Self Deception and the ART of Self Knowledge
Think of the person you with whom you have the closest association. It might be a spouse, or if you’re not married, perhaps a parent, child or someone else. When you disagree with this person, what percentage of the time are you right? What do you think the other person would say in answer to the same question?
If your answers aren’t 50% and 50%, something is amiss, and it could be that either you or your significant other aren’t seeing things exactly as they are.
When we find ourselves in a perpetually defensive posture, there’s a good chance we’re seeing the world through faulty paradigms. It’s not that all paradigms are faulty or unhelpful - paradigms are models or patterns of thought, and they can be useful for making sense of the world. When we see a flower, we recognize it as a flower regardless of its color or shape because we have a previously developed thought model for the concept of a flower. Having paradigms means we don’t always have to start from scratch to figure things out.
Our paradigms are formed through personal experiences and also by what we’ve been taught and modeled by influential people and forces in our lives. We’re not consciously aware of our paradigms but they act as a grid through which we see the world and make decisions, and they can be deeply ingrained and hard to shift. The trouble with paradigms is they aren’t necessarily completely accurate, and when we filter ideas or information through faulty paradigms we can come to faulty conclusions.
I experienced this firsthand when I was the guest preacher for a congregation in Waukegan, Illinois one Sunday morning. Shortly after I began my diligently prepared, passionate message, a young man interjected loudly repeating something I just said. My first reaction was fear. A mental model of a dangerous disrupter flashed through my mind, but then I noticed that no one else seemed afraid. My fear quickly turned to annoyance when I was interrupted several more times by this young man, and my annoyance spread to those around him who seemed unfazed by his impolite behavior. But after the service when I asked about the young man and was told that he had Tourette’s Syndrome, my annoyance turned to compassion for the man and admiration for the congregation who welcomed him, disruptions and all, into their communal worship.
The knowledge I gained in that situation shifted my paradigm about proper behavior in a worship service. I not only learned something, that knowledge changed me.
In Peter’s second letter to various churches in Asia Minor, he asserts that God has already given us everything we need to live a godly life through Jesus. He further says that we share can share in Jesus’ divine nature by responding to God’s promises and adding certain actions to the rock-solid foundation of our faith in Jesus. (See 2 Peter 1:3-7).
One of the additions to our faith that Peter recommends is knowledge, or in the Greek, gnosis. Gnosis is not just head knowledge or book learning. It is knowledge gained from personal experience, and it is knowledge that changes our behavior.
That sounds fairly doable, right? Just add some transforming knowledge to our faith and we’re on our way! But we have a Problem, and this problem looms large both outside of us and even in us. It’s deception. Deception takes our paradigms captive and keeps us from the kind of knowledge that could bring about change.
Deception is not a recent phenomenon – it’s at the root of the story of the fall of humanity. In God’s original design, humans were to have authority over all of creation tending and caring for all that God had made. But when confronted by a sneaky serpent, rather than taking charge the first humans allowed a non-human creature to influence their thinking. The snake’s deception led the first humans to doubt the goodness of God and take matters into their own hands, and their rebellion against God’s good and perfect way has been repeated by every human who ever lived.
The results are catastrophic. Our ability to know God and know ourselves has been shattered. Lost to God and confused about who we were created to be, we are left vulnerable to deception - particularly by ourselves.
In his book, I Told Me So, Gregg Ten Elshof explains that when someone is trying to deceive us, they attempt to “manage our beliefs” so they can lead us to false conclusions. In self-deception, Elshof explains that we are “both the deceived and deceiver.” We are the ones attempting to “manage our beliefs,” but our efforts are not aimed at getting to the truth.
There are multiple methods and strategies we use for self-deception, but here’s just a sampling:
Attention Management - We pay attention only to information that supports our beliefs or preferences. For example, when we limit our intake of news only to sources that confirm or affirm our point of view, we’re managing our attention.
Procrastination – We put off acting on what we know to be important until the urgency subsides so we can move on without guilt. We might hear of a need and feel moved to give aid in one way or another, but if we wait long enough the moment passes and we either forget to act or no longer feel the need.
Rationalization – By creating our own narratives about our behavior, we convince ourselves that our questionable behaviors or feelings are actually not so bad or are even perfectly acceptable.
Fundamental Attribution Error – We convince ourselves that when we behave in a way that could be considered questionable, our behavior is caused by outside influences and circumstances. But when we observe questionable behavior in someone else, we judge the behavior to be the result of bad motives.
Magical Thinking – We mistakenly believe that our inner thoughts and feelings have an effect on the outcomes in the world. Think about watching a sporting event and believing that our enthusiasm is actually helping our team. Or think about “liking” a cause on social media and believing that we have actually made a difference.
In a recent interview on the Hidden Brain podcast, Emily Pronin, an Associate Professor of Psychology at Princeton, talked about the problem of self-deception. She said we aren’t usually aware of how our minds are processing incoming information, so we tend to act automatically based on our previously constructed paradigms. We act first and then try to come up with reasons for our choices and actions.
Further, our own subjective conclusions feel as if we have used reasonable, objective data to make our judgments. But the majority of the time information is coming to our senses too rapidly to reason out. We are mostly reacting to information rather than processing it rationally. In other words, our paradigms, good or faulty, are determining our reactions. Pronin said that education on self-deception strategies is only marginally helpful – it mostly gives us words for what we perceive others are doing but we fail to see it in ourselves.
When we consider our inability to know how we’re deceiving ourselves and how we’re mistakenly judging the behavior of others, it can give us a sense of helplessness. We might resonate with the despair of Jeremiah: “The human heart is most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is (Jeremiah 17:9)?” Or perhaps we would cry out with Paul, “Who will save me from this body [and brain!] of death (Romans 7:24)?”
Thank God, the answer is found in Jesus.
The only way to know who we are, to know who God intended us to be, is to see ourselves through Jesus’ eyes. Jesus is the only lens through which we can understand ourselves, others and the world around us. Jesus alone can redeem us and reverse the consequences of our rebellion against God’s good and perfect ways. When we trust him, Jesus takes our broken relationship with God and restores it beyond anything we could ever imagine. He also takes our shattered sense of identity and peels back the layers of self-deception until we see again the image of God inside us. Through Jesus, we can see God, ourselves and others more clearly. Jesus is truth and only through his lens can we come to know the truth.
So, what is our part? Well, it’s the best deal ever! We show up and open up to Jesus and he does the rest. But however meager our part, we do have a part to play and choices to make.
Self-knowledge is an art. It involves humility, diligence and vulnerability, and the acronym ART can be helpful for understanding the process by which we show up to Jesus and become acquainted with our true selves.
The “A” stands for “Admit.” Admit that you are powerless to know yourself apart from Jesus. This is the first step for all of faith, life and recovery. It’s what Jesus told us to do in his Sermon on the Mount when he said, “Blessed [or “O how lucky!”] are the poor in spirit” – those who recognize their need for God. If we don’t admit that we have a problem, we won’t be inclined to look for a solution. And self-deception is a big problem that is largely unseen by those caught in its grip. And that’s all of us.
So, Admit that you are deceiving yourself, and Admit that you are powerless to do anything about it apart from the soul-searching truth of Jesus. When we start there and turn to Jesus in our helplessness, he draws us closer. And because he is light, as we come closer to him the dark places in our lives are illuminated bringing us to an awareness of what needs to change so we can be the people God intended us to be.
And what is our part in drawing near to Jesus? We show up in humility and learn from Jesus and then act on what we’ve learned. That’s the “R” in the acronym: Renew your mind.
In his letter to Jesus followers in and around Rome, Paul said “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think… (Romans 12:2, NLT),” or as another translation of the Bible puts it, “…be transformed by the renewing of your mind (NIV).”
We already saw that when Peter wrote about supplementing our faith with knowledge, he wasn’t just referring to head knowledge. For transformation to happen we need to act on the knowledge we receive. It’s simply not enough to study the Bible or listen to lots of sermons and Christian podcasts. Unless we are purposeful about having our thoughts and attitudes changed by God, and unless we live out that change in our actions, we aren’t renewing our minds. We’re just consuming lots of information. And information disconnected from obedience is not transformative.
After Peter’s list of all we need to “add to our faith” in order to share in the divine nature of Jesus, he writes this: “The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1:8, NLT emphasis mine).” There’s “knowledge” word again, but this time the word in Greek is “epignosis” which indicates a knowledge that is reflexive or intuitive. It’s as though Peter is saying that when we have been purposeful about Renewing our minds - turning knowledge into obedient action - at some point we begin to see and react to the world around us through the lens of Jesus. At that point, the light of Jesus has literally Renewed our minds by transforming our previous ways of thinking – our paradigms. We come to share in the divine nature of Jesus by learning and obeying.
In the ART of self-knowledge we Admit our need for Jesus, we Renew our minds by learning and obeying, and then we “Test” ourselves by engaging others. Following Jesus is a personal and communal way of being in the world. We weren’t created for a solely individual relationship with Jesus – we need others to act as a mirror to help us see who we really are and to help us understand how we are deceiving ourselves. James wrote: “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” Opening ourselves up to trusted spiritual friends is a great way to Test our self-knowledge and receive healing for our faulty thinking.
When we seek out other Jesus followers who are willing to speak truth to us (and who are open to us speaking truth to them), we grow in our self-knowledge and our ability to be the people we were created to be. It’s a vulnerable activity that takes real courage, but if we are willing to Test our perceptions by soliciting feedback about ourselves, Jesus will lead us to new depths of self-knowledge.
Studies have shown that two of the best sources for knowledge of our blind spots are our boss and our spouse. It may sound like a risky proposition to ask one or the other of those to help us see what we’re missing about ourselves, but courage and vulnerability can open the way for real growth. If we are willing to Test our self-perceptions by laying down our defenses, listening deeply, and then acting on what we’ve learned Jesus can and will use our experience of Christian community to transform us.
The ART of self-knowledge then is as follows:
• Admit your need for Jesus
• Renew your mind by drawing near to Jesus and acting on what he tells you
• Test your self-knowledge by engaging other people to tell you the truth
It’s not a one-and-done process. It’s more like a continuous improvement loop that we will need to repeat over and over.
Paul explained that before we commit our lives to Jesus, it’s like a veil covers our understanding. But when we give our lives to Jesus, he removes the veil so we “can see and reflect the glory of the Lord.” Paul goes on to make this amazing statement: “…the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him [that is, Jesus] as we are changed into his glorious image (2 Corinthians 3:18, NLT).” As we follow Jesus, he transforms us into people who think and act like him. We begin to resemble Jesus – to share in his divine nature!
So the next time you feel the need to defend your position remember that your way of thinking might just have some flaws that you can’t see. Instead of digging your heels in deeper stop to pray and take the first step: Admit your need for Jesus. And then Renew your mind by showing up consistently to be with Jesus through time in prayer and the Bible – especially the Gospels. And when Jesus gives you knowledge, act on it in obedience. Finally, step out in courage and Test your self-knowledge by asking others to point out your blind spots and help you see yourself for who you really are – the good and the not so good.
And when you’re tempted to judge someone else based on their behavior, remember that you can’t see their inner thoughts and motivations. So stop to pray and give grace. After all, we’ve been given more grace than we could ever imagine.
Self-deception is a ubiquitous malaise, but there is a cure. If we partner with the Master Artist and willingly join him in the ART of knowing ourselves, over time Jesus himself will peel back the layers of deception and show us who we were meant to be. We will be transformed into his masterpiece becoming more and more like him and displaying his marvelous glory to the world.
