What Gaslighting Is

Today a word we are hearing very often, one that I never heard as I grew up, is “gaslighting.” As I looked to see if I had ever used the word in any of the written material of this blog site, I found none.  People use the term all the time and in a popular manner, but it has a psychological meaning. Psychology Today defined it:

Gaslighting is an insidious form of manipulation and psychological control. Victims of gaslighting are deliberately and systematically fed false information that leads them to question what they know to be true, often about themselves. They may end up doubting their memory, their perception, and even their sanity.

I see and hear gaslighting all the time from the political left. It includes a blatant form of lying, that requires people to believe something demonstrably untrue.

Merriam-Webster named “gaslighting” its word of the year for 2023 because it  said it was a pervasive term that shaped interactions and was relevant to our current social climate. The dictionary defines gaslighting as “the act or practice of grossly misleading someone, especially for one’s own advantage.”  In the previous year of 2022, lookups for the word “gaslighting” occurred 1740% more than the previous year according to Merriam-Webster online.

If I were to sum up the concept of gaslighting in the clearest way possible, it is that gaslighting requires obedience to a lie.  It’s not just lying, but requiring obedience to that lie.  It says something different happened than what many, witnesses, even every witness, plainly see.  Nevertheless, you must stand and nod your head “yes” to the gaslighter or face some form of retribution.

Examples and History of Gaslighting

The entire left gaslit the country on the condition of President Biden. Now it again gaslights the whole United States by giving a particular false impression about Vice President Harris. The left did this in 2016 with the Russian collusion hoax, saying that then President Trump was a Russian agent. For decades the so-called scientific community gaslit everyone with the theory of evolution, that then turned into the science of evolution, even though it isn’t scientific. Egalitarianism, that men and women are equal in authority and that they can fulfill each other’s roles, is also gaslighting.

Apparently the word “gaslight” arose from a 1938 British play, called “Gaslight.” Someone wrote the plot:

Set among London’s elite during the Victorian era, it portrays a seemingly genteel husband using lies and manipulation to isolate his heiress wife and persuade her that she is mentally unwell so that he can steal from her.

In scripture, the Pharisees gaslit the entire nation Israel with their teaching, leaving the people of Israel wallowing in spiritual darkness.  The level of deceit in the world today, I would assess, is at an all time high with maybe the exception of the days of Noah.  Everywhere you look, those in positions of authority spread bold-faced lies about the most important subjects.

A Challenge

It’s easy today for professing Christians to concern themselves deeply with government and elections, but the biggest ongoing gaslighting occurs concerning the Bible.  False religion and false teachers gaslight billions with falsehoods and lies.

Even though Satan wants to destroy the Bible, a part of that larger strategy is destroying the truth itself.  The gaslighting everywhere results in deceit on a mass scale.  Men become apathetic toward the truth in this world scale flurry of lies.  People give up, cutting through the lies seeming not to be worth the effort.  They see the sheer difficulty of penetrating the fog of deceit as a legitimate excuse to hedge against future judgment.  No one could be accountable to believe with so many lies everywhere.  And yet that too is a lie, even a bigger one.

Gaslighting right now happens at epic proportions.  It’s as if the gaslighters are attempting to top one another with the sheer audacity.  It is a high level of disrespect to the targets or audience of the gaslighting, that they think that it will work at this scale.  They have good reason to think they’ll fool people, because it’s working.