The lessons of the Islamic belief
have shown us how the people who do not have a strong foundation of truth could
be easily deceived. One of the clearest examples of such deception is how the
false teaching of Islam gave an unreasonable promise to those who decided to be
involved in Jihad, especially the Fidais
type of Jihad which involves assassin or martyrdom such as the suicide bombers.
For such type of Jihad, the Muslim promised that 70 virgin ladies will be
waiting in Firdaus (the heaven);
therefore, many people, especially those who do not have a strong foundation of
truth, would easily believe it and allow themselves to be involved in Jihad
without realizing that they have been deceived and used by the false teachers.
In fact, there is no direct evidence in the Qur’an to support there being 70 or
72 for each person. The value of 70 comes from a Quranic commentary by Quranic
scholar Ibn Kathir. It comes from a hadith that says “‘The smallest reward
[each] for the people of Heaven is an abode where there are 80,000 servants and
72 wives, over which stands a dome decorated with pearls, aquamarine and ruby,
as wide as the distance from [Damascus] to [Yemen].’”
In the world today, many people,
especially the youngsters do not have a strong foundation of truth. They are
easily deceived by the work of Satan in a way that they are led away from the
truth. Some of the examples of means used by the Satan to deceive the
youngsters are computer games, television, movies, and other modern
innovations. As a consequence, many of such youngsters fall into temptation and
deception, losing their destiny and ending up as failures; moreover, many of
them end up committing suicide. Satan's modus
operanda is by instilling twisted truth and partial truth rather than
trying to instill a complete truth since the victim would easily reject the
complete false truth.
People should be able to guard
themselves from Satan’s deception of twisted or partial truth by being able to
discern well. Good discernment, furthermore, comes only by having a strong
foundation of truth and also a good relationship with God. Christianity have
made it clear that the Bible is the solid and strong foundation of the truth;
therefore, people should study and meditate the Word of God in order to have a
strong foundation of truth such that they will also be able to discern well
between what is right and what is almost right.
I had an experience where Satan
tried to deceive me to losing my faith in God such that I became a free
thinker. In my case, Satan uses my mental scientific knowledge as a mean rather
than visible mean. Satan tried to proof me scientifically that religion does
not exist. No matter how I tried to argue the ideas, Satan could always return
me a much smarter ideas which could literally and in fact could be proven
scientifically. Such indirect argument between me and Satan continues for about
3 hours late at night until I decided to read the Bible. From that experience,
I learned that I should be more diligent in studying the Word of God so that I
will not be easily deceived by Satan’s work into believing in the twisted and
manipulated truth.
As a conclusion, having a strong
foundation of truth is very important to many people especially in the modern
world today where Satan uses many modern innovation as their mean to deceive us
from the truth. Satan does not work in a way where they tried to directly make
us belief something falsity since we will obviously reject it; however, Satan
works in a very smart way by twisting the truths and manipulating them to
slowly deceive us to believe a twisted truth and slowly leading us to the
definite falsity. No matter how smart we are in our education field, but if we
are not rooted in the truth, Satan who is always smarter than us could deceive
us into the wrong way of life. As a Christian, therefore, to be rooted in the
truth, we should study and meditate on the truth which is the Word of God. When
we are rooted in the truth we would be able to have a good discernment being
able to discern between what is right and what is almost right that we will not
be easily deceived.