“So don’t be misled, my dear brothers and sisters. Whatever is good and perfect is a gift coming down to us from God our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens. He never changes or casts a shifting shadow. He chose to give birth to us by giving us his true word. And we, out of all creation, became his prized possession.”
I have heard some people say that Christians (or perhaps religious people in general) have just been brainwashed to believe a certain set of ideas. When you really look at it, perhaps we have all just been conditioned to think a certain way so we view the world through that lens. Atheists would say that what you see is what you get — there is no God/god or spiritual explanation for our world.
The problem with this thinking is that one could easily claim that a non-believer has been brainwashed to think only in practical or earthly ways. They eliminate God because they have been conditioned to think this is a higher form of thought. So which is it?
These verses tell us not to be misled (or brainwashed). What follows gives us insight into what it would mean to be misled: if you think that God does not have good gifts for you (perfect ones, in fact) and if you think that God changes or has it out for you, you’ve been misled. Your ideas about God are wrong. It’s interesting to me that a lot of people have these exact beliefs about God.
If that sounds like a crazy idea to you, consider the possibility that you have been brainwashed into thinking of God as an angry old man or as a distant force out there somewhere. I challenge you to seek what is true. These verses claim that you are God’s prized possession. What if that were actually real? God hasn’t changed since before time, and he isn’t about to start now. He’s always been for you. Maybe today it’s time to start buying that idea and stop being misled once and for all.