On my flight back to the States I read a book that I’d heard talked about by some of my co-workers. It’s called Leadership and Self-Deception and takes a thoughtful look the way our inclination to ignore the needs of others results in the kind of self justification and self-deception that ruins whole organizations, families, and individual relationships.
The book is published by the Arbinger Institute which seems to have ties to Brigham Young University. While it always makes sense to look for the philosophy and theology behind a book, I became deeply impressed with how effectively this one describes our common inclinations.
In short, the authors suggest that our problems begin when we “betray ourselves” (i.e. expose our own failure to live up to a higher purpose) when we fail to consider the humanity of others who are as needy as ourselves for consideration and help.
The result, according to the authors, is that when we notice or sense that we have neglected the needs of others, we naturally look for a way to justify what we have done. Just like our first parents in the Garden, we try to deal with our sense of wrong by shifting blame to something or someone outside of ourselves. This inclination to self-justify, results in a distortion of reality that causes us to see ourselves as better than we are, and others as deserving of our neglect or harm.
Over time the authors describe a process by which our pursuit of self-justification and self-deception results in an ever increasing failure to recognize each others’ humanity. The result is that we actually become pathetically dependent on our mutually negative opinions of one another to justify our own lack of common decency.
While the book may sound like a downer, it eventually suggests the discovery of freedom and shared humanity when we begin to doubt our own lack of virtue, and begin to look for solutions that help us rediscover our need of and love for one another. It shows how futile it is to try and change one another, tolerate one another, or ignore our mutual faults– without a radical change of heart.
The book remains “secular” in language and does not move directly to any kind of spiritual redemption. But it remains a short step from our need for a Savior and the grace-sourced life of truth and love that he offers (Isaiah 53).
In any case, having just left the “sheep fields of England” I found the book valuable because it seems to resonate so deeply with what a number of you have expressed over the last week. There are reasons the Bible describes us as wandering sheep.
As we drove the narrow winding roads, and walked public footpaths through the beautiful hills of the Lake Country, we kept finding sheep that had managed to escape their walled and gated pastures. Yet even then, as they wandering dangerously on narrow roadways, they seemed to be like eating machines in search of little more than something more to consume.
Admittedly, once we make the application to ourselves, the sheep becomes amazingly innocent by comparison. Identifying with these “consuming machines” may not feel like an especially honorable comparison. And it gets worse before leading us to a far better place. Just think—if it’s really true– how naturally we move from real food to an amazing capacity to consume self-deception, and then one another, in an ongoing effort to justify the betrayals of ourselves, our God, and one-another…that tell our story.
Imagine what it would mean if it were not for the heart, plans, and faithfulness of our Good Shepherd (John 10:11-14).
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