“The Conscience Chart”: Self-understanding vs Self-deception; Religious Performance vs Being

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Introduction: Self-knowledge and Self-deception

Even the Ancients understood that true knowledge begins with accurate self-knowledge. To the degree that the words inscribed over the oracle at Delphi were “Know Thyself.” With Socrates responding to Euthydemus’ questions in a dialogue of Xenophon with the following words:

“Then did you notice somewhere on the temple the inscription ‘Know thyself'?”

“I did.”

“And did you pay no heed to the inscription, or did you attend to it and try to consider who you were?”

“Indeed I did not; because I felt sure that I knew that already;

for I could hardly know anything else if I did not even know myself” (Xenophon, Memorabilia, 4.2.24-25).

And we could continue further to Socrates next question:

“Is it not clear too that through self-knowledge men come to much good, and through self-deception to much harm?” (4.2.26)

With his answer

“Those who do not know and are deceived in their estimate of their own powers, are similarly disposed toward other people and other human affairs.

They know neither what they need,

nor what they are doing,

nor those with whom they converse;

but being wholly mistaken (diamartanō) in all these respects, they fail to come to the good and stumble into the bad” (4.2.27).

And we could point to these same themes in Plato’s dialogues, from Phaedrus, 229e-230a to the Apology, 21d-22a to Protagoras, 343b, etc.

The question for us, however, 2500 years later is whether this is actually true?

Do our own self-deceptions lead us to be “wholly mistaken” (diamartanō) both in regard to ourselves and towards others (with that particular Greek word intensifying the later NT term for “sin” (hamartánō)?

Or more positively, does wisdom actually require an accurate understanding of ourselves which then enables us to better understand others?

From Socrates to Augustine a thousand years later…and Calvin in the next millennia

The counter to this focus on self-knowledge is the question:

Shouldn’t we actually seek to take the focus off of ourselves?

And the answer to both is:

“Yes.

And yes.”

The inescapable reality is that without precise knowledge of ourselves (our temperaments, our strengths, our weaknesses and their accompanying pathologies), our relationship with ourselves, with others and even with God Himself will continually be plagued by our own cognitive distortions and self-projections.

Augustine will go on to write nearly a thousand years after Xenophon and Plato,

“I have become a question to myself and that is my weakness” (Confessions 10.3)

As Augustine came to know, which was taken up by Calvin centuries later, this knowledge (or ignorance) of self will extend to God Himself:

“Our wisdom, in so far as it is deemed true and sound wisdom, consists in two parts:

The knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves” (Calvin, Institutes, I.1.1).

Blinding: From where?

The problem, however, is our blinding.

A blinding partially due to our own pathologies, those inherited from our families, those passed down through the cultural systems in which we have been raised and educated in addition to those religious systems through which we have been churched.

And over all this, the is the further reality that our own understanding (nóēma) has itself been blinded:

“whose understanding (nóēma) the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe,

lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them (II Cor 4:4).

Understanding restored: From the “left” to the “right” side

As this chart demonstrates, our accurate understanding of ourselves, others and God centers on our response to the eternal light of God’s fourth-dimensional Word.

When it shines on us, God’s Word first reveals to us the darkness of our minds and the vanity of so many of our pursuits, which, we come to realize…if are actually honest… are based on works, not grace; on achieving, not receiving; on performance, not faith; fueled by our little human methods and resources, not the extraordinary riches that flow forth from internalizing the Gospel of the Father’s Love.

As such, our “spiritual ministries” do not actually glorify Christ but ourselves; do not build up His body in love, but “bind heavy burdens, hard to bear” on others that break them down.

And so there is the paradox:

Our “good works” have quite terrible effects on those around us.

Roger’s teaching makes clear that when we become human doing not human beings, our works have the paradoxical effect of separating us from our true self, from others and, finally, from God.

For we are operating on the “left-side of the conscious chart” (see the image below).

And the evidence of this is that our relationships become progressively marked by criticism, judgment, impatience and unforgiveness…that arise out of a state of dishonesty…which fuels unrealistic expectations of ourselves and others and drives us into a performative perfectionism.

And though our “ministries” may thrive from this perfectionistic do-ism (of the “left” side), the flourishing will only be temporary.

We will progressively burnout and our relationships will suffer; because we have been cut off from the source of live and love and grace and forgiveness (i.e. the “right” side) that flow down to us moment by moment from the Throne of Grace.

Understanding who we actually are in Christ—our true identity, based not on achieving within the fallen third-dimensional metrics of This Age; but on receiving our fourth-dimensional inheritance from the Father—enables us to move from the “left” side of performance to the “right” side of being.