by Pastor Jeff Jackson, ACBC Certified Biblical Counselor
You’ve probably heard of it; they’ve made a couple of movies about it—even a musical—and it’s now known as one of the most successful acts of deception and misdirection in modern military warfare. They called it Operation Mincemeat, a somewhat dubious appellation considering that the central feature of the mission was… a corpse.
In brief, during a critical stage of WWII the British came up with this daring (and rather macabre) idea of using a cadaver to convey false information about the location of the impending invasion of Sicily. Everyone knew an invasion was coming, and Churchill was concerned that Sicily was a glaringly obvious choice, especially to the Germans, who had dutifully turned the island into a fortress.
To try to deflect any credible suspicion away from Sicily as the intended target, the fictitious Captain Henry Martin (the cadaver) was created. In reality, he was Glyndwr Michael, a civilian who had died from ingesting rat poison. British intelligence personnel obtained Michael’s body, dressed him in a British uniform, and meticulously created and then planted false documents on his person and in a briefcase chained to his wrist. He effectively became Captain Henry Martin.
A submarine secretly deposited the body of Captain Martin into the sea where Spanish fisherman promptly found him, along with all the false documents detailing the lie that Greece and Sardinia, not Sicily, were the targets of the upcoming invasion.
The ruse worked. German spies were able to access the body and search the documents; they believed the lies, and Sicily received no reinforcements. In fact, supplies and soldiers were diverted from Sicily and sent instead to Sardinia and Greece. The invasion was a shocking success.
Know Your Enemy
Christians face a spiritual enemy far more chillingly skilled, calculating, and more cunning at deception than anything mankind has ever achieved. Satan wants to make you a victim of his falsehoods; he wants to play you as a sucker for his schemes, he wants to make mincemeat out of you—pun intended. Consider just a few of the ways the writers of holy Scripture warn us about who and what we are up against.
Peter tells us "Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith..." (1 Pet. 5:8).[i] James concisely echoes Peter’s counsel, "...Resist the devil..." (James 4:7).
The apostle Paul gives us several sobering warnings we need to heed: "...do not give the devil an opportunity...Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places" (Eph. 4:27; 6:11-12).
The issue we face is one of satanic deception from a spiritual enemy set on our destruction. Satan knows he cannot rob believers of salvation, but he also knows that he can certainly deceive us into discouragement, distraction, and even disuse in our walk with Christ.
In 2 Corinthians, Paul writes, "But I am afraid (deeply concerned) that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ" (2 Cor. 11:3). Another translation has "...your minds will be corrupted from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ" (LSB). A few verses further into this passage, Paul adds, "...Satan disguises himself as an angel of light" (2 Cor. 11:14).
Satan’s design against believers in his Operation Mincemeat is also deception and misdirection through minds led astray from and corrupted from being sincerely and purely devoted to Jesus moment by moment, day to day. Your walk with Jesus is the thing that he is most keen to deceive you about and distract you from.
Satan wants you to be religious, he wants you to worship, and he wants you to be passionate and sincere about what you believe. But he wants to deceive you into making your life about religion and not about the Person of Jesus Christ; he wants you fooled into worshiping false gods of your own making; he wants you to be sincerely entrenched in beliefs based in lies, so that you are sincerely wrong in what you are defining your life by. That’s his stock and trade, and he’s really, really good at it.
It Matters Who You Listen To
Every believer faces trials, suffering, challenges, hurts, and all kinds of issues that life throws at us. No one is immune to the pain, discouragement, heartache, grief, and loneliness of daily life in this broken world. Because God has made us meaning-makers, we are constantly striving to make sense of these challenging, complicated, and often confusing circumstances of life. You’re not crazy. You’re not supposed to always be able to figure it out or to fix what’s going on; you can’t even fix you, much less someone else. This is all proof that you need a Savior and, thank the Lord, He’s sent us His Son to deliver us, forgive us, and give us freedom from self and satanic deception.
But here’s something you must carefully consider as you face the very real onslaught of your spiritual enemy battling against your devotion to Jesus Christ: it matters who you turn to and who you listen to as you try to navigate the issues of life and as you do battle against Satan’s deceptive lies. We have some options, but only one will lead us to the peace that passes human understanding. In a nutshell, it’s the wisdom of Jesus Christ found only in the Bible. Jesus knows you best because He made you, and He knows what’s best for you because His wisdom is truth, and it is superior to anything on earth.
The Heart of the Matter
When it comes to caring for your soul through the crises and challenges of life, God is the only expert we can trust with something so valuable. But our world is not short on answers, nor is it shy about offering its answers to the problems that plague our souls. Most often, the world’s wisdom is offered in the form of psychological diagnoses and remedies which can sound very sophisticated and can seem helpful at the time. Mincemeat!
This little article isn’t designed to take on all the ills of secular psychology or even of what passes as Christian psychology these days. But what I do want to put forward is that these methods of psychology for diagnosing and curing the issues of the soul are based in man’s wisdom. We often refer to this process of receiving this wisdom as counseling or therapy. My concern is here is to simply alert us to what the Bible tells us about where this worldly wisdom comes from and what it is.
When we talk about biblical counseling or any other type of counseling, we might call this counseling a process of wisdom-giving and wisdom-receiving, because giving and receiving wisdom is what happens when we seek the counsel of others and heed what they tell us. The question is, is this wisdom helping you understand the heart of the matter you are dealing with? Are you being helped to deal with the root of what’s wrong? Answers are everywhere. How do you know which answers are correct and which are... mincemeat?
If you’ve been following Fallen Soldiers March, attending any of their conferences, reading their materials, etc., you know that FSM makes a big deal of the sufficiency of Scripture (SoS). This is a shorthand way of saying that the Bible has the answers we need for the care and cure of our souls—all the answers and the only trustworthy answers.
Once again, the apostle Peter weighs in and leaves us in no doubt about the Bible’s trustworthiness in the matters of our hearts/souls: "... His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence" (1 Pet. 1:3). The Lord has given us everything we need in Scripture to know God and to live godly lives which please the Lord. We can only have a true knowledge of God through what He has revealed to us about Himself in the Bible. And in the Bible, the Lord has granted to us all His precious and magnificent promises (1 Pet. 1:4), so that by them we can be godly and fight the deceitful desires threatening to corrupt our souls.
Is God’s Word, the Bible, really that powerful to help us through the complex and modern difficulties of life? The writer of Hebrews says it is: "For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are uncovered and laid bare to the eyes of Him to whom we have an account to give" (Heb. 4:12-13, LSB).
God is interested in our hearts/souls/minds, and He uses His truth, His Word, to search our hearts and then to reveal our motives, attitudes, desires, and thoughts to us. Biblical counselors use God’s Word to cut through the lies of self-deception and of satanic deception, so that the truth of God can lead us to repent of the sin that is gripping our hearts and to replace that sin with what pleases Christ.
Because of this, it’s really important for us to keep the main thing the main thing, and that means we need to see that as we face the issues of life, we are actually facing how our hearts are determining our responses. We are the issue we need to deal with.
Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing
Jesus is the main thing. Our walk with Him is about our conformity to His character, so that we can reflect His character in every aspect of our lives and relationships (His kindness, gentleness, meekness, love, patience, forgiveness, etc., see Gal. 5:22-23; Col. 3:12-14). Satan wants to keep us confused and uncertain about what the main thing in life is all about. But the Bible consistently warns us not to be deceived about spiritual matters pertaining to our relationship to God and Christ (E.g., Gal. 6:7; Col. 2:4, 8-23).
The truth of God’s Word exposes Satan’s lies and the selfish, deceitful desires of our hearts which camouflage themselves as being legitimate. But the world’s wisdom has just the opposite effect on our hearts—worldly wisdom and counsel corrupt our hearts in devotion to Jesus and poison the process of personal change. Why? Because worldly wisdom is earthly, natural, and demonic.
James gives us a good summary of the characteristics of false/worldly wisdom: "But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth. This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing" (James 3:14-16).
James 3:15 gives us 3 characteristics of man’s fleshly wisdom in contrast to the wisdom from above (i.e., vv. 17-18, God’s gentle wisdom).
Earthly: "...it is restricted to things that man can theorize, discover, and accomplish by himself. It has no place for God or the things of God. It has no place for spiritual truth or illumination. It is a closed system, a circumscribed box, as it were, of man’s own making and choosing under satanic prompting". Earthly wisdom "pervades philosophy, education, politics, economics, sociology, psychology, and every other dimension and aspect of contemporary human life" [i]
Natural: "Those who rely on this wisdom are ‘worldly-minded, devoid of the Spirit’ (Jude 19). All of their feelings, desires, appetites, standards, and impulses are grounded in a humanistic view of the world and of man, who, understandably, becomes the measure of all things. Such wisdom not only feeds the flesh but also is foolish."[ii]
Demonic: "Although [false wisdom] is human, earthbound, and fleshly, its root source is Satan himself... The wisdom from below is nothing more than the foolishness of demons. Appealing to men’s natural fallenness and sinful inclination to arrogant self-interest, this wisdom deceives them into believing Satan’s lies rather than God’s truth. What they believe to be their own wisdom is really the devil’s."[iii]
Worldly wisdom produced the psychologized gospel as a competitor, not as a complement, to biblical truth. The many versions of a psychological gospel are based on unbiblical views of man, God, problems, resources, the change process, and the matters of life, etc.
Looking to Jesus, the Author and Perfector of Faith
The main take-away in all this: Satan wants to use your own heart’s desires to lure you away from what is true and good in God’s sight. Satan’s design is to deceive, just as the Germans were deceived by the false documents of Operation Mincemeat. Every aspect of those papers was designed to fool, to deceive, to get people to believe a lie. It worked because the counterfeit looked so genuine.
Believers who are trusting in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins are people of the truth, God’s truth in Christ. Since we have been raised up with Jesus Christ by God’s grace through our faith in Him as our Savior and Lord, we must keep seeking Jesus as our greatest treasure in life. And we must keep setting our minds on the wisdom of God in Christ and not on the wisdom of this earth; we belong to Jesus, and we have our life in Him (see Col. 3:1-4).
In spiritual warfare, we are armed with the truth of God’s Word so that we can speak the truth of Jesus Christ in love to one another as we seek to please Jesus in every aspect of our lives. So, turn to God’s Word to help you distinguish between worldly wisdom and God’s wisdom. And keep Jesus as the main thing—the greatest treasure of your heart (Matt. 6:19-21; 22:37-40).
[1] Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture is from the New American Standard Bible Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation, La Habra, Calif. All rights reserved.
[2] John MacArthur, James, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1998).
[3] John MacArthur, James
[4] John MacArthur, James
by Pastor Jeff Jackson, ACBC Certified Biblical Counselor
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