In terms of daily living, a "scatoma" is not seeing the whole picture. It's lies your eyes tell you! One of my favorite expressions has always been : "Are you going to believe me or your own lying eyes?" (Groucho Marx). Yes, our own loyal eyes can and will deceive us!
Another idiom is "Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see!" (Benjamin Franklin). Groucho and Ben understood real life. Each are paraphrasing scripture:
Ezekiel 12:2 "Son of man, thou dwellest in the midst of a rebellious house, which have eyes to see, and see not; they have ears to hear, and hear not: for they are a rebellious house."Scripture covers the spiritual aspect of scatomas for they apply to hearing as well. Satan wants people to misunderstand and he throws in confounds to, well, confound you! He doesn't force scatomas upon those who trust in and obey God, but on those of a rebellious nature. Before we proceed with the spiritual aspect, let's look at other types of scatomas:
Carelessness:
We're all sloppy! Sloppiness is basically inefficiency in the use of our brain. Our cognition takes the easy route to the conclusion. "You can't see the forest for the trees" (proverbial) means that people have a tendency to focus on the wrong things. In this case they fail to see the beauty of the forest because they are looking at the detail of one tree.
A good painting, when viewed from a distance, is beautiful. However, when the viewer gets too close too much detail is seen and the detail doesn't match reality. When the artist stands back a ways and examines his work, he paints a better picture. An achieved painter paints with carelessness because he knows for beauty's sake, the detail doesn't matter. This is an example of a beneficial scatoma.
An an engineer, I can't paint because I must show all the detail. Hence, my drawing of the tree looks contrived although it's closer to what's real than what the more abstract person paints.
Let's say right now that for five seconds a picture is placed before you. It may have much detail. In five seconds, even if you concentrate, you will never ever be able to exactly duplicate that picture even if you have the skill set because your brain is inefficient. Those who have efficient minds have photographic memories. Most people don't have that!
In five seconds, my attitude and readiness determines how much detail I see. If someone merely flashes a picture for five seconds, I may not see anything with clarity, but the impression is that it's a forest, for example. If I'm forewarned, I'm ready for the "test" and see much more! The lack of readiness is carelessness because there must be a reason to take in as much as possible. Because it's a test of efficiency, we all want to be more efficient, so we try harder! Even with that we see very little detail. We see, but still are blind! It's not rebellion. It's inefficiency. It's lack of motivation. We need a reason to be more efficient!
Error:
Many times we just err in what we see. Our mind can't take in the entire picture, so it just adds the detail because of various factors. Perhaps one is that "We see what we want to see." Let's say that Joe Chance stumbles into a women's changing room, for instance. His brain quickly gets new information: "Something is amiss here!" and Joe darts out because of his perception. Joe could have walked in while a woman was showering. He would then notice that there was a woman present, but not even be able to say if she is white or black, let alone how big her endowments are. That goes back to inefficiency.
On the other hand, the longer Joe stands there the more detail he sees and the more complete the picture matches reality. If he stands there ten minutes he will surely see "the whole Monty"! The problem arises when the time is of short duration. His mind fills in the blanks for the detail he did not see! His mind enlarges her breasts and puts a smile on her face. He colors her hair and her eyes with perceptual colors. She may actually not even look like the person he saw. That's his mind making errors in detail. This sub-conscious action is one reason witnesses misidentify innocent people in line-ups.
The woman showering may say "I saw Joe looking at me showering!" Joe may have had his focus on the trees and not have seen the forest, so to speak. His eyes were attracted to something else in the scenery and did not even see that the woman was showering; while she believes he did because to her she is the most important thing in the room!
We all have experienced this many times! We believe we captured it all when what we perceived was a fiction. Many people are in jail because of errors in seeing. Truly our eyes lie to us and lying eyes indict innocent people! Our minds fill in too many blanks!
Is this of Satan? He certainly uses our limitations to deceive for his own havoc! He even uses carelessness to make people stumble. All's fair with him in love and war. He will use our human frailties to ruin relationships whenever he can!
Planting Scatomas:
Satan "plants" things that aren't there. He wants us to see real things wrongly and false things as truth. For instance, I got in trouble for harassing a person with fourteen telephone calls. When confronted, I felt guilty. My phone showed that I indeed had called the person, who became irritated, fourteen times, but I only had called her once to answer her question! There's more: I never even had her phone number in my smartphones's address book yet my history showed that I called her all those times!
I had no explanation. I was accused of harassment, I couldn't deny making the calls, so I must have done them. I felt guilty, but something was amiss!
Well, it turns out that by "accident" my phone and my wife's phone, when close, exchanged information without the knowledge of either of us. Compounding this "coincidence" was that there was a bug in the IOS which caused my phone to auto-dial this number. Then the other "coincidence" is that it called one of the few people who much dislikes me and she knows that I have trouble tolerating her.
Are these truly accidents and coincidences? I don't think so! I believe them to be "plants" by Satan to ruin relationships! If one looks at probabilities, scientifically, the odds are well beyond it happening by chance. Satan rigs the tables. He plants scatomas to fool even the elect. His M.O. is to ruin relationships because his desire is for us to hate each other for his own nefarious purpose; to undermine God! This brings us to the spiritual.
Spiritual Aspect:
Sometimes carelessness and error is because we're human. At other times it's the devil's deceit. He plants things in our minds to cause discord. He knows that when human's are at each other, we are not with God! That's why the love of others is so important. We are doing what God wants us to do!
Let's say that I'm in a store. I drop my comb on the floor while looking at a billfold. I put the comb back in my pocket and the billfold back on the display. Mrs. Observant, who I know, "sees" this incident. Her own mind "develops" this snapshot. What she sees is that I slipped something into my pocket. It must be the billfold because she failed to see the comb being dropped and retrieved. The mind then creates a fiction. She "sees"me put the billfold in my pocket!
That is a scatoma painted by the devil. She immediately (her maiden name was Shirley Gossup) tells all her friends. "I saw Larry steal a black Tommy Hilfiger wallet at Macy's." Her ready mind even put a color to the wallet, who the designer was and that it was Macy's and not Wal-mart. She became the tool of Satan to destroy my reputation! Mrs. Observant did see me put something in my pocket (truth), but her mind created a fiction (lie). She wasn't being dishonest on purpose. She was being used by dark forces to ruin relationships.
On the other hand, Mrs. Observant was married before to Mr. Sinter. Because she is a thief, that's her first impression: "This man is stealing!"
In the other example, the woman in the shower may create a fiction which suits her fantasy. She wants a man to see her, so she creates the situation in her mind. It's real to her because Satan created it with realism. Satan paints a good picture and the woman's fantasy is fulfilled.
With the billfold, because this woman is a thief, to exonerate (sic) herself, she wants me to be a thief as well. It makes guilt less excruciating for her if "we all do that!". Satan let's her rationalize her own wrongs through the use of scatomas. She "needed" to see me steal to validate her own thefts! The downside is that she is still a thief, but now her fiction is that I am too! This misperception is not intentional. It's how Satan does his dirty business. We must always be merciful and give others the same benefit of the doubt which we would want for ourselves. That's the Golden Rule!
Summary:
Because of scatomas, reputations can be ruined and relationships soured. Because someone really didn't see what they "saw", animosity results. Discord results in bitterness and the one we once loved, now we hate. We both lose and Satan wins. God cries as Satan smiles.
Note that none of these were done in rebellion, but in innocence because we were pawns in Satan's game of chess. On the other hand some people destroy others by refusing to look at truth for any length of time and in detail. People are happy with their false realities and God's not going to change that! People know what they"saw" is wrong, but continue in the facade because of pride. This is rebellion against right. It is rebellion against God.
People just have a problem admitting "Maybe I didn't see what I thought I saw." because of their pride, or it may be that they are mere pawns in the hands of a deceptive dark angel!
Validation:
Back in the first paragraph this was written "feces in the the colon which appears". Did you see "the the" before colon? If not, that's a scatoma. Slow detailed readers will immediately see it while the mind will not absorb that for speed readers. That's life folks. That's carelessness and inefficiencies in our make-up. Sometimes Satan uses that for nefarious purposes!
No comments:
Post a Comment