THE ELUSIVENESS OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE

Self-knowledge is to the wise as eyes are to the race-car driver. As the driver will crash without sight, any ordinary person will eventually crash without self-knowledge.

If it is true that to manage anything well, we must first understand it, it is also true that we need to understand ourselves. If we lack the knowledge to put the gas in the gas tank and the water into the radiator, our car will soon become inoperative. Should not the same be true when it comes to managing our lives!

Many have observed that self-knowledge and self-examination are critical to our lives.

The psychologist, Carl Jung, noted that:

·       Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”

We might even add to Jung’s observations that we will not be able to understand others, their motivations and actions, until we first understand our own. Consequently, we have to look inward.

This is the message of most world religions. The Book of Proverbs exalts wisdom and self-examination:

·       The purpose in a man’s heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out. Many a man proclaims his own steadfast love, but a faithful man who can find? (Proverbs 20:5-6)

Proverbs hints at the main problem of self-knowledge. We really don’t want it. We would rather think thoughts that are comforting like, “I am a wonderful person.”

In “Stillness Speaks,” mystic and New Age Guru, Eckhart Tolle, suggests that wisdom and self-knowledge merely through stillness and self-observation:

·       Wisdom comes with the ability to be still. Just look and just listen. No more is needed. Being still, looking, and listening activates the non-conceptual intelligence within you. Let stillness direct your words and actions.

However, it seems that far more is necessary. Many of our pundits have commented on the difficulties of acquiring self-knowledge:

·       If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion. (The Perennial Philosophy, Aldous Huxley (1894-1963))

·       There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's self. (Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist and philosopher)

·       Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world. (Miguel de Cervantes)

·       Other men's sins are before our eyes; our own are behind our backs. (Roman philosopher Seneca (4 BC-65))

Why do we run from self-knowledge? It is just overwhelmingly painful:

·       Unless we can bear self-mortification, we shall not be able to carry self-examination to the necessary painful lengths. Without humility there can be no illuminating self-knowledge. (“A Study of History,” Arnold Toynbee)

As many point out, true self-knowledge is humbling. However, with this humbling process, there can be no illumination.

As a result, many psychologists have observed that normalcy is self-delusion. One representative study reported:

·       “In one study of nearly a million high school seniors, 70 percent said they had “above average leadership skills, but only 2 percent felt their leadership skills were below average.” Another study found that 94 percent of college professors think they do above average work. And in another study, ‘when doctors diagnosed their patients as having pneumonia, predictions made with 88 percent confidence turned out to be right only 20 percent of the time.’” (Abcnews.go.com;; “Self-images Often Erroneously Inflated,” 11/9/05)

There findings are pervasive. In “Positive Illusions,” psychologist Shelley Taylor sums up the evidence:

·       “Normal people exaggerate how competent and well liked they are. Depressed people do not. Normal people remember their past behavior with a rosy glow. Depressed people are more even-handed…On virtually every point on which normal people show enhanced self-regard, illusions of control, and unrealistic visions of the future, depressed people fail to show the same biases.” (214)

Perhaps pain isn’t so bad? Perhaps it’s even necessary! Sadly, once the psychological torment passes, these aggressive tumors return.  Taylor confesses:

·       “When depressed people are no longer depressed, they show the same self-enhancing biases and illusions as non-depressed people.” (p.223)

This demonstrates that these “self-enhancing biases and illusions” are entirely human and serve to explain why we flee from self-knowledge. We are simply addicted to the pleasure of having and inflated self-esteem.

But is this addiction harmful? Taylor and others believe that an inflated self-esteem is necessary to get us going in the morning. But doesn’t this addiction also exact a high price?

Psychologist Roy Baumeister has extensively researched the relationship between high self-esteem and performance:

·       For three decades, I and many other psychologists viewed self-esteem as our profession’s Holy Grail: a psychological trait that would soothe most of individuals’ and society’s woes. We thought that high self-esteem would impart not only success, health, happiness, and prosperity to the people who possessed it, but also stronger marriages, higher employment, and greater educational attainment in the communities that supported it. (http://imaginefirestone.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/RethinkingSelf-Esteem.pdf)

• Recently, though, several close analyses of the accumulated research have shaken many psychologists’ faith in self-esteem. My colleagues and I were commissioned to conduct one of these studies by the American Psychological Society, an organization devoted to psychological research. These studies show not only that self-esteem fails to accomplish what we had hoped, but also that it can backfire and contribute to some of the very problems it was thought to thwart. Social sector organizations should therefore reconsider whether they want to dedicate their scarce resources to cultivating self-esteem. In my view, there are other traits, like self-control, that hold much more promise.

An inflated self-esteem is also associated with arrogance, lack of humility, self-righteousness, and also heightened relational problems. How then to break this addiction?

First of all, we need to become aware of the heightened price we are paying for our self-delusions. This can only come through suffering. However, more than suffering is needed. As Taylor had written, once the pain passes, so too does an accurate assessment of ourselves.

I found that facing my weaknesses, inabilities, and failures is so painful that I had to run from them, even after the intervention of five highly recommended psychologists. Instead, it was only through the love, forgiveness, and assurances of Jesus my Savior that I could begin to endure the truth.

People will kill when they are dishonored. This should give us some appreciation of how tenaciously we cling to our honor and high self-regard. Jesus had to show me that there was something better than my distorted self-appraisal. He showed me that I would do far better by living for Him than for myself.

I am still pained to see myself as I truly am. However, He reassures me that it is no longer about me but Him:

·       I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)

May He always remain first in my life!

“I’M SPIRITUAL; I’M NOT RELIGIOUS”

These words serve as the mantra of today’s seekers. It is their “declaration of independence” from organized or established religions. It also represents the expectation of finding spirituality within oneself and not through the preaching or teaching based on an ancient book or tradition.

What then is spirituality? Whatever you want to call it! And nobody can judge you for it as long as you are willing to forgo judgment of others’ spirituality, as long as it is not organized. However, this form of spirituality is also coming out of the seminary.

In his most recent book, The Future of Faith, liberal professor emeritus of the Harvard Divinity School, Harvey Cox, celebrates the shift in Christianity away from fundamentalism and its emphasis on doctrine to “spirituality” and social activism. He favors a doctrine-less faith – a faith we experience and perform, not something we believe. (You might ask, “What beliefs enable us to understand our experience and direct our social activism? This vacuum will be inescapably filled by the beliefs of society.)

Cox suggests that the Biblical revelation is entirely unnecessary. He asserts that one can be a “practicing Christian, but not necessarily a believing one.” This makes the teachings of the Bible irrelevant, and Christianity merely becomes a matter of good deeds, and “salvation” becomes a matter of personal attainment. In describing his liberation from his Baptist roots, he explains:

·       We have been misled for many centuries by the theologians who taught that “faith” consisted in dutifully believing the articles listed in one of the countless creeds they have spun out. (18)

However, Cox’ prime targets are the Biblical teachings themselves, which, according to Cox, are irrelevant:

·       I also became friends with several students who seemed to me to exemplify the Christian life better than some of the taut fundamentalists, although they were not particularly concerned with being doctrinally correct. (16)

For Cox, this constitutes a slam-dunk. But what does it mean to “exemplify the Christian life?” For Jesus, we first have to be set free (John 8:31-32) from the lie before we could step into the light of God:

·       “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” (John 3:19-21)

Evil can come in many forms. Perhaps its most dangerous form is self-righteousness, which poses as virtue, even godliness. Therefore, Jesus had warned that the most vicious forms of persecution would come from those who were convinced that they were spiritual:

·       “They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. And they will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor me.” (John 16:2-3)

How can this be? Don’t think for a moment that this was because they were following religion instead of spirituality and God instead of their own inner promptings. About them, Jesus warned that their religion was just a show and that they didn’t even believe the Law of Moses (John 5:44-47). Instead, their religion, spirituality, and social activism were all about themselves so that they could look good in the eyes of the world.

Spiritual pride is a life-controlling, self-righteous, and blinding force. It tells us that we are right even in the face of all the evidence to the contrary:

·       Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the heart. (Proverbs 21:2; 16:2)

Can finding spirituality within ourselves heal us of such blindness? Instead, our normal tendency is to see the things that we want to see. We believe those things that will make us feel good about ourselves.

The evidence for this is overwhelming. We want to be flattered and surround ourselves with “yes” men, people who will make us feel good about ourselves and not those who will tell us what we need to hear.

Consequently, when the psychotherapist advertises her services, she doesn’t say, “Come to me and learn the truth about yourself.” Instead, she says, “Come to me to reduce your unwanted symptomology.”

Of course, many will object to this characterization, but why? We want to believe that we are really seeking after truth, even though this postmodern culture has rejected the existence of objective spiritual truth. It is offensive to us to think that we are motivated to think pleasant, “spiritual” thoughts about ourselves at the expense of truth thoughts.

Is my assessment valid? Yes! It is even largely affirmed by the psychotherapeutic community.

In Positive Illusions, Psychologist Shelley E. Taylor argues that “normalcy” involves layer upon layer of self-delusion. Nevertheless, she argues that these delusions are necessary and positive:

·       People are positively biased in their assessments of themselves and of their ability to control what goes on around them, as well as in their views of the future. The widespread existence of these biases and the ease with which they can be documented suggests that they are normal.

·       Normal people exaggerate how competent and well liked they are. Depressed people do not. Normal people remember their past behavior with a rosy glow. Depressed people are more even-handed…On virtually every point on which normal people show enhanced self-regard, illusions of control, and unrealistic visions of the future, depressed people fail to show the same biases. (214)

If the “normal” are more self-deluded than the “abnormal,” what should be the therapeutic goal? What represents a therapeutic success story? Learning to see ourselves as we truly are? Not according to Martin L. Gross:

·       “The ideal patient must be suggestible. He should be able to easily absorb dogma and ideas of the most abstract, even outlandish dimension. He should be philosophically adaptable and able to ape the therapist’s value system and biases. The more he agrees with the therapist, the better his chances of being helped. This conditioning process is at the core of all faith healing, magic and religion. Psychologist David Rosenberg checked out the connection between improvement and value-conditioning in psychotherapy. He found that those rated as ‘improved’ had changed their moral values in sex, aggression and authority in the direction of the therapist’s own prejudices. Those who had been rated ‘unimproved’ had tended to hold out.” (The Psychological Society, 48)

We do not gravitate towards truth but to comfort. What does this suggest about finding one’s own spirituality? These findings do not bode well for this pursuit.

Instead, the Bible insists that we must first be changed from Above. But how? By the Spirit working through the Word of God – the very object that many have claimed to be irrelevant!

Jesus repeatedly pointed to the relevance of the Word of God in His final pre-cross teaching and prayer (John 14-17):

It is through Scripture that we love God and enjoy His presence:

·       Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me. (John 14:23-24; 15:6-14)

How are we transformed? Again, by the Spirit applying Scripture to our hearts and minds:

·       Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. (John 15:3)

When Jesus was praying to the Father, He expressed the same truth:

·       Sanctify [cleanse] them in the truth; your word is truth. (John 17:17)

Jesus understood that the truth of Scripture transforms. We cannot perform spiritual surgery on ourselves. This surgery must be performed by God Himself through the truth. Nor can we lift ourselves off the ground. Someone else must do this for us.

This sounds strange to modern/postmodern ears, which tend to regard experiences as transformative, not truths. However, right before this, Jesus had prayed:

·       “But now I am coming to you [Father], and these things I speak [Scripture] in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word…”(John 17:13-14)

How can truths or teachings produce joy? As a Zen Buddhist, late psychiatrist and writer, M. Scott Peck, wrote the esteemed best-seller The Road Less Traveled. Fifteen years later, he wrote Further Along the Road Less Traveled to bring us up to date with his spiritual pilgrimage. During these years, Peck observed that his Christian patients were improving. Peck concluded:

·       The quickest way for you to change your attitude toward pain is to accept the fact that everything that happens to us has been designed for our spiritual growth.

·       Now what better news can there be than we cannot lose, we are bound to win? We are guaranteed winners once we realize that everything that happens to us has been designed to teach us what we need to know on our journey.

Peck found that believing these truths proved transformational. Consequently, Peck gave up meditation on his changing inner states in favor of meditation on Scripture.

How do we grow in love? According to Jesus, the Word plays a central role:

·       I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them." (John 17:26; NIV)

How can Jesus’ teachings produce love? When we come to know how beloved and protected we are, we too will love. We will be largely freed from the tyranny of having to seek the approval of others. Freed from their opinions and confident of God’s opinion of us, we no longer have to resent those who do not give us what we want and need. We are freed up enough to begin to look to the needs of others.

However, this is a process:

·       So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you WILL KNOW the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31-32)

However, this is a painful and humbling process of stripping away the layers of self-righteousness and self-deception, and few are willing to bare it.

Real self-examination (spirituality) is so painful that few can tolerate it. I couldn’t, even after the counsel of five highly-recommended psychologists. Instead, we blanket ourselves with “positive illusions” in favor of true but negative and depressing self-knowledge. We run from the light and anyone who will focus the light upon us and into the comfort of darkness and delusion. However, we run to people who will stroke our self-esteem.

What “positive illusions” do we feed to ourselves? Well, I convinced myself that I was better than others in all regards. Although, deep down, I knew better, I nevertheless believed that I could handle anything. However, this was a drug that required increasingly greater doses to get the high. Meanwhile, my delusions were removing me from reality and from meaningful relationships. When we refuse to see ourselves, we also have blinded ourselves to reality and to others.

How did the truth set me free? It taught me that there was something better than my false spirituality – a Savior who loves, forgives, and gave His life for me. Only with the assurance of His love could I endure His penetrating light.

God, the Evidence, and its Denial

In a debate against a theist, atheist Justin Schieber argued that if God exists, he would have gladly provided ample evidence of his existence so that humanity would be able to “freely respond to God’s grace.”

Schieber then correctly anticipated the Christian response that God has already amply revealed Himself, but humanity has gladly rejected Him.

Schieber then roughly responded:

·       This is arrogance of biblical proportions to dogmatically claim that all humanity has rejected the evidence of God… There is no reason to believe that this is true.

Schieber is seriously wrong about this. The experimental evidence that humanity is in denial about uncomfortable knowledge is rampant. In a New York Times 2007 article, “Denial Makes the World Go Round,” Benedict Carey, by virtue of the overwhelming evidence, concludes:

·       Everyone is in denial about something; just try denying it and watch friends make a list. For Freud, denial was a defense against external realities that threaten the ego, and many psychologists today would argue that it can be a protective defense in the face of unbearable news, like a cancer diagnosis.

·       “The closer you look, the more clearly you see that denial is part of the uneasy bargain we strike to be social creatures,” said Michael McCullough, a psychologist at the University of Miami and the author of the coming book “Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct.” “We really do want to be moral people, but the fact is that we cut corners to get individual advantage, and we rely on the room that denial gives us to get by, to wiggle out of speeding tickets, and to forgive others for doing the same.”

These observations are extensive within the world of clinical psychology and perhaps most apparent in the field of addiction:

• The concept of denial calibrates widely shared ideas about language with the clinical regimen that characterizes mainstream American addiction treatment. Since the 1930s, denial has stood at the ideological center of the field and has enjoyed a wide range of professional adherents across otherwise distinctive theoretical orientations. As in so many contemporary addiction treatment programs, the professionals I studied believed that addicts are—by definition—unable to clearly see themselves. By extension, they also believed that addicts are unable to speak about themselves and their problems authoritatively. 

Psychologist Shelley Taylor writes that denial does not just apply to the addict but to humanity as a whole:

• As we have seen, people are positively biased in their assessments of themselves and of their ability to control what goes on around them, as well as in their views of the future. The widespread existence of these biases and the ease with which they can be documented suggests that they are normal. (Positive Illusions, 46)

Taylor adds that:

• On virtually every point on which normal people show enhanced self-regard, illusions of control, and unrealistic visions of the future, depressed people fail to show the same biases. (214)

However, she observes that once the depression lifts, “normal” people return to denial and other forms of self-deception.

Psychologist Harold Sacheim also had argued that self-deceptions are normal and even “profitable”:

• Through distortion, I may enhance my self-image, not because at heart I am insecure about my worth but because no matter how much I am convinced of my value, believing that I am better is pleasurable. Such self-deceptions may prove to be efficient in constructing or consolidating a solid and perhaps even “healthy” identity.

Perhaps denying the evidence for God might also be “pleasurable.” God not only interferes with our autonomy, awareness of Him also brings disruptive guilt feelings.

Psychologist Roy Baumeister has extensively researched the relationship between high self-esteem and performance. He concludes:

• There are now ample data on our population showing that, if anything, Americans tend to overrate and overvalue ourselves. In plain terms, the average American thinks he’s above average. Even the categories of people about whom our society is most concerned do not show any broad deficiency in self esteem. African Americans, for example, routinely score higher on self-esteem measures than do European-Americans.

In other words, we have a great capacity to believe those things that make us feel good and to deny those realities that threaten our self-esteem and autonomy. The existence of God threatens our self-esteem, exposing our falsely constructed self – the delusion that we are worthy people.

In contrast to this, Schieber claims that there is no evidence of any widespread denial of the evidence for God. Meanwhile, many atheists have even admitted that they don’t want there to be a God. Others have admitted that by going to extra step, denying freewill, they have been able to assuage their guilt.

The Bible claims that we all have the truth but choose to deny it (Romans 1:18-21). We love darkness rather than the light of truth (John 3:19-20) – the very substance of the experimental findings.