Moral Insincerity

Proverbs 3:26, “For the Lord will be your confidence and will keep your foot from being caught.”

I am not your typical reader. I very seldom take information at face value. Typically, I would not pass on an opinion unless I emphasized it was not mine or researched it to assure myself I could defend it. That is why I found this piece of research interesting. Zoe Chance, associate professor of marketing at Yale University, did a study on self-deception. This study showed how ingrained self-deception was.

Romans 12:3, “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.”

In the study, Ms. Chance first gave two groups of subjects an IQ test. One group was given the test without an answer key; the other had the answer key at the bottom of the test. The group with the answer key did better. The deception comes in when they were asked to retake the test without the answer key and predict their outcome. The second group predicted that the outcome would be the same. They fooled themselves into believing that they had known the answers. Of course, it wasn’t the same; they all did more poorly. Even when the subject group was given a financial incentive for predicting the outcome, they still guessed wrong. The lure of financial gain did not deter them from overstating their performance. In reality, even money could not puncture their inflated self-belief.

There have been several studies on the concept of moral insincerity. They all demonstrate that if we lie to ourselves enough, we begin to see it as a truth. Self-deception allows us to overlook the repercussions on others so that we can believe we are generally acting morally.

“Self-deception means that we can continue to see ourselves as good people” – Uri Gneezy.

I came face to face with this in my life. About a decade ago, I realized that I had inflated my self-worth.  Over the years, I have slowly and methodically enhanced my past. They were all baby steps, no out-and-out lies, just little exaggerations. I was taking historical license to my own story. I crafted the narrative to fit the circumstances. My experience proved that if you do this long enough, you create a person who never existed.  Ah, to be that person.

Hebrews 10:35-36, “So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.”

I am still struggling with undoing the narrative and rediscovering the truth. I try to avoid discussing personal accomplishments so that I may get back to the truth and not confuse people with what I have said in the past; I don’t want to present a false humility. I had to go back into my past documents to rediscover the truth. It had been molded, bent, and compromised to the point I didn’t know it, and it was my life; I lived it.

I don’t think I am alone in wanting to matter. We all want the life we’ve lived to mean something. Earlier in life, I didn’t know what that phrase meant. I thought living a life that meant something was to accomplish material gain or status. Now I understand that the world that God created consists of relationships, not accomplishments. To matter is to have changed a life for the better. It is to allow someone else to stand on your shoulders to reach higher than you could. To be something is to drive an eternal emotion of gratitude from someone else.

I say this as both a confession and an encouragement. God has made us incredible creatures. What we can accomplish seems endless. The beauty, artistry, and creativity He embedded within us is amazing. When we focus on worldly temporal goals and achievements, we limit our true potential. When we focus on changing a life for eternity, we realize our potential.

2 Timothy 1:7, “For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.”

To accomplish that potential in God’s Kingdom doesn’t require you to be anything more than who you are. The bumps and bruises are the battle ribbons of being human. Falling short yet standing firm is a better story than succeeding. The character of a Godly person accepts failure as a learning experience. The side roads and the rabbit trails are the cautions we pass on that make the next generation stronger.

Ephesians 4:29, “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”

We spend too much time watching videos of other people’s perfect days and aspiring to live them. Influencers dictate self-view and drive moral insincerity. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among children and adolescents aged 10–14 and adults aged 25–34 years.  In 2020, men died by suicide 3.88x more than women. 

2 Corinthians 12:9, “But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”

When we start lying to ourselves, we start the destructive process of elevating expectations in others. When we only present the positive side of our life experiences, we subtly teach others that negative experiences are taboos. We don’t deceive ourselves to harm others, we do it to embellish ourselves, but the harm still happens. It creates a slowly eroding sense of worth, of not keeping up.  

Be good to yourself. Love who you are and who God made you. Encourage others that imperfections are what makes us unique. See that when you lie to yourself about who you are, you not only harm your self-perception, you create a false expectation in others.

1 Corinthians 2:3-5, “And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”