The Lie We Tell First
Mistaking ourselves for impartial judges
Most of us have become remarkably good at recognizing when someone else is lying to himself. The relative who reads three market panics into every headline. The friend who has never once, in a decade, been the common denominator in his own string of broken relationships. The public figure who explains away every contradiction as though reality itself were conspiring against him.
We recognize these patterns almost instinctively.
We are considerably worse at recognizing them in the one person whose judgment we seldom think to question: ourselves.
Scripture Turns the Mirror Around
Scripture refuses to let us leave the conversation there. It does not merely observe that other people deceive themselves. It turns the mirror around.
“Every way of a man seemeth right to himself: but the Lord weigheth the hearts.” (Prov. 21:2)
The point is universal. Left to ourselves, we find it easy enough to mistake confidence for correctness.
Jeremiah presses the point even further.
“The heart is perverse above all things, and unsearchable, who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9)
Jeremiah’s target here is closer than the world’s deceit, false teachers, or wicked men: the very faculty through which we judge all three. We cannot step outside ourselves, examine our hearts as detached observers, and assume the conclusion is objective. The instrument by which we discern truth is itself among the things most in need of being purified.
The Lord teaches the same lesson, not first by explanation but by encounter. When the scribes and Pharisees dragged before Him the woman caught in adultery, they came convinced they understood both the facts and the justice of the matter. They saw her sin clearly enough. What they did not see was themselves. Christ answered them with a single sentence:
“He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” (John 8:7)
St. John tells us that, “being convicted by their own conscience,” they departed one by one. They entered the scene certain of another person’s guilt. They left confronted by their own.
Why does this happen? Why does the human mind, even when it sincerely desires to do what is right, so often arrive at conclusions that seem strangely favorable to its own interests?
When the Intellect Serves the Will
The answer begins with the distinction between the intellect and the will. The intellect is ordered toward truth. The will is ordered toward the good. Neither faculty was created to oppose the other. Before sin entered the world, the intellect perceived reality rightly, and the will loved what was truly good. The Fall did not destroy either faculty, but it disordered their relationship.
The will rarely rejects truth by declaring open war against it. It usually begins by becoming attached to something besides the truth itself. It grows attached to reputation, to comfort, to vindication, to a cherished grievance, or to an image of itself that has become too painful to surrender.
From that point on, the intellect begins doing something it was never meant to do. Instead of presenting reality as it is, it begins searching for reasons why the will should be allowed to cling to what it already loves.
The process seldom feels dishonest. On the contrary, it usually feels entirely reasonable. That is precisely what makes it so dangerous.
St. James gives us a glimpse into this interior process with a word that deserves more attention than it usually receives.
“But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.” (James 1:22)
The Greek participle translated “deceiving your own selves” (παραλογιζόμενοι) is something closer to home than being fooled by another man’s lie. It is more a man reasoning himself into error, his reasoning drifting from the truth while he never stops believing he reasons correctly. Reason keeps walking. It is simply no longer on the same road as truth. The logic has not disappeared. It has changed masters, and it now serves what the will has already chosen.
James returns to the same theme only a few verses later.
“And if any man think himself to be religious, not bridling his tongue, but deceiving his own heart, this man's religion is vain.” (James 1:26)
The deception is reflexive. While the world’s influence and the devil’s temptations are real, what James is naming here is a man who becomes an active participant in his own blindness.
The Beginning of Self-Knowledge
The saints understood this well. Among them was Augustine, who prayed, Noverim me, noverim Te: "Lord, let me know myself; let me know Thee." He understood that self-knowledge and the knowledge of God rise and fall together. A soul unwilling to see itself truthfully will not see anything else truthfully for long.
Recognizing self-deception in others is often necessary. The greater challenge is learning to recognize it in ourselves. Every insight that stops with our neighbor has missed its nearest and most important application.
One of the surest ways to become difficult for others to deceive is first to become difficult for ourselves to deceive. The man who has learned to question his own excuses, to examine his own motives, and to welcome correction has already removed the strongest ally any deception could hope to find.
That is where every serious examination of conscience begins. It begins not by asking whether someone else has been dishonest, but whether we have.
One question, then, is worth asking: What have I become so attached to that my mind has quietly begun justifying it instead of judging it?
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Editor's Note: This essay is the first in a four-part series exploring the nature of self-deception and the pursuit of self-knowledge. Each essay develops a distinct aspect of the argument before a concluding essay draws the threads together into a practical account of overcoming self-deception through the wisdom of Scripture and the saints.