psa. 46:1)?

Dr. Howard E. Dial
Berachah Bible Church