Is manipulation always deception? If so (and I'm not sure I agree yet, as you haven't presented evidence for the claim), is deception always wrong? Is God being deceptive when he tells the Israelites to set up an ambush for the people of Ai?
Joshua 8:2 (KJV) And thou shalt do to Ai and her king as thou didst unto Jericho and her king: only the spoil thereof, and the cattle thereof, shall ye take for a prey unto yourselves: lay thee an ambush for the city behind it.
What about when he will send a "strong delusion"?
2 Thessalonians 2:11 (KJV) And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
If he's not being directly deceptive in the first, at least he's being manipulative in the second.
I hope I can explain this to you in a way you can understand.
I'm going at this obtusely so you can understand my frame of reference. There are two ways to "know" a person. First you can read about them. Second you can meet them personally and get to know them. The first is head knowledge as it is all intellectual. The second is what I call heart knowledge because it is first hand experience in which we actually get to know the person in our heart whether they be good or evil.
Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass became friends. After Lincoln was assassinated Douglass said Lincoln was a great friend to the black man. How could he say that so positively? Because he had heart knowledge of who who Lincoln the man was. Douglass knew what was in Lincoln's heart because was born a slave and experienced slavery, hatred, and bigotry first hand and his experience with Lincoln told him that nothing of the sort existed inside Lincoln.
The same holds true for getting to know God. Because I know God personally I know what exists in His heart and no desire to deceive exists within Him. He has brought me through experiences in my life that kill almost everyone. The emotional abuse I experienced growing up was off the charts cruel. I had no one to turn to look for sympathy and kindness. My grandpa and I got along but I only saw him once every few years so speaking to him about what was happening to me just wasn't possible. Over and above that my old man hated his step dad with a never ending passion so calling grandpa was out of the question and telling him what was going on even more impossible because my old man would have sat and listened to every word. He would have beaten the tar out of me for even attempting to tell grandpa. And my mother and older brother had the exact same attitudes toward me. Until someone has heart knowledge of that it's really impossible to know the damage it does. Oh, someone with the right training can understand with their head, but still not fully.
My old man would scream at me and tell me that I was the one responsible for everything that ever went wrong for the family. He heaped the guilt on me. My brother understood that and manipulated the old man into saying/doing those things to me even more than he would have on his own. My mother went along with all of it and added her own frustrations onto the mix. My chances of growing up normal were zilch. I was filled with self doubt, self loathing, and anxiety beyond what you can imagine. I was fully bent on destroying myself by the time I graduated from high school. I got into drugs knowing they would eventually kill me because that is what I wanted. I wanted out of this hell called life.
When I finally started talking to God I was a burnt out. spaced out wreck, and yet God listened to me attentively, kindly, and merifully. He answered my prayers the same way. He intervened in my life in such a way that he brought me out of my mental illness, my sel loathing. and brought the love of life back into my heart. This was not an over night experince because the changes he brought about in my thinking, expectations, ability to trust, etc... have taken decades to develop. So I know God at a heart level far beyond what most people can.
that's not bragging. That's just the reality of how far the devil had dragged me down in life. I was worthless, use less, and stupid when God began working in me. He has restored much of my original intellectual capabilities. I don't know how He ever saw anything worth saving in me. I still don't. That's just who God is. He doesn't ever manipulate anyone. He always meete us head on with love, kindness and sympathy. He's straight forward and honest in all his dealings with us. Look at the conversion of Paul. He want from someone consumed with hate to someone who after three years in the wilderness was the greatest missionary ever known. Also look at Baalam. God never deviated from head on honesty, kindness and understanding with Baalam. Yet Baalam still went the same way Judas did and for the same motivation. That is the mystery of iniquity.
I met a guy in my mid twenties who was a part of a very large family. He had aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, all over the area I lived in. This family was not poor by any stretch of the imagination and they were all nice people. Yet this guy was considered a lunatic by all his relatives. I had known of him for a decade or so until he walked up to me in a bar one night and asked me to talk to him. I agreed because I was really curious about him. It soon became obvious that he was just as curious about me. He bought us a couple of drinks and then turned to me and asked my why I was in the bar. I was experiencing a lack of faith as my anxiety levels were off the charts at the time. My mouth fell open and I asked him what he knew about me. He said he knew enough to know that I should never have been in that bar that night. As this guy had a real reputation for being evil my moutj continued to hang open. Then he explained to me that he knew God but enjoyed being evil and knew I did not. Thus his questions to me. We talked for another half hour or so and I couldn't believe me ears. He was thoughtful, intelligent, and articulate. I had thought he would be slobbering creton from the things he was known to have done to his own mother. That was the only time I ever talked to the guy. A couple of months later he died in a house fire with several of his friends. People that were at the fire said he was walking around going from room to room until he finally collapsed and died.
I think of him every once in a while and ponder the mystery of iniquity. He knew God and saw nothing wrong with God. He just loved evil more than he liked God. It's beyond my ability to understand.
