I want to deal with the topic of deceitfulness and since I cannot handle it all at once I decided to create a menu where I can keep all the topics together and give a rough outline of each article as I create it. What follows is the links to each article.
But why spend so much time examining deceitfulness? The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
Jeremiah 17:9 [KJV]. The point here is that if you are deceived then you cannot but deceive others and we all are because we all own hearts.
Classifications of deceitfulness
I think that for my purposes deceitfulness can be classified into inherent deceitfulness and malicious deceitfulness. I plan to deal with the inherent kind first. We can seek to militate both. I believe that awareness is the key to eliminating the first kind while the second is a persistent weakness in character. That is not to say that just being aware will of itself eradicate the first because it will not. It is the second kind that I would consider deliberate sin and has no place in a Christian if we consider that it is possible to be like Nathaniel.
John 1:47 [KJV] Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and saith of him, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!
Also bear this in mind. This is presented that readers may examine themselves not as an authoritative psychology thesis. The emphasis is on self examination not proving to anyone the validity of any psychological approach or analysis. Consider the definition of self-deception
First published Tue Oct 17, 2006; substantive revision Mon Nov 7, 2016 at Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Virtually every aspect of the current philosophical discussion of self-deception is a matter of controversy including its definition and paradigmatic cases. We may say generally, however, that self-deception is the acquisition and maintenance of a belief (or, at least, the avowal of that belief) in the face of strong evidence to the contrary motivated by desires or emotions favoring the acquisition and retention of that belief. Beyond this, philosophers divide...
Inherent Deceitfulness
Under the heading of inherent deceitfulness I plan to deal with how we deceive without any preconceived intention to do so.
Everybody is deceived to some degree and it is dangerous to ignore that fact.
The limitations of the mind almost ensure that we will be deceived from time to time
The difference between knowing that you know and believing that you know
What believe has a lot to do with our point of view.
Being deceived has a payoff which some people may find to enticing to abandon
Deceitfulness can have disastrous consequences
There is an antidote for self deception
Our whole youth is deceptive
How is it that people still get so much mileage out of statements like, Everything has a way of working out in the end
?
Cowardice or frugality relates to whether or not we take care of things that fall into the category of things that we can control.
The shocked look on the faces of people who have been rejected by the judges in contests may seem comical to us, but they are genuinely unaware of how poorly they have performed having been misled by their illusory superiority.
People cannot be completely trusted in their allegiances and we should think twice about our motives
We should not have time to waste comparing ourselves with people. In these cases our assessment is often used maliciously or stupidly to create a false sense of wellbeing. Whether the person is better or worse than we are does no make is any better to the one who has to judge.
Self-handicapping was first defined in 1978 by Steven Berglas and Edward Jones as “any action or choice of performance setting that enhances the opportunity to externalize (or excuse) failure and to internalize (reasonably accept credit for) success.
When people gain an understanding of new information (cognition) it can create disharmony or discord (dissonance) between previously held attitudes, beliefs or behaviours. This disharmony creates irritation and produces a feeling of mental discomfort.
The truth is that we are never perfect. In everything that we do there is room for improvement and God only accepts us because we are giving it our all. He accepts us because of our attitude. One of the surest ways to incur rejection instead of acceptance is pride. This is the lesson we learn from Cain and others.
Malicious Deception
The articles above are about being innocently
deceitful. Some people are malicious in their deceit and I hope to get to that.
Deception as Folly
This type of deception falls somewhere in the middle. It is the type of deception that we often see Christians fall prey to. It comes from a lack of proper fear of God. It is the opposite of Godly wisdom as we find out from Ecclesiastes, and it is where Christians typically end up harming ourselves. There are examples in both the Old and New Testaments. I hope to get to that as well.