We don't think about self-deception much in our culture.But the Bible does. For example:
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17.9)In the past warnings regarding self-deception were common. Now, though, we talk about being "authentic" and "true to ourselves" in a way that insists there's not really a way we might be deceiving ourselves.
The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rocks and make your home on the heights, you who say to yourself, "Who can bring me down to the ground?" (Obadiah 1.3)
If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. (Galatians 6.3).
And it's odd. Because the research -- not to mention the simple daily experience -- would tell us how very inauthentic that is.
And we Christians seem to be among the worst at this.
Christians worry about a great many vices but we rarely warn against self-deception.
Self-deception is everywhere. Social Psych studies support just how radically deceptive we are toward ourselves. In one study, 94% of us think we do a "better than average job" in our places of work or how 100% of us think that we are "better than average" in getting along well with others. Clearly there's some self-deception at work in all this. Think about the people you will encounter today at work. All of these people think they are "better than average" in getting along with their coworkers! Obviously, some of these people are seriously deluded. (I, of course, don't fit that mold. Yeah, I know ...)
So self-deception is everywhere and it affects our ability to be honest with ourselves. But we have trouble following the advice of the ancients. We have trouble admitting we might be self-deceived. Why is that?
Here's the thing: When we promote vices in severity we have a hard time admitting that we do them. The more severe the vice the greater the social and emotional cost to recognize its effect upon us.
Think about racism.
Many of us, myself included, have a hard time these days admitting that we correlate the significance of a person's existence with the color of his or her skin. This hasn't always been so. There have been times and places -- in fact, there are places now -- where people would have no trouble at all recognizing they correlate the significance of a person's existence with the color of his of her skin. They may or may not use the word, but they have no trouble with the idea that they are, themselves, racist.
In the recent history of developed western society, though, racism earned a well-deserved promotion in the ordering of vices. This is all to the good. But with that promotion came an increased emotional cost in the recognition, "I am a racist". If racism is worse than we thought, then it's harder than it used to be to admit to yourself that you're a racist. And it's at this point that life offers us the self-deception deal. You can experience the satisfaction that rightly belongs to the person who steers clear of the vice of racism if you can but convince yourself that you're not a racist. Unsurprisingly, a great many people take the deal.
Why bring all this up?
Simple: It's Lent.
Self-deception of this sort is rampant within the Christian community. And it's not that people are being hypocritical (although many are). People really do believe they aren't afflicted by a variety of vices, racism included.
Beginning with Kierkegaard, the existentialists (including Sartre, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and others) elevated authenticity to a place of primary importance in their understanding of the virtues. Due to the writings of the existentialists and other cultural trends, the "Good Person" was increasingly understood to be the "Authentic Person". Being true to oneself became a -- or, in some cases, the -- chief good. Self-deception, then, was given a promotion in the ranking of vices. What was once a derivative vice -- one whose primary importance was found in its ability to facilitate other, more serious, vices -- became itself the most egregious of all sins.
In all the pressure to be "authentic" or "real", we simply can't admit how self-deluded we are. I'm a self-deceived person, and Lent is that time to take a good look at the real me in the mirror.
If Lent is the time the Church does some genuine self-examination, then Lent's repentance necessarily involves the difficult work of penetrating into our self-deceptions.
Lent must be the hard work of exposing the lies we tell ourselves.