God put something on my heart to share with you today. I want to talk about Deception. In Chapter One of The You Testament I open with Deception and the first question I ask is “when was the first time you were deceived, what age were you?”
When I thought about that question from my own personal experience, it provoked me to seek when and how the first time Deception entered into this world we live in.
We see Deception for the very first time in the book of Genesis. In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the earth, and everything He created on earth was good. Genesis speaks to the arrival of the first humans (Adam and Eve) and it also reveals important Truths about how God wanted the world to be (The Garden of the Eden) It speaks to human identity, of our role in creation and of our relationship with God.
The Book of Genesis says that while living in the Garden of Eden, there was one tree from which Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat—the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil. This was a test of their faith. God warned them that if they ate fruit from this tree, they would die. Then that crafty little serpent (satan) provoked Eve to challenge God’s authority. And she ate!
Now one would ask, “if God knew man would fall, why create the Tree of Knowledge in the garden anyway?” The tree symbolizes the boundary between obedience and disobedience, innocence and moral understanding. Eating from this tree would grant Adam and Eve knowledge of good and evil, implying the ability to discern right from wrong, which was previously beyond their understanding.
I believe in that moment of Temptation and Deception; man was given the true choice to impact history. And this still happens today. Even for me, Coco Ramos. Sharing the first part of my testimony in Chapter One, showed me the times I chose to eat forbidden fruit—and I saw the fruit it produced in my own life.
God foreknows what we will choose, yet we truly do have the authority to choose. God could have created us like robots, without the ability to reject him or disobey but where is the relationship in that? Ultimately, God wants a relationship with us. That's is the most obvious answer here—He gave Adam and Eve every reason to trust Him, but they chose to doubt His goodness, and ultimately believed the lie that they were better judges as to what was good for them. He created the tree because it was a manifestation of His character, of His love. He didn’t force Himself on Adam and Eve, and He doesn’t force Himself on us.
In today’s world, satan has deceived humanity into thinking that good is evil and evil is good. One of the deceptions is the belief that there is no spiritual realm—no God, no satan, no right and no wrong. Through the Bible, God has explained this deception, but for the most part, we humans have chosen to reject God’s revelation, leaving satan’s deception as the only option. I know that is a radical thing to say, right? But hear me out. One would ask, Coco how are you so sure of this? Well I can only speak on my own experience. I believed the lie, I even told the lies. I promoted the deception and here is how crafty satan is, I had no idea I was even doing it. Until one day, that all changed. More on that, in Chapter Two of my You Testament. I began to recognize this in the work I did prior.
I have worked in Media and Creative Advertising most of my career. Content programming for brands, corporations and product marketing is what I did and I learned a lot. In fact, I have had the opportunity to work for the biggest corporations that impact this world. I became a well-versed expert at targeting audiences, buyer personas, tactics to influence behavior, control brand perception for consumers—and my responsibility was to use the most accessible device, the smartphone This logo reminds me of the Tree of Knowledge—interesting brand choice.
Side note: the smartphone is the most powerful device to access Knowledge (information) Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1289755/internet-access-by-device-worldwide/
As of 2024, the number of smartphone users is predicted to reach 7.1 billion
Source: https://whatsthebigdata.com/smartphone-stats/
Using data from the International Database, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates the world population hit 8 billion on September 26, 2023.
Source: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/11/world-population-estimated-eight-billion.html
We have all experienced this before, “wow, I was just thinking about this product and it popped up in my Instagram or Facebook feed!”
This is called a Digital Footprint or Digital Shadow. Everything you do on the smartphone creates a trail of data, or digital footprint, that can reveal a lot about you. Savvy corporations have access to you 24/7. There are teams, technology and tactics that study, profile and categorize you—often times it’s not meant for good but merely a distraction that corporations (or powers at be, Ephesians 6:12) use to their advantage to promote ideals, product and mainly agendas to conform to their rules and outcome for this fallen world. I spent almost two decades promoting materialism, worldly ideals and corporate agendas that came from the top. That was my world. At times, there were things I saw and discovered that frightened me.
So what does our search history say about us? Think about it. What temptations are we drawn to? Are we being deceived to think and believe a certain way? If we see something enough will be we desensitized by it, will it be normalized? What is our perception of good and evil? Take some time to think about that.
In today's complex world, navigating through deception can be challenging. Faith strengthens discernment, fosters wisdom, and empowers us to see through falsehoods.
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