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Education
Self-Deception for the Common Good
by
Gregg Ten Elshof
Truth is over-rated. And it’s no easy thing to over-rate Truth. After all, believing what’s true is
extremely
important. But it’s not always the
most
important thing. Occasionally something else is more important. That’s why God has graciously given us the ability not only to conceal from our friends and loved ones truths it would harm them to know, but also to avoid the truth ourselves.
Of course, it’s usually a very bad idea to avoid the truth. We look with a mixture of pity and scorn on the spouse who can’t recognize the obvious signs of infidelity, or the employee who, having blinded himself to the clear indicators of poor job performance, is utterly shocked when he’s finally let go. And we’re sickened by the director of the non-profit organization who genuinely fails to see the illegitimacy of the purchase of a private jet with donated funds.
But, for better or worse, God has created us in such a way that we are not slaves to rational standards in the formation of our beliefs. We are, within some limits, free to believe things even when we know them to be highly improbable. And we have the amazing capacity to barricade from consciousness truths we have reason to avoid. God didn’t have to do this, of course. He could have created us with little or no control over the direction of our awareness and in such a way that our beliefs always befit the evidence at our disposal. And, ironically, reflection on the good that can come of self-deception can ease the way toward the eradication of its destructive instances.
Understanding the capacity to deceive oneself as a God-given capacity to be celebrated will likely make it easier to admit to myself that I’m caught up in self-deception. And the freedom to acknowledge my own self-deceptive capacities is the first step in the direction of eliminating their inappropriate deployment.
But what good could it possibly do to deceive myself? Why might God have given us these capacities which so often contribute to our ruin? A few examples may bring to light the possibility that truth, while extremely valuable, may be trumped by other deep goods.
If a lunatic is trying to kill you and asks me for your whereabouts, you won’t be too disappointed with me, I trust, if I purposefully conceal the truth. If it comes to it, I won’t hesitate to lie (though I might start by trying to evade). So we can have good reason to conceal the truth from others. But can we ever have good reason to conceal the truth from ourselves?
Terminal cancer wards are full of patients who believe (despite damning statistics to the contrary) that they will beat the disease or that they’ll be the recipient of a miracle healing in response to the prayers of friends and family. And there’s some reason to think that believing as much makes survival slightly less radically improbable.
Though he’s failed countless times in the past, the heroin addict manages to work up the belief that
this time
he’ll quit. He’s probably wrong. But the belief itself is an important ingredient in the recipe for the
possibility
of success. And what about the addict’s friend? Ought the friend to believe he’ll quit this time? Should he really believe? Or should he just feign belief in order to facilitate the attempt? Love hopes and believes all things. Love is optimistic—sometimes in the face of evidence that warrants pessimism. Perhaps love and loyalty sometimes require something less than perfectly rational standards for the beliefs we take on about the ones we love.
Beyond these circumstantial cases, there are two realities that, were I to confront them in their fullness, would likely undo me completely: the unveiled glory of God and the depth and severity of the sinful condition of my heart. Fortunately God has given me the capacity to come to grips
gradually
with these realities by allowing me to conceal from my own view that which, at present, I can’t handle.
So let us celebrate our God-given capacity for self-deception and, in so doing, better position ourselves to identify and eradicate its illicit deployment. Perhaps self-deception is like sexual intimacy. For each, there is the tendency to lose sight of the narrow range of appropriate expression within which it is something to be cherished and encouraged because of the virtually infinite field of potential abuse.
Gregg Ten Elshof (Ph.D., University of Southern California) is Professor of Philosophy at Biola University and Director of the
Biola University Center for Christian Thought
(
@BiolaCCT
). His book,
I Told Me So: Self-Deception and the Christian Life
(Eerdmans, 2009) won
Christianity Today
’s 2009 Book Award for Christian Living.
Editor's note: This piece was posted as part of a partnership with Biola University.
Image by
alusiaaa.
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