I caught myself in a lie the other day. Oh, it wasn't to someone else. I was lying to myself. I caught myself saying, "You always get the short end of the stick." It wasn't true.
Telling the truth is a problem for human beings. I suspect, however, that our biggest problem isn't lying to others as much as we lie to ourselves. We are, in fact, somewhat schizophrenic in our lies to ourselves. We tell ourselves we're losers when we're not really so bad. We tell ourselves we're pretty good people when we're not really so good. We tell ourselves we're "all that" when others don't quite see it that way, and we tell ourselves we're "not so much" when others see us differently. We think we're stupid when we're not so stupid and we think we're pretty smart when we're not so smart. We tell ourselves we're useless without recognizing how much others need us and we tell ourselves we're indispensable when much around us can do without us. We tell ourselves we're moral when we're not and we tell ourselves we're evil when we're forgiven. We're pretty sure we can handle anything at all when we're weaker than we realize and we see things we are called to do as impossible that aren't impossible for God. We see ourselves as pretty wise in areas that the Bible describes us as fools and we see ourselves as pretty foolish when it really isn't so. We're too fat, too thin, too tall, too short, too smart, too stupid, all depending on the circumstances and all likely 180° out of phase with reality.
Isaiah warns, "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil." Paul says of Natural Man, "Claiming to be wise, they became fools." Jeremiah (quoting God) describes us this way: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" Jesus described Satan as "the father of lies". That's God's assessment. I suspect that many of the lies we tell others are products of the lies we tell ourselves. Either we justify those lies with our own or we have so extensively lied to ourselves that we actually believe the lies we're telling others.
We have a problem, it seems, with lying. We lie first to ourselves and then to others and we recognize it irregularly because, after all, we suffer with deceitful hearts that we don't even understand. Telling others the truth is important. It's called "integrity". Telling yourself the truth is just as important. It's called "thinking soberly". Both are hard for us. Both ought to be a priority for us.
6 comments:
Yep... I'd say that meaty paragraph of what we tell ourselves is a pretty fair assessment of me! What tangles of stupid muck are so often in my mind; I pray daily for God to cleanse it and teach me to be honest.
Thankfully, God has put people in my life who constantly remind me to "examine myself" or to ask God to "search me" (Psalm 139:23). My mom has always been one to diligently dig deeper into herself to examine her true heart and her true motives; she's always encouraged her kids to do the same!
My mom is really good at holding my feet to the fire over lies I tell myself about myself. Good mothers, eh?
This reminds me of Greg Koukl from Stand to Reason. While discussing the issue of his daughter's self esteem he answered the question, "don't you want your daughter to have a good opinion of herself?", with "I want my daughter to have a true opinion of herself". That was a pearl.
Okay, Dan, just to let you know, I wrote tomorrow's blog before you wrote this comment. (It's titled "self-esteem".) :)
There you go... great minds, or is that mines?
I've always gotten a kick out of how, often, when a person will be complaining about how "bad" his or her spouse, child, or self is to someone else and their listener then actually AGREES with them, the person complaining doesn't like that! He or she will then begin defending the offensive one and essentially calling their listener a liar. It can seem "okay" for US to say something derogatory about our own, but NOT so much for others to do that! (How dare they!) The "truth" about how "bad" someone is sort of changes mid-stream. Ha! This can actually be kind of a good thing, because it can cause the complainer to see things in a different light.
Along this same line, have you ever noticed just how vehemently many people will defend their religion even if they have had NOTHING to do with it in years and have even been complaining about it themselves? If you want to create sudden renewed interest in it for them, just say something negative about it!
Aren't we funny creatures sometimes? Deceived about our deception. Very good post, Stan.
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