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1/15/2012 - by Chuck Monan, Preaching Minister
Each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body.
— Ephesians 4:25
The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; Lying to others is relatively an exception.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
In recent years there has been an explosion in the numbers of psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists and others who view humanity through the lens of evolutionary theory. They have offered up Darwinian explanations for lust, love, infidelity, status-seeking, mental illness, violence, patriotism, politics, economics and religion.
With Robert Trivers’ The Folly of Fools, we can add lying and self-deception to the list.
Trivers, an evolutionary biologist, has influenced a host of intellectuals from Edward O. Wilson to Richard Dawkins to Steven Pinker who calls Trivers “an underappreciated genius, and one of history’s greatest thinkers in the analysis of behavior and emotion.” In this book Trivers tackles the question of why lying plays such a prominent role in so many lives, including his own.
Calling deceit a “deep feature” of life, even a necessity, Trivers cites examples from childhood forward to state that we use our large brains and communication skills to become master dissemblers. We play and manipulate others. We engage in “confirmation bias” which leads us to seize on facts that bolster our preconceptions and overlook contradictory data.
We wittingly and unwittingly exaggerate our own strengths, while denigrating those outside our group as well as sexual and economic rivals. Reviewer John Horgan asks,
Fooling others yields obvious benefits, but why do we so often fool ourselves? Trivers provides a couple of answers. First, believing that we’re smarter, sexier and more righteous than we really are — or than others consider us to be — can help us seduce and persuade others and even improve our health, via the placebo effect, for example. And the more we believe our own lies, we can lie to others. “We hide reality from our conscious minds the better to hide it from onlookers,” Trivers explains. But our illusions can have devastating consequences, from the dissolution of a marriage to stock-market collapses and world wars.
Throughout the book Trivers recalls instances in which he has lied to girlfriends (many), wives (two), children (five), and colleagues. He recalls walking down the street with a young woman when he spots “an old man on the other side of her, white hair, ugly, face falling apart, walking poorly…” Trivers suddenly realizes he is seeing his own reflection: “Real me is seen as ugly me by self-deceived me.”
Consider all the wallop packed by that sentence. On all kinds of levels.
The Bible doesn’t support the idea that we are simply purposeless, accidental beings controlled by selfish genes. But too often our behavior doesn’t offer much of an argument to the contrary. We can offer up all kinds of excuses for our behavior, but in the end they are only excuses. We alone are responsible for what we do.
Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). When we refuse to make excuses for our dishonesty, we are ready to begin this exciting quest.
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Are We Afraid to Tell the Truth? |
1/8/2012 - by Chuck Monan, Preaching Minister
Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.
— Prov.15:22
Advice, n. The smallest current coin.
— Ambrose Bierce
If you were seeking advice, would you take it from someone who lost his savings, his marriage, and suffered several nervous breakdowns? A lot of people are doing just that.
James Altucher is a shaggy-haired 43-year-old venture capitalist who has made and lost fortunes. Now he is turning his misfortune into a source of wisdom and comfort for the despondent. Bloomberg Businessweek’s Roben Farzad writes,
(Altucher) shares his insecurities and psychic traumas with 30,000 Twitter followers and on his blog, the Altucher Confidential, which he says has had 10 million page views since he launched it a year ago. His self-published book, I Was Blind But Now I See, has ranked as high as No. 2 this year in Amazon.com’s motivational book category, and he’s publishing a comic book about his life. “I think the role James fulfills in the post-crash world is beacon of hope,” says Joshua Brown, a financial adviser who blogs as the Reformed Broker. “I know it sounds corny, but no one has been more forthcoming about how the torn economic fabric of this country has affected him personally. The message is always centered around him still being here – that there’s life after financial near-death.”
By all accounts, Altucher knows his stuff. But it isn’t just his business acumen that is attracting a legion of followers; it is his unflinching honesty about the life he used to lead and the problems he caused that has struck a chord. “A year ago I had a revelation. I’ve failed time and again, hurt myself and others, woke up angry and scared at three every morning. I needed to open up and share,” he says. Last year, Altucher started posting confessions on everything from business failure and sex to death and depression. Shortly after launching his blog, he learned that the top search query bringing readers to the site was “I want to die.” He posted about the times he had considered ending it all and how he managed to persevere.
Altucher does not gloss over his mistakes or make excuses for his greed and hubris: “How much happier would I have been if I had said in 1999, ‘You know what, I have enough cash now to live forever and pursue creative, charitable, or spiritual pursuits so I could become a better person.”
Isn’t it telling that great numbers of people are going to a venture capitalist for advice and honesty?
Perhaps one reason why is that, far too often, church is seen as a place where everyone has it all together, where no one has any substantive problems. In such an environment, what place could there be for someone who has made a mess of their life?
Except none of us has it all together. All of us have failed. All of us have problems. All of us struggle.
Maybe if we weren’t afraid to tell the truth, more people would be coming to us for advice.
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