The story of Bernice

Why is it so hard to tell ourselves the truth? During my Cal State Fullerton days I met Bernice—attractive, available and interested. After our first date she said, “I never know how to say ‘thank you.’” On the next few dates she found out. Hugs escalated to kisses and eventually to long couch sessions.

It felt good but I was puzzled. I assumed women were the sexual gatekeepers and that most women had sturdy boundaries, But Bernice seemed to have none. Instead, I felt her drawing me in. I felt the urge to embrace longer, to move faster, further. I began having fantasy dreams. My conscience told me God disapproved. I could not justify a sexual relationship, even to myself. I knew I needed to deescalate. But instead, I began working on my self-deception (SD) project—lying to myself. I told Bernice I loved her. Maybe I thought that telling her would make it so, or that the declaration would justify my passions.

I told myself that she was dialing up our passion, not I; that I wasn’t forcing her into anything; that we would marry (eventually, maybe?). That I was under complete control and could stop at any point. That premarital sex wasn’t so bad. That God would forgive me (later). But lust is like scratching a scab. Scratching feels good. Soon you’re compelled to scratch, obsessed with scratching, even if it gets bloody.

What was this doing to her? I wasn’t even thinking about how our passions might affect Bernice. Later, after she started dating someone else, she came to me teary-eyed and said, “I can’t stop!” My behavior had clearly perforated her already porous boundaries.

All the while the voice of conscience was telling me: “You’re headed for something you know is wrong. You must respect her, regardless of how she behaves. You aren’t in love; just in lust.” Eventually, conscience won out, or more accurately, a loving God restrained me from doing something stupid. Later years have only confirmed my gratitude to God that I turned away from my lustful promptings. But the point is, I almost talked myself into it. I just about bought the flawed logic. I just about violated a deeper good in favor of a lesser. My self-deceived reasoning almost led me to disaster.

Although my tryst with Bernice did not rise to the level of “petting” (as our elders called it), sexual fantasies still disturb me today. A few years ago I was alone in my motel room, four thousand miles from home. Flipping through the TV channels, I came across a pornographic movie. I quickly kept flipping (but memorized the number so I could avoid it). I approached the same channel again and thought I’d better verify that it was the porn channel (so I could avoid it). Then I got hooked. I told myself I was powerless to change channels.

Classic self-deception—I talked myself into a lie so that I could fulfill an intense desire that would work against my long-term interests. The experience shook me. Immediately afterward I repented and my resolve stiffened. But why did I even give myself permission?

Self-deception (SD) is so common. People say all the time—“I know I shouldn’t but… It’s only this one time… I’ll quit tomorrow…. Rules are for other people… I can drive over the speed limit because I’m more skillful (or intelligent)… It won’t hurt anybody….”

Even statisticians play the lottery and believe they’ll win, although they know that statistically they’ll lose money. People say “I’ll stop smoking tomorrow,” and mean it, but no real intention, no plan, and the next day, the conviction fades.

What is SD anyway? It seems contradictory—believing two opposite things at the same time. It’s distinct from other deceptions because in SD, the deceived and the deceiver are one person. It’s not just bad judgment or ignorance, because in those, there’s no deceiver involved. It’s not a mental illness, unless you allow that all people on the planet are mentally ill.

In SD, you yourself are both the deceiver and the deceived. You give yourself permission to do something that your “better angels” knows is wrong. You privilege the immediate over the future, the short-term over the long, the easy over the hard, your own needs over those of others. You deceive yourself when you start acting on the lies you tell yourself, lies you know aren’t true.

Why I eat junk food

Like most people, I have two contradictory desires: to satisfy my food cravings and to live a heathy, long life.

When I was a teenager, I didn’t hear much about nutrition. I knew I needed Vitamin D (milk) and I knew I needed protein. That was about it. I was skinny, so I didn’t worry about getting fat.

Every weekday while I was waiting to pick up my papers at the Orange Daily News, I would walk next door, put a dime in the pop machine (it was a long time ago), and get a cold bottle of Coke. Then on the way to my paper route I would stop at the gas station and buy a Heath candy bar. I ate all the dessert I could get hold of. Once I bought a quarter pound of fudge, took a chaste bite, and then devoured the whooole thing in ten minutes [for your ears, only—it was totally worth it]. Even today, I favor ice cream and chocolate over leafy vegetables, carrots, peas, and green beans.

My wife, the voice of reason, fights a faithful but futile battle against my cravings. She cooks healthy meals even though I still major on desserts. She says, “I give up! Eat what you want. But don’t expect me to take care of you when you get sick” (an empty threat). She’s already picked out my tombstone epitaph: “I tried to tell him, but he wouldn’t listen.”

Despite all I’ve learned about nutrition, despite the scientific evidence, despite my wife’s rational suggestions, I still eat junk food.

There’s a reason I eat this way—I’m an SD expert. I tell myself: “I eat better than my friends. I’ll eat better next week. I know a guy who ate junk food and lived into his 90s. Just this one time. I’ll take just one piece.”

Do I believe these lies? Well, it’s complicated. The best explanation is that I believe the lie now. (Why spoil a great experience!) Then, just after eating, I can repent and listen to the voice of reason. This allows me to preserve my self-respect, to see myself as a rational, disciplined person. But of course, my repentance is a lie also and my fake resolve doesn’t motivate me to change my behavior.

SD is always motivated—you practice SD because you want something. What you want is to have your cake and eat it too—to act on one conviction that contradicts a different conviction. You want to enjoy a delicious taste, avoid the hard choice, satisfy an immediate desire, or give yourself permission to violate a moral code. You have reasons to deceive yourself.

What’s wrong with a little SD?

Why worry about a little innocent SD? Because it’s not innocent. The stories above show how SD can be dangerous, or deadly. SD promotes lazy, habitual behavior that may lead to addiction. It represents a divided care for yourself, and works against a healthy, integrated personhood. Most serious, it tempts you to “self-divinize”— to substitute your own flawed judgment for God’s.

SD works because of our compartmentalized brains. Each of us has a “reptile” brain—the amygdala—older, simpler and associated with instinctual behavior such as fight or flight. In addition we have a neocortex (“new brain”) that is rational and deliberating—the part of our brain that says, “Wait a minute—will this serve your long-term interest?” We can call the amygdala “Junior,” and the neocortex “Mother.” Junior does what he wants to do; Mother does what she plans to do. SD occurs when we let Junior bully Mother.

 The story of the city in a bowl

Looking back, I recognize that my flying days produced the most vivid examples of SD. I based in San Cristobal where we flew the Mission Aviation Fellowship plane out to little airstrips across southern Mexico.

San Cristobal de Las Casas (in Chiapas State, Mexico) lies in a huge bowl circled by towering peaks. All the rainwater courses down a huge, natural ground hole at one end of the bowl.

One day, I’m stuffing a missionary family and their belongings into the small Cessna 180. They’re traveling from Yaxoquintelà (a jungle training camp for Wycliffe Missionaries) back to San Cristobal. A norther has blown in, and clouds lie like cotton balls over the mountains and down into the valleys, so I’m flying just below the clouds at 8,000 feet, following the Comitán road. The road winds through a narrow pass and then plunges down into the San Cristobal bowl.

The afternoon light fades as I eye the narrow pass through the blurry rain. I see that I could barely slip through the pass clear of clouds. Or, we could turn around now and head to nearby Tuxla Gutierrez, a large town beyond the mountains with a good airport, lights, and good weather. At this point, I know a few things: a) We’re at high altitude and engine performance is reduced. b) Transiting the pass is a high-risk operation, and who knows the weather conditions in the bowl? c) I’m a good pilot, better than average. d) If we landed in Tuxla, we’d have to find overnight lodging. Suddenly I resolve to try getting through to San Cristobal. We high-jump the pass and dive into the bowl.

Except now I can’t see the ground. There’s no opening ahead, just solid clouds and rain, even though the airstrip is only five miles away. It would be deadly trying to climb out through the clouds with mountains all around. I must turn around and go back through the pass. But we’re in a narrow canyon and we’re well below the bowl rim. And is the Comitán pass behind us still open?

I pull on flaps to shorten our turn radius and make a steep bank left, narrowly clearing the encircling clouds. But now I’m looking at the high pass directly in front and above me. At best angle of climb we barely squeak out over the rim. Then we circle outside the bowl to the right, find a crack in the clouds, and descend to land in San Cristobal just at dusk.

In flying, as in so many other endeavors, it’s amazing how your vision and judgment clarifies after you’re back home sitting in your easy chair. You can call it cockpit judgment vs. armchair judgment. Safely at home, I reflect on the irony. In bad weather, when you make a good decision and return to your departure airport or divert to another airport, your passengers criticize and grumble and you feel like a failure. If you make a bad decision and forge ahead, the passengers praise you for your amazing piloting skills. And you feel good that you’ve accomplished your mission! But now I reminded myself of certain fatality statistics in similar circumstances. I knew I made a bad decision, and I felt guilty. Of course, my San Cristobal passengers didn’t know that I had made a foolish decision—to continue through a cloudy mountain pass at dusk.

I repented, and vowed never to do that again. But of course I did do similar things again, all employing sturdy rationales. This is classic SD, built on the lie that I am an exceptional pilot and can beat the odds. But in truth, the exceptional pilot would have put prudence and passenger safety over convenience. It’s true: there are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old, bold pilots.

Why tell myself lies? These lies arise out of a mental “board of directors.” SD occurs when one mouthy, loud, ignorant board member trumps all the other members and argues for the act. I let mouthy Junior (the reptile brain) drown out Mother’s voice (the more rational neocortex). I, the chair of the board, found myself trying to persuade Mother to accept Junior’s shortsighted, dangerous suggestion.

SD comes in many guises: overconfidence; seeking immediate rather than long-term gratification; choosing the easier, rather than the better action. “Rationalization” means constructing a plausible reason for doing something I shouldn’t do.

One common type of SD discounts probability statistics. People make good yes or no choices, but if an outcome is only probable, they make poor choices. For example people might say, “I could win the lottery!” “It can’t happen to me,” “I drove 30 miles over the speed limit and got away with it.”

The simplest airplane to fly

One day I jumped into an Ercoupe (“the simplest airplane there is to fly”), a plane I’d never flown before. I did a takeoff and landing in 50 mph winds, despite knowing that I should have gotten a thorough checkout before flying that plane. I just about wrapped it up in a little aluminum ball.

In Amarillo, Texas, I took three passengers on a sightseeing flight in a twin-engine Cessna 310, and decided to do a practice shutdown of one engine. Bad judgment doing this with passengers and I also used wrong procedure. The engine did not immediately restart, and we almost ended up landing in the weeds.

A different time (in Venezuela), I crammed seven small schoolchildren into the MAF Cessna 185 and leaded for Tama Tama, an hour away through heavy clouds. We flew blind for thirty minutes, and when we broke out I saw rain and lightning ahead. We were low on fuel, and I should have diverted to Santa Barbara, but that would have meant overnighting with these children on a remote, abandoned airstrip. So I grabbed the control wheel with my sweaty palms and flew through the rain and storm. Flying only 200 feet above the curving Orinoco River, we pushed ahead until I glimpsed Tama Tama airstrip through the bleary windshield. If I had failed to find Tama Tama, I would have had insufficient fuel to fly back to Santa Barbara.

What were the lies I was telling myself? In the Ercoupe incident, I convinced myself I was an expert pilot who could safely fly a strange airplane in high winds without a thorough checkout. In the 310, I convinced myself I knew emergency procedures well enough that I could safely stop and restart an engine, even though I had very few hours of experience in the airplane. I didn’t know what I didn’t know until it was too late to learn it. In the Cessna 185, I convinced myself that risking fuel exhaustion over a hostile jungle was more acceptable than the prospect of spending the night at a strange, abandoned airport with seven young children—I chose convenience over safety.

How tell yourself the truth?

If self-deception is so common, if it is corrosive and harmful, how do you avoid its traps?

You should begin by naming the deception; stripping it bare it so you can see it as it is. You must tell yourself the truth. For Bernice, above, I should have told myself the truth—that I did not love her.

Another good idea—when you fly (or drive), ask yourself, “What are the risk factors on this trip?” (bad weather, illness, nighttime, distractions, etc.) Tell yourself the truth about the risks.

You must prepare your defenses against SD ahead of time. Before I fly, I make a “Go-No Go” list, specifying the conditions under which I will cancel the trip. I establish rules about my health (exhaustion, illness, anger), airplane condition (rough engine, malfunctioning instruments, quantity of fuel), and weather conditions (e.g., demanding a cloud forecast that is scattered but not broken or overcast). If my neocortex creates these clear rules ahead of time, I’m less likely to violate them when the pressure is on. After making these checklists, it’s good to over-train—practice procedures you already know, so that in an emergency you’re more likely to do the right thing.

You need “accountability partners,” people who will tell you the truth. For instance, I promise my pilot friends that I will confess to them my safety violations—and let them scold me. When flying, I can ask myself, “What would my pilot friend Sam do in this situation?” We need accountability partners.

Beyond self-discipline and accountability groups, I can embrace my true identity in God. As the poet says, “Man [Mortals] cannot name himself. He waits for God, or Satan, to tell him who he is.”

How beautiful to exchange a distorted view of oneself for a godly view. Christian conversion means rejecting SD and letting God define me. I can confess sin and pray for forgiveness, for insight and discipline. I can see the world clearly with a God-s-eye view. This is the best antidote for SD.

 A final story—fuel valve trouble

When I was in Honduras, Paul, our program manager, asked me to fly the Piper Pacer—a nasty little fabric-covered plane that drops like a rock when you pull back the power and prefers going down the runway tail-first. I’d never flown a Pacer before so I assumed I’d get a thorough checkout. But Paul said, “Simple airplane. Just take ‘er out and make several practice landings. You’ll be fine.” I was too proud to admit I needed a thorough checkout. Plus, the flight was today and it was urgent—a sick patient needed to be flown to the hospital. So I quieted Mother’s voice in my head and listened to Junior. I told myself: Simple airplane. I’m experienced and highly-skilled. No problem.

But on the return flight I switched to the right fuel tank and the engine quit! Was the valve broken? The fuel line clogged? I switched back to left tank; the engine roared to life. But I wasn’t certain I had enough fuel to make it back on only left tank. I called base and said I was going to divert and land nearby and please bring fuel out to me. John, my fellow pilot, said, “Aw, you’ll have enough fuel—just come on in.” John’s confidence (how did he know?) and Junior’s voice in my head encouraged me to “come on in.” I did and landed with minimal fuel.

Then I checked the fuel valve, located down by my left knee. I noticed that you turn the valve left for Right Tank, straight up for Left Tank, and to the right for Off. I had mistakenly turned the fuel valve to Off!

No checkout. Didn’t read the manual. Bad judgment. Pride. Hurry. Classic SD.

Self-deception is common but subtle and has many complex causes. We can practice raising our consciousness about its dangers, we can make good decisions ahead of time and stick to them, and we can create accountability partners to check our bad judgment. And finally, we can know that we if we humble ourselves, God will lead us into truth.