Here is an email forwarded to me March 31st, 2011:
Have you ever been fooled by a duck decoy? If you said, No, I have another question. How do you know? If it was a really good decoy, you might not have realized it. If decoys can fool ducks, who hang around other ducks for a living, they can probably fool us. Thankfully, most of us have greater powers of discernment than most ducks. Hey, wait a minute, that’s a decoy sitting above my fireplace! A really good decoy can fool the eye, but it cannot fool time. If we watch it long enough we will see that it doesn’t do what a duck does.
A decoy can be beautiful, but its beauty just masks its nefarious purpose – drawing real ducks to their doom.
“Hunters deploy these false ducks into ponds with the intent of making other ducks believe that it is a safe place to paddle around for awhile. The deceived ducks fly confidently into the hunter’s range, never realizing that the duck in the water is bait. A decoy is created for the purpose of deception, then chosen and placed by hunters to fool ducks into flying close enough to get shot. Even if a decoy wanted to be more than what it is, it can’t. Being surrounded by hundreds of mallards in a pond will never make it a mallard. All it can do is look like a duck. Real ducks fly, splash, swim, quack, waddle and appear in cartoons. Decoys just deceive.
I’m afraid that contemporary Christianity has lost its ability to discern ducks from decoys. Dynamic personalities in the pond of faith claiming to be a Christian and using all the right words can persuade us to jump into the pond and swim with them. Sometimes, a decoy in the biggest pond and surrounded by the most ducks has an even greater deception. Some of those who claim to be believers in Jesus Christ have redefined Him or re-interpreted His Words. It sure seems like, now more than ever, we have popular christian teachers whose messages doesn’t stand up to close Scriptural scrutiny. Maybe they are not decoys, but the effect is the same. They are being placed and used in our culture by the hunter who walks about as a roaring lion seeking whom he can devour.
Before you jump into the pond with a spiritual teacher, make sure that he or she is authentically Christian. How will you know? Authentic believers will not hesitate to proclaim the deity of Christ and the authority of Scripture. They will not employ doctrines, principles and practices just because they draw people, but will choose, instead, to be true to God’s Word. They will display the fruit of the Spirit and their actions will be consistent with the truths of Scripture. We need to watch longer than we do.
Once you suspect someone is a decoy, get out of his pond – there may be a hunter in the blind.
