Most word processors include a review mode that allows you to suggest changes to another person’s document or review another’s suggestions regarding your own writing. These programs include a feature typically called “accept or reject changes” that requires you to decide if you should or should not incorporate suggested changes into your document. Many times a day we apply this same concept to suggestions coming to our thought. They can be as simple as the suggestion that drinking coffee makes one more alert, or that a white lie now and then doesn’t hurt anyone. Because suggestions of every type have such a big impact on our health, finances, relationships, and more, let’s explore the spiritually based rationale behind this decision-making process.
Synonyms of the word suggestion include insinuation, hint, implication, intimation, and innuendo—things that often carry with them a negative influence on one’s thought. This isn’t to say that a person suggesting changes to our document (literal or figurative) doesn’t have our best interests in mind. But it’s wise to always consider the source of a suggestion, as well as the motives behind it.
In the Adam and Eve allegory, in the third chapter of Genesis, the serpent told Eve, “Ye shall not surely die” if she and Adam ate the forbidden fruit. Eve accepted this suggestion, and her decision to do so, along with Adam’s, made them both susceptible to the mistaken belief that man can find life and intelligence in matter. This belief is in direct opposition to the truth previously stated in Genesis 1: that we need look nowhere for our true life and intelligence other than to God, in whose image we are created. The subtle, serpentine suggestion to the contrary weaves its way into the thoughts and actions of the antagonists in many beloved Bible stories, culminating in the account of the red dragon in the twelfth chapter of Revelation. This underscores the importance of rejecting serpent suggestions before they can swell into something bigger.
