You see the fun house as you walk down the midway. You hear terrified screams before you ever step inside. A fun house plays tricks on the brain. People scream in terror, then laugh at their own reactions. Each moment of shock induces a fight or flight response, surging adrenaline through the body. Some might enjoy that excitement briefly, but no one would want to live there. Its chaotic images shock the system, and it is seriously loud.
In The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis described the realms of Satan as “the Kingdom of Noise.” A fun house is a kind of kingdom of noise, except that it’s always a bluff — the dangers are never real. On the other hand, the world we live in is real, but we don’t always know the validity of the dangers it presents. As last-days deception grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to differentiate between the false and the genuine. Is the image a deep fake, or did that really happen? Is the esteemed scholar telling the truth, or is she manipulating the public for political reasons? Does the somber anchorman really know what he’s talking about?
When the disciples asked Jesus for signs of His coming and of the end of the age in Matthew 24, His first words were, “Take heed that no one deceives you.” Throughout His discourse, He points to deception as a sign of the end, as do several other end time Bible prophecies.
People have been deceiving one another since Adam and Eve. So, Jesus was clearly talking about something more extreme. Today, lying and deception have become industrialized. We now have machines with which to spread lies like no generation before us. More than that, we have machines with the ability to create their own lies. That’s new and unexpected. The internet and artificial intelligence (AI) have done for deception what paved roads did for cars.
Futurism Magazine recently ran an article headlined, “Apple’s AI Is Constantly Butchering Huge News Stories Sent to Millions of Users.” The article says the Apple AI pushes breaking news data to users “while often butchering it beyond recognition.” Some might say, “That’s not deception. It’s a programming error.” But, whether or not it was the programmer’s intention, when AI presents false facts as news, it still deceives people.
The problem grows exponentially when individuals, groups, or nations use AI to deceive on purpose. That’s already happening on a massive scale, and it’s going to get worse. An inadvertent error can be called misinformation. An intentional lie is disinformation.
Some of the most unlikely people now seem to recognize the new level of deception this generation faces. In his farewell address, former President Biden warned, “Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation.” He has his own agenda for choosing this moment to attack technology and social media firms, but he’s right that we are being inundated with an “avalanche of misinformation and disinformation.”
How do we sort it out. It’s as if we are in a “fun house” where some of the monsters are illusions, and some are real. “The prince of this world” loves fear and confusion. But God is the opposite. 1 Corinthians 14:33 says, “God is not the author of confusion, but of peace.”
In John 14:27 (NKJV), Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”
Need discernment? Study His Word and pray. Do you feel fear? Stay close to the Lord’s side. No matter what pops up in Satan’s fun house, it never surprises God. Whether the danger be real or false, do as He said. “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”
