During the rise of the Soviet Union and its growth to a world superpower, a term came into existence which has entered into modern political jargon. The term was “useful idiot” and it has been attributed (though not proven) to Lenin, and later to Stalin of the Soviet regime describing a Westerner who was sympathetic to communism.
It is a somewhat distressing, yet very real problem that people make active choices to embrace lies although being perfectly aware of the truth. One such example would be a person who makes excuses for an abusive or unfaithful spouse. The truth of this situation should be obvious, many times to those outside of the situation, yet the person continues to embrace a lie anyway.
There are few things which have caused greater damage to the religious truth of God’s people than the misguided preconceptions of man in regard to religious matters. Approaching the Bible with a personal bias commonly causes man to attempt to shape the Biblical text to fit such bias as opposed to allowing the text itself to shape the understanding of man.