Overcoming Our Delusional Selves

There have been multiple times in my life that I can say that I was lying to myself.  Generally, each of these times was marked by a man (me) who was pretending to be living life the right way and deceiving myself into believing this to be so.  However, without fail each of these times was ended abruptly when God hit me with reality and I came face-to-face with the how my life's understanding of what was true stood in discord with what was actually true.

To understand how this would feel, for those who have not experienced what it feels like when truth slams your falsity in the face, I want to paint a picture that might give some insight and protect us from getting so wrong.  For if we continue to deceive ourselves and remain concealed from the truth, we will inevitably be crushed by truth when we are forced to see it.  Imagine, then, for a second a situation like this:

A young man jumps off of the 124th floor observation deck of the largest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.  For a few moments the laws of physics are suspended and the young man falls in slow motion.  As he passes each floor, he has a brief conversation with each window he descends passed.  Every conversation has the terrified person asking the young man with great fear and care, "Are you okay?" To which the young man shocks the person by replying, "Yeah, I'm great!  This are going well and looking good."

Despite the young man's delusion at his present predicament, the truth will hit him as he splatters onto the ground.  The bystanders that watch him cooly pass by them can try with all their might to persuade him to see the reality of his situation, but he continues to lie to himself and neglects reality and the truth will crush him when the the pavement strikes him.

The point is to point out the danger in delusion.  Aren't we all masters at rationalizing our behavior and claiming to be in the right no matter how dire our trajectory may be.  Instead, we should strive vehemently to continually realign to the perfect Word and will of God.  In this way, we will be protected from falling ignorantly like the man above.  But praise be to God who always brings us back to Him!