Be not deceived! Galatians 6:7
When was the last time you became obsessed with something that happened to you that turned out to be very small? You blew up over some small thing and remained alienated for a period of from someone who really loves you. Relations are strained and sleep is lost and friends and brothers are failing to grow in the Lord.
Do you find that you take things far too personally? How often do you use the words always and never? Do you feel and think later?
It is easy to distort things and then the Devil comes in and exploits things worse. In out perceptions we often distort reality. It becomes the foundations of most of the lies we tell ourselves. These distortions and the lies they feed are:
Magnification – the “mountain out of molehills” lie.
Personalization – the “taking everything personally” lie.
Polarization – the “black/white” lie
Selective abstraction – the “missing the forest for the trees” lie
Overgeneralization – the “history always repeats itself” lie
Emotional Reasoning – the “don’t confuse me with facts” lie.
It can easily happen to any of us. We can distort our thinking over and over to warp daily events and conversations out of truthful proportions.
All of us do some of this. We must learn to work on our thinking process so we can avoid the devil’s trap. Want to read more? Chris Thurman, The Lies We Believe is a good book on the subject.