Proverbs 26:23 ESV Like the glaze covering an earthen vessel are fervent lips with an evil heart.

Here is a very important insight shared today by Survivor, a commenter at my Light for Dark Times blog. She pointed us to the verse above.

Even Christian marriage counselors do not understand the machinations of mind control. In fact, I believe that mind control was even used on the counselors by my abuser. It seems that the veneer of a deceitful mind can circumvent even very intelligent people.

Mind control. Not the kind that a Jedi knight in Star Wars exercises, but the kind of deceptive darkness that Satan is a master at using. We should not be surprised if his servants wield the same weaponry.

Think about this for instance:

2 Corinthians 4:4 ESV In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

Paul speaks here of unbelievers being blinded in their mind, but this verse certainly establishes the fact that this is one of the ways Satan operates. Mind blinding to the truth of Christ. And check this out:

Hebrews 5:13-14 ESV for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. (14) But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

This means that anyone who is unskilled in God’s truth is going to be more easily controlled by evil ones because he or she cannot distinguish good from evil. They cannot discern who is lying and who is telling the truth. No one who is unskilled in this matter, a baby spiritually, has any more business addressing an abuse case than a little kid has (sometimes the little kid will do a better job!). In so many cases this is a willful blindness. (I should add though that all of us have experienced this deception and usually it has taken us, even though we were Christians already, to shake it off. I think the main reason for that is that we were immersed in false teaching and we assumed we were being taught truth).

Mind control. I bet most all of you have seen it. The wicked, like these domestic abusers who parade as holy saints, really do seem to cast a mind controlling spell and gain people as their allies time after time. And I wonder just how much of this business is involved in the warfare Paul tells us we are in:

Ephesians 6:10-12 ESV Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. (11) Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. (12) For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

These verses are quoted all the time by lots of Christians and preachers and counselors, but how many of these people really understand them? Not many. The devil has schemes. Lying, blinding schemes by which he exerts his brand of mind control. If, as Hebrews says, a person is not trained to discern truth from error, if as Paul puts it here they are not “strong in the Lord,” then the result of a “counseling session” with an evil person is going to be, well, in a way kind of like that Jedi knight business – “Listen to me now. You will believe me. You will be my ally. You see how holy I am.” And then the duped counselor just spits back that line to the victim.

We are dealing with the devil and his kingdom of darkness and his wicked servants when we stand against these domestic abusers and other forms of these evils hiding in local churches wearing a disguise of wool. Most professing Christians are still milk-fed infants in their maturity in Christ (if they are in Christ at all), and thus it is no wonder that over and over again churches and pastors and counselors and others end up siding with the evil one against the innocent.

The wicked do indeed cast a glaze over the mind’s eye of such people.