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Matthew Stuckey here, and I want to give you another video on one of the 20 characteristics of being a psychopath. And one of the characteristics that they've discovered is manipulation. Now manipulation is the fourth out of the four interpersonal characteristics. There's various ways they divide these 20 characteristics, but oftentimes they divide into four interpersonal characteristics. We talked about charm, we talked about a grandiose sense of self-worth, that the world revolves around you, we talked about lying, and lastly we're talking about manipulation. And this is what it says on a website that gives descriptions of each of these 20 characteristics. Psychopaths are really good at getting other people to do what they want. They may play on one person's guilt while lying to get someone else to do their work for them. And so what it talks about with manipulation is that they do whatever they need to to get what they want, and they'll basically use people, you know, gain information about people, use people's emotions against them, they analyze your weaknesses, and they're going to use that to manipulate you. And the reason why is because they think the world revolves around them. So manipulation is a big characteristic about that. You know, examples in the Bible are with, you know, Jonadab and Amnon. And Jonadab says, you know, why are you the king's son being leaned from day to day? And basically he's analyzing the weaknesses of Amnon to use his own emotions and problems and sinful flesh against him. And it talks about alluring through the lusts of the flesh in the book of Jude. And so that is what Jonadab is doing to get Amnon to commit violence and end up committing rape. And Jonadab is doing this because he's trying to fulfill his own lustful desires. Another great example is Haman in Esther chapter 3. And it says in verse 8, And Haman said unto king Ahasuerus, There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the people in all the provinces of thy kingdom, and their laws are diverse from all people. The statement by Haman is actually true that their laws are diverse from all people because obviously as God's people they had the scriptures directly from God that they were supposed to follow. However, Haman is making it sound to Ahasuerus like these people are rebelling against the laws of the king. That's not actually the case because the actual scriptures in the Bible teach us that we should be in obedience to our authority unless that authority is asking us to sin. So they would actually be very obedient to the laws of the king. They wouldn't be going out and murdering and you know stealing and committing crimes like that. And then it says after this in verse 8, Neither keep they the king's laws. And so once again Haman is trying to make it sound like these people are rebelling against all of the commandments and rules of Ahasuerus when in reality they are gonna keep the king's laws because the Bible tells us to keep the king's laws unless the king is asking us to sin. And so it's true that they don't keep the king's laws because ultimately we keep the laws of the Bible number one. However it's misleading to say that they don't keep the king's laws because Bible believing Christians, people that believe on the true God, they're not going to be going out and committing murder and stealing like the rest of the world at least as much. Then it says therefore it is not for the king's prophet to suffer them. And so Haman says you know it's not your prophet to allow them to do this. Allow them not to keep your commandments. Now what Haman wants Ahasuerus to come to the conclusion of is that these people should be killed because they're rebellious bad people. But that's not actually technically what Haman says. He leads Ahasuerus to think that but what he's actually saying is you know it's not you know your benefit. It's not your prophet to allow this to take place. Basically they should be following your laws above their own laws. However what Ahasuerus is hearing is that these are rebellious bad people that I need to get rid of, that I need to kill. So Haman is not technically lying because he wants to say it in a way where he can step away and say wait a minute I didn't say to kill them. I didn't say they were bad people. And this is what psychopaths often do. They'll say something that can be taken two different ways and they want you to believe this. They are manipulating you and they're not technically lying but they really are lying because they're getting you to think this and they could easily walk away and say well this is what I actually said. And so that's what Haman is doing. And then in verse 9 he says if it pleased the king let it be written that they may be destroyed. So what he says to the king is hey if it would please you then you write that they are destroyed. Okay Haman does not technically say well let's kill these people because of the fact he wants that to be in Ahasuerus' hand where Ahasuerus made that decision. However Haman led Ahasuerus to come to that conclusion. And see this is what psychopaths will often do. They will basically manipulate you, use guilt and emotions and be misleading in order to get you to do what they want but they didn't technically tell you to do this so if they ever get in trouble they can say now wait a minute I didn't say that I didn't do that. You know that was their choice and see that is their goal. They manipulate and that way they can just step away from it like they didn't actually do anything wrong. In Jude 1 verse 16 the Bible says these are murmurers, complainers walking after their own lusts and their mouths speak of great swelling words having men's persons in admiration because of advantage. They speak swelling words, words of flattery because they have men's persons in admiration. Why? Because of advantage. They want to take advantage of people and that is manipulation. They use flattery as a form. They complain and murmur because they realize many people inside of them have the the same sort of idea where they they are upset about something. An example is Judas Iscariot where in one of the gospels it talks about how he said that the woman should not have wasted the money and you know he did that because he's the one who kept the money and wanted to steal it but then the other gospel you can read that all of them were saying that and what it shows you is that Judas was a ringleader because he realized other people felt the same way and he used their emotions against them. He used their weaknesses. He allured through the lusts of the flesh and he did that because he knew that people would actually support what he said. And so how do bad people, how do psychopaths manipulate? One common technique in the Bible is flattery. Another common technique is giving gifts. I mean maybe you've had people that have flattered you or given you gifts and then it reaches a point where it's uncomfortable. Where it's nice when people do nice things for you but when they're offering to do extreme things like well you know let me just I'll just do your laundry for you. I'll buy all your groceries for you. You know what it sometimes it can can reach a point where it's it's a little bit too much and you know you need to be very careful if you get that feeling on the inside where something just doesn't quite sit right it might actually be a red flag that there is something wrong. You know this is what I've experienced through the years. People that end up being bad people sometimes they can cross a line where it just feels very uncomfortable and it just doesn't feel right. Another technique is gossip. Oftentimes they'll get you to trust them and then they'll get you to gossip and they can use that as a form to manipulate you and manipulate other people if they need to. Sometimes what they'll do is they'll ask you questions just to see what your reaction is and they just want to analyze your weaknesses and sometimes they'll ask ridiculous questions where there's no way the answer is going to be yes but they're basically trying to analyze for weaknesses and see how they can take advantage of you. You need to be very careful with people that you do not allow them to manipulate you and you know how are they successful? Well they're willing to lie and they're very charming and the reason why they do this is because they have a grandiose sense of self-worth where they believe the world revolves around them. They don't feel guilty about manipulating they feel justified to do this and so these are the four characteristics interpersonal characteristics of psychopaths. They are very charming, glibness or superficial charm. They're very charming but it's fake. It's not real. It's shallow. It's superficial. They have a grandiose sense of self-worth. They believe the world revolves around them. They lie. They're of their father of the devil. They are liars and they are manipulators and they do this because they think they are more important than anybody else. Be very careful to guard against people manipulating you because if you allow psychopaths into your life they could end up destroying your life and you're finding people that are often trying to manipulate you and other people that should be a massive red flag in your head that this person might actually be a bad person. It might not be a coincidence. It might actually be very intentional. They might actually be a bad person. Anyways thank you and God bless.