My Self Deception

Recently I converted my worn down, elderly, copy of God in the Dock from a box in storage to my “download” library. In doing so consternation set in upon discovering that the book was originally published in England under a different title. The book was titled Undeceptions. 

This amazement caused my exploration as the reasons for the title change and found that "Undeception" was the word Lewis used to describe a startling experience of awareness—moments when deception is uncovered and the cause is seen clearly from within, moments when blind spots are replaced with reality. He was taken with these awakenings or undeceptions in many of the characters of Jane Austen. In much of Austen's work, he observes, "the undeception...is the very pivot or watershed of the story.”

I seems to me that Lewis would unquestionably tile my story the same. Undeception and Bill Prather. "Undeception" was no doubt a word that fittingly described his startling experience of being brought into the kingdom of God kicking and screaming, the most reluctant convert in all England. It was that experience through which he saw himself, the world, and its creator for the rest of his life.

Just yesterday, having breakfast with a friend, I recognized, yet another, blind spot when encountering God. He called my attention to the fact that he was well aware of the way God was specifically calling him. It was kinda like: “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it"  which woke Jacob to his own deception. He didn't wake up declaring that the God who was once absent had now appeared. He said, "God was here all along and I was the one who didn't see it." As I ruminate this morning, a long dead friend of mine use to refer to pivotal encounters like Jacob's dream as "thin spots"—moments in life where the nearness of God is nearly palpable. Other theologians describe such encounters as openings or baptisms, windows or transcendence. Still others give testimonies similar to the man born blind in ancient Jerusalem. Forced to explain to the Pharisees the unexplainable moment he had with Jesus, he mustered the only words he could think to describe it at John 9:25: "Only one thing I do know. I was blind but now I see."

My inner eye is a bit more focused when reading John Bunyan, in his book Grace Abounding, is describing  a day when he was inexplicably released from doubt and despair.  Not unlike me many times during the past few years, while passing through a field, troubled in conscience and fearing that all was not right, the sentence fell upon his soul: "Thy righteousness is in heaven." Plam 85:11b Writes Bunyan, "I thought I saw with the eyes of my soul Jesus Christ at God's right hand. There was my righteousness. Wherever I was, or whatever I was doing, God could not say of me that I lacked his righteousness, for that was ever before Him. Moreover, I saw that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor my bad frame that made it worse, for my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself."

Bunyan's encounter was for him an experience of undeception. I think that his story is, more than coincidence, also just another example of a soul not seeking experiences of self-awareness or even experiences with God, but one seeking the Lord, His kingdom, and His holiness, and in seeking finds it all.

I confess that this has never been easy and most of the time painful. When I have come to the place of willfully putting my vision of life into God's hands, and watch as I see a concoction of spit and mud, my soul seeks relief from fear and seeks God earnestly for courage to move boldly forward.  Self-deception is a difficult thing for me to own up to, and far too often it is easier to see the deception in others than it is to see in myself.

These blinders I have walked with through life, God in his mercy must remove. Opening my reluctant eyes, the Father shows me with his radiance the darkness I've been squinting in, even as God prepares me to see or may never see the great and unsearchable.

Father, God, Almighty, I see more clearly now!  Thank You for my friend David, Bunyan, Lewis, and one after another in biblical and recent history with who I count privileged to know.  The defining characteristic of their encounters with You has taught me that their willingness (even reluctant willingness) to see the deceptions within myself and to bring those deceptions to the feet of the One who has made them visible.  Your love and mercy are to my life the shining undeceptions that unwearyingly move me to see and completely rest in Your grace.  Amen