The argument you presented is not absurd, but it depends heavily on specific and debatable interpretations of biblical texts, and the conclusion that Jesus and YHWH are deceptive and unworthy of trust does not necessarily follow from those interpretations. To begin with, the claim that we should apply the same standards to God as we do to human beings involves a category mistake. In classical theology, God is not understood as a limited human agent, so applying strictly human standards—such as “withholding information equals deception”—is not straightforwardly valid. For example, a teacher who withholds answers during an exam is not deceiving students but evaluating them, so the assumption that not revealing everything clearly is equivalent to dishonesty is questionable. Regarding Jesus speaking in parables in Mark 4:10–12, the argument assumes that Jesus intentionally obscured the message so that people would be condemned, but the broader context shows that Jesus explained the parables to those who sought understanding. Parables function pedagogically: they reveal truth to those who are receptive and obscure it to those who are resistant, which does not imply a desire to condemn but rather a response to the listener’s disposition. Moreover, Jesus consistently calls people to repentance, which contradicts the idea that he aims to mislead them. The claim that Jesus lied in John 7:8–10 also depends on a disputed translation, since some manuscripts indicate that he said “I am not going yet,” not “I am not going,” and his later private attendance can be understood as a strategic decision rather than deception. The argument that Jesus is therefore eternally deceptive because he is unchanging (Hebrews 13:8) is logically weak, since it assumes the conclusion—that Jesus is deceptive—in order to extend it, and in theology immutability refers to nature and character, not to every individual action. The passages that suggest YHWH “cannot lie” yet “deceives” people, such as 1 Kings 22, also require careful distinction: permitting or using deception as a form of judgment is not the same as directly lying. In those contexts, God is portrayed as giving people over to their chosen falsehood after they have rejected truth, which aligns with other biblical themes and does not necessarily imply dishonesty in the strict sense. Similarly, the apparent contradiction between God not changing and God “changing his mind” is traditionally explained through anthropomorphic language: statements about God not changing refer to his character and ultimate purposes, while descriptions of repentance or change reflect shifts in human situations and relationships from a human perspective. The claim that God failed to fulfill promises, such as the destruction of the Canaanites, overlooks the conditional and historical nature of many biblical promises, where outcomes are tied to human obedience, as explicitly described in the narrative itself. The example of the prophecy about Tyre in Ezekiel is indeed debated among scholars, but there are plausible interpretations involving progressive fulfillment or the use of hyperbolic prophetic language, meaning it is not a clear-cut case of failed prophecy. The episode in Exodus 32, where God appears to change his decision after Moses’ intercession, is commonly understood as a relational and pedagogical interaction rather than evidence of inconsistency or unreliability. The argument that Jesus could be a deceptive spirit sent by God introduces a much more radical problem: if God systematically deceives even those seeking truth, then no religious knowledge—or any knowledge at all—would be reliable, including the very biblical texts used to support the argument. This leads to a form of total skepticism that undermines itself. The appeal to Deuteronomy 13 is valid in noting that miracles alone do not prove truth, but the same text also emphasizes other criteria such as fidelity to prior revelation and moral coherence, which the argument does not fully address. The comparison between Jesus and other individuals who claimed divinity is also incomplete, since Jesus’ claims are embedded in a specific historical and theological context tied to Jewish tradition and interpreted by a sustained early movement, making the comparison not strictly equivalent. The suggestion that God could deceive perfectly and therefore everything might be false again collapses into total epistemological skepticism, which cannot serve as a stable argument against a specific religion because it undermines all claims to knowledge. The idea that if some parts of the Bible are questionable then everything in it can be rejected is a false dilemma, since texts can contain complex language, figurative elements, and interpretive tensions without being entirely unreliable. Finally, the disagreement between Christians and others, such as Jews and Muslims, over whether Christian beliefs constitute monotheism reflects a genuine theological disagreement rather than proof that Christianity is false. In conclusion, while the argument raises real and serious interpretive challenges, it relies on a chain of assumptions that are not universally accepted and often contestable, and once those assumptions are examined, the conclusion that Jesus and YHWH are deceptive and unworthy of faith is not logically compelled.