Self Love and Self Deception Here are a few loosely connected thoughts: The person who lies has first lied to themselves. Have you ever lied to yourself? On Facebook I see a correlation between self love and self deception: those who are the most preoccupied with themselves are the most deceived, and these are the ones who are the most disturbed by the truth of God’s Word (I’m talking about professing Christians) So their deception springs from self deception. I see individuals who have believed they have an elite calling and who claim to experience esoteric things above the normal Christian life, like travelling to heaven regularly, and then I observe that these same people then sink into times of deep despair and even suicidal thoughts – The higher they go the harder they fall. But then they will lie to themselves and say that the reason they have become suicidal is bcos they are so elite, so specially chosen and anointed by God, and therefore the devil has specially targeted them. In fact it’s the opposite, they have allowed the devil to deceive them into thinking they are elite, which is pride, and their self love, their preoccupation with self led to self deception: so it’s a vicious circle, a treadmill they are running on. I pray for such people for deliverance from this trap of self deception. It is so dangerous. If it goes unchecked it can lead to insanity. There are many in mental institutions who claim to have a unique, elite relationship to Jesus. What was the root of that? Pride. But they lied to themselves and told themselves it is not pride, it is not sin, so they became self deceived. A person preoccupied with themselves is not preoccupied with Jesus, no matter how much they may claim to be, or spiritualize it, or claim to know Him and be used by Him. The irony or the clincher here is that the person who is constantly talking about their esoteric experiences with “Jesus” is actually still preoccupied with themselves, they have just spiritualized their pride and deceived themselves. The Bible is true. Jesus said that unless a man deny himself (deny the right to be preoccupied with himself) he cannot be His disciple. And when we deny ourselves then we deny ourselves the fleeting empty vanity of self love. A man who has denied himself cannot love himself. When you are caught up in the love of Christ, that you are loved by Him, then self love becomes irrelevant bcos the focus is now Christ and not you: Christ becomes the object of your love, not you. Any man who truly loves Jesus Christ also has Christ’s perspective of him – he sees himself as Jesus sees him (the Jesus of the Bible) and that is the only safeguard against self deception. …For men shall be lovers of their own selves… 2 Tim. 3:2a Quotes from the Wikipedia article on Self-deception: "Self-deception is a process of denying or rationalizing away the relevance, significance, or importance of opposing evidence and logical argument. Self-deception involves convincing oneself of a truth (or lack of truth) so that one does not reveal any self-knowledge of the deception." "It has been theorized that humans are susceptible to self-deception because most people have emotional attachments to beliefs, which in some cases may be irrational." "One deceives oneself to trust something that is not true as to better convince others of that truth. When a person convinces themself of this untrue thing, they better mask the signs of deception." "Self-deception lowers cognitive cost; that is to say, it is less complicated for one to behave or think in a certain manner that implies something is true, if one has convinced oneself that that very thing is indeed true. The mind will not have to think constantly of the true thing and then the false thing, but simply convince itself that the false thing is true." "Humans deceive themselves in order to better deceive others and thus have an advantage over them." ianvincent.wordpress/
Posted on: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 02:02:32 +0000
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