Can a Mentalist Teach Us About Temptation?

Recently, on the news show 60 Minutes, Cecilia Vega interviewed mentalist Oz Pearlman.

 

Pearlman’s act is spookily entertaining: he reads people’s minds. He randomly asks people in his audience to think of a question that no one could possibly know the answer to, as he did with Vega. She asked him, “Who was my third grade teacher who had a paddle above the classroom door?”

He answered correctly, completely freaking her out.

The act is stunning—you’d be convinced that something devilish is at work.

Yet Oz reveals his act is based on a big falsehood: “The lie is that I can read your mind.” He insists he has no magical powers. Instead of reading minds, he reads people really well. The trick is actually backwards: it’s putting words and suggestions in people’s heads. He tells Vega:

“How you’re gonna think is shockingly under my control. It’s almost like the way a puppet gets moved around. Certain moments where you’re right now about to change your mind, and I move you into another direction, you don’t realize that you were about to do something but that your mind works in a certain way. . . . The moment I lose control is the moment the trick falls apart.”

Fascinating.

This led me to think: Could supernatural powers function in this way?

What if malevolent spiritual entities could drop phrases or single words into our minds? What if, à la Screwtape, they could suggest thoughts? Agreeing that the enemy of our souls cannot read our minds the way God can (MATTHEW 9:4; MARK 2:8; LUKE 5:22), what if they could impress ideas to foster certain behaviors? For forty days after his baptism, it certainly appears Jesus was tempted by certain thoughts outside of himself, with Satan hoping to elicit particular actions.

Similar to how certain animals can, in fact, smell the chemistry of human fear, what if demonic powers could somehow detect when we’re in vulnerable places?

It appears that the training of our minds is serious business at a spiritual level. James offers this explicitly: “So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” And, of course, Paul writes about renewing our thought processes as well as standing “against the devil’s schemes.” These operations will invariably begin and end in our minds.

Helping our followers to understand this and make critical decisions about how to respond is serious business, and should be a central part of our discipling processes.

Moreover, we leaders must remain aware and vigilant ourselves. Jesus told his friend Peter that Satan was intending to “sift him like wheat.” That’s a chilling pronouncement.

And while none of us is likely to have the same impressive role Peter has in the Kingdom, it’s good to consider the response Jesus gave regarding the preeminence of John the Baptist, “….yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” MATTHEW 11:11b

I don’t know about you, my friends, but it’s easy for me to forget this.

I’m sure our enemy does not.

Dave Workman | The Elemental Group

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