The harmful effect of self-justification

There is something very convenient and easy to slip into, like a nice warm pair of slippers, and yet very deadly to our health and our joy and our peace in our lives, in that it causes and maintains our "stuckness" about "what's wrong with things," and it's this little bugger called "self-justification." Read on and prepare to strip naked before God on this one, noticing how totally, if not laughably unreliable you can be in your feeble attempts at loving, based on an insistence (and wait til you hear the arguments in your own head justifying that insistence) that you have every reason to hate or resent or harshly judge this person or that, based solely on their actions or behaviors, even though that attitude on your part totally contradicts what you "preach" to others about God and His truth in the area of human interaction. When we can really see how totally "full of it" we are on this one, there's new hope for us, and radical unstuckness and new levels of reliability await.


"People, particularly those who take risks in their actions or beliefs, view themselves as good people who are striving to do well. As a motivating force this gives strength to a community or organization but as a reductive belief, that is, a belief that reduces ideas to one narrow belief, the idea of one’s goodness can supersede other beliefs about oneself, leading to an exclusion of or ignorance about one’s real imperfections. The reductive belief that one is believing good, espousing good, and thus can only do good things interferes with self-criticism or receiving truly constructive criticism from others. It also interferes with effective interpretation of events regarding natural consequences of one’s actions. If we subconsciously and self-protectively believe that we cannot do wrong then we attribute wrong to outside forces or other people.

In uncertainty, or when facing the unexpected, we may do everything correctly, yet fail. If we change our beliefs and actions, even though they seemed correct at the time, we can work toward a solution and become more reliable and true. We can adapt to changing events or changes in the environment. Keeping to the correct process (at least in our limited understanding of it) but reaching the wrong or an undesired outcome creates a dissonance in how we view ourselves. David Burns (1999) observed that when we succeed or are deemed right we gain higher self-esteem, but this comes with a corollary – when we fail or are wrong we can feel we are not worthwhile. Some respond to this failure not by letting their esteem drop but by justifying their wrong actions through logic and deflection – 'yes, mistakes were made, but not by me.'

Justification of one’s actions or attitudes, especially the wrong ones, comes from the drive to reduce the dissonance between one’s sense of self and one’s wrong decisions and choices. Cognitive dissonance describes the tension between two conflicting cognitions (ideas, attitudes, beliefs, or opinions) that are psychologically inconsistent. To make sense out of these contradictory thoughts some will self-justify their actions and place total responsibility on others or outside influences.

Most people will justify a belief or action even when faced with proof that they are wrong, even proof from their own tightly-held doctrine, not because they are bad people or that they lie or give excuses, but simply because they see themselves as good and that their intentions as good. This self-justification convinces them that they did their best, it was the right thing to do or way to feel, or they reached the best outcome possible. Self-justification can be more dangerous than the lie or excuse.

At some level, people hold two beliefs, ideas, opinions, or values that psychologically conflict with each other. 'I do not lie.' and 'I do not hurt people.' will often conflict, for example. A young friend asks you about their new hairstyle with a haircut, which you think is awful. Cognitive dissonance causes the tension you feel at that moment. Cognitive dissonance drives self-justification. The greatest dissonance can come where beliefs about God are involved, because of the magnitude of the power that can be given to religious beliefs in one's life - for example, 'I know God loves me.' and 'I hate you.' This dissonance is so huge that a person will often completely justify their hate of another person, even though it is in complete opposition to their espoused beliefs about both God and themselves. They will go completely blind, and cannot be forced to see, even with their own religious beliefs read back to them in their own words.

Self-justification drives one to justify an opinion, decision, or action by adding emotional or intellectual benefits after the decision is made. The individual will search for information and other opinions that confirm their decision and will ignore information that proves them wrong (this is called confirmation bias).

Self-justification facilitates the dichotomy between 'us' and 'them' (us good guys vs. those bad guys) that disrupts information flow and eases blame toward the 'others.' It produces a blind spot that one does not have prejudice, only good judgment or bitter, other-caused experience. If something goes wrong we do not hold ourselves responsible; we place total responsibility on others. This fails miserably, as we can only have responsibility over our own behaviors or what we can control.

Self-justification blocks the ability to learn from one’s own mistakes. It goes past, 'I made the mistake, not you. My mistake was in trusting you, it is my fault,' to see how one’s own attitude or behavior contributed to the failure itself. Self-justification causes a blind spot at finding one’s own errors, and is therefore the primary enemy of peace in one's life and reliability in loving others."

-- Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, in Mistakes Were Made (but not by me)


Folks, and in saying this I am including anyone who is reading this and committed to a God-driven, self-responsible life, there is no justification for hating or hurting anyone, no matter what they've done to you or anyone else. No justification, period. What they did or didn't do is none of your business. Your business is simple, if you believe what you say you do, and if you RELY on His love. It will ALWAYS be there, but you will often sense it's not, and why is this? Because the way us humans are made is that it seems you can only "experience" receiving it to the extent you give it. The frequency of your experiences of God's love is directly tied to the frequency of your giving God's love, especially where it's hardest.

The Third Option

Over the first several weeks of 2010, I have been speaking quite a bit with people about being in the "Third Option Space" (first occasionally visiting and now setting up permanent residence), a place that is still relatively new for me (say about 6 years in the gradual unfolding, from the time of my father's death in late 2003 and the painful completion of my last marathon around this time in 2004, dedicated to him), but I find it coming up constantly now, and it's a place where I am committed to living for the rest of my human, physical life. First, let me describe what I think this Third Option Space is, along with a little visual support (see the atttached "Pendulum" diagram that I have shared with you several times before). Clearly, this is not really new. Jesus set this space up a long time ago, and invited us there, but we must all take our own path to it for ourselves. But anyway, here goes, having taken my path.

In my past life, when confronted with difficult external circumstances, I had only two options to choose from in terms of how to deal with these difficult circumstances, and I chose each one of these futile options quite often over the years (and had to to learn about them), and the choice between them was usually based on a quick, gut-level risk assessment. The first option, which I will generally call Avoidance, could include sub-strategies such as slow and subtle circumvention, blatant denial, false oblivion, and even the most ridiculous one, "running for my life." I usually chose this Avoidance Option out of a deeply emotional place of victimhood and woundedness (see attached), where I felt that the risks associated with any kind of direct confrontation of the situation were very high and that the world was about to hurt me really badly, in ways that I had been severely hurt before - and it would be completely by surprise, out of the blue, undeserved, and with great shock and awe. I was quite literally a "victim waiting to happen," prepared only for "being hurt in the making," feeling very innocent and righteous, while mostly oblivious. I was truly a "deer-in-the-headlights" in this space and had to run off into the woods for my survival.

The alternative to this option, when I felt the physical risk to me in my "controling and managing of things" was relatively low, and that I might actually have a chance to dominate the problem emotionally or intellectually before it dominated me physically, and I maybe even felt a misplaced sense of competence or self-empowerment, was what I will call the Hero/Savior Option, which I chose out of a place I'll call the ego-defended "King Arthur Space," the place where I felt the problems were completely "fixable" (and, of course, knowing that "he who first defines the problem gets to dominate the solution") even though the problem was not necessarily mine (but it was sure to become mine if I allowed matters to run their own course), and that "I was clearly the right man for the job," even in the problem was "beneath me." This was a place in which I was set up to hurt other people (through my subtle condescension, my deeply critical spirit, my obnoxious hypocrisy, my harsh judgment, my bitter, biting commands and more squirrely manipulations), whether intentionally or totally unintentionally, and while mostly unaware of the difference, because I was so busy defending myself, focused on preventing my pain even if it meant causing yours first, all while looking like the hero who no one would ever consider questioning or seeing as the bad guy. And I was this as a spouse, a parent, a friend, an executive, a neighbor, all of it.

What is happening in having practiced experiencing and clearly distinguishing these things inside myself for so long, and then finding God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit waiting right underneath it all - quite literally waiting to hold me and speak with me and gently guide me from the vast void underneath all my human noise - is that a Third Option is truly available and absolutely choose-able from anywhere, under any circumstances, and that this Third Option Space is available only while in the awareness of sitting in His hands, staring the problem right in the eye, not fighting or flinching or flighting, and "letting it have me," like Jesus let the problems of all of mankind have him, turning myself completely over to it as a sacrifice of love, and "seeing what God does" in the raging fire of its unresolvedness, vs. seeing what I can make happen (already knowing that "what I make happen" is often far worse than the initial problem itself - and that never being totally clear to me, even while being completely unmistakable - both for myself and others). The Third Option Space waits on, and in, the power of His Spirit, while seeing everything, letting itself be seen, and holding the intention of hope, kindness, love, reconciliation, total redemption of everything. The Third Option Space is the only safe space, the only sacred space, the only living space. It costs everything in this world to get there, and provides more than this world can in return. It lets me watch the world, even live in the world, and not be bound by it - it is the space of ultimate freedom and peace.

It is an insanely difficult and harrowing journey, this climbing off the "schizophrenia line" of conventional, so-called "normal" human existence, up that string into His hands (see attached), but only to an insane world does it look insane, from the perspective of so-called "human agreement reality" (har har har). In God's reality, it is the only truly sane journey worth taking, even though it can often and quite literally look like a stairway to nowhere, and it seems to get steeper and steeper and more and more lonely as you go. But that is really just an illusion, for "up there" lies the breathlessly beautiful, intimate connection to everything.



P.S. If you want some motivation for the trip, some incentive to get you started, then just insist on managing the lives and behaviors of those whom you claim to love, or avoid them in fear and bitter complaint. Show how good you are at providing everything they need, or run away and hide, withholding yourself. Show how intolerant and judgmental you are of any unappreciative or unruly behavior in response, or just pretend to not care. Either way, work it into the ground, this human survival strategy you've chosen. Prove that you're right about what's wrong with others and the world. Just do it! And I'll see you soon on the stairs.Pendulum.ppt

Creating space to dance together vs. suffocating each other


Creating Space to Dance Together (Henri Nouwen Society)
When we feel desperately lonely (vs. in joyful, peaceful solitude) we keep looking for a person or group who can take our loneliness away. Our lonely hearts cry out, "Please hold me, touch me, speak to me, pay attention to me (ultimately, please fix me and make me complete)." But very soon we discover that the person or group we expect to take our loneliness away cannot really give us what we ask for. Often that person or group feels burdened or oppressed by our relentless demands and runs away, leaving us in despair and terror. As long as we approach another person or group from our desperately lonely neediness, no authentic, mature human relationship can ever develop. Clinging to one another in loneliness and neediness is suffocating and eventually becomes totally destructive for all. For love to be possible we need the courage to create sacred space between us and to trust that this space allows us to dance together.


"To genuinely love another you must be bold and willing to unlock from the inside the deep mystery that is you."

-- Yours Truly

"A poet has written, 'The need to feel loved in the world is the last illusion; let go of that and you are home free.'"

-- Brennan Manning, in The Ragamuffin Gospel

"But let there be empty spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another, but make not an oppressive bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls."

-- Kahlil Gibran

"There is a sacred space between self and other where the boundaries actually melt - where being myself means being attuned to and one with the other - where being in sync with the other includes finding myself of real value and worth. This transformative experience is something so powerful that it cannot be taken away, even if and when the other leaves."

-- Monica Diaz

"The problem with being 'needy' in a relationship is that it attempts to 'take' from our partner, the very one we claim to love, and it's so often something that they don't really have to give. It assumes that they consciously possess that thing we need to make us happy, and that we must have it, which means they must provide it. In truth, they may feel a sense of desperate scarcity themselves, so having to continually meet our needs drives up the feeling that they are 'losing' something essential to them for their own survival. We might end up fighting for who is going to meet the needs of the other person - this is the desperate power struggle stage of relationship (the 'rocky road of self-discovery,' as Harville Hendrix describes it). When we feel our needs have not been met we might get angry, disappointed, or moody as a way of punishing the other person. If this carries on we might be hit by depression because we just cannot get rid of the emptiness and deadness that we feel inside. Our own neediness eventually destroys or takes away all of the joy in a relationship we once valued above all else. And the problem actually started right at the 'valuing it above all else' stage."

-- Peter J. Granger

I have seen so much agonizing, bloodcurdling pain in the area of love relationships from the phenomenon described above, and am in fact convinced that this is both the reason for so many angry, bitter, ugly divorces and is also the primary cause of so much of the sheer craziness on the other side of divorce, when we will just not let the other person get on with their life after the unforgivable "hurt they caused"; we must make sure they know just how much they failed us and let us down and must drive their hearts into the ground with our unsatisfied need. And I really do believe it comes from this primary source - from this suffocating neediness that comes from mistakenly thinking that another person is going to "correct in me what happened before."

You might have learned by or are learning now, that there is no person or relationship out there that can fix you or mend your past. It is the soil in which your life was buried, and is a blessing, pain and all - both the glimpses of God you received, however few, and the frequent experiences of "not Him." And then you awaken to realize that there is only you and God on this healing, redemption journey together, and He invites you to "see" yourself in the reflection of others (and this can be very painful), and then He invites you to "be" Him in their presence (and this can be very hard and mystifying) - to love them the way He loves you (and this is where He really delivers the goods), knowing that you can't really know all of who they are, ever (only He can), nor can you control or manage their behavior (that's an ongoing process between them and Him). Our relationships are not meant primarily to "please" us by being our idol - the deliverer of our heart's desires. They are meant primarily to "grow" us in our capacity to access and deliver Him (the ultimate, redeeming joy of our lives), by being our laboratory and gymnasium - the refiner of our heart's desires. And what a great deal this is!

Let go of other people as your source of joy or pain, and you are free to really see them (to the extent of your receiving of Him) - to dance with them, to laugh with them, to totally marvel at them, as you continue the unraveling of the mystery that is you, and you will notice that their ability to disappoint or hurt you vanishes in the sacred space between you, and that space will stop looking like this:



and then in came this:


Yearning for Perfect Love (Henri Nouwen Society)
When we act out of loneliness our actions easily become violent. The tragedy is that much violence comes from a demand for love. When loneliness drives our search for love, kissing easily leads to biting, caressing to hitting, looking tenderly to looking suspiciously, listening to overhearing, and surrender to rape. The human heart yearns for love: love without conditions, limitations, or restrictions. But no human being is capable of offering such love, and each time we demand it we set ourselves on the road to violence. How then can we live nonviolent lives? We must start by realizing that our restless hearts, yearning for perfect love, can only find that love through communion with the One who created them.

The self-sabotaging poison of exclusion, and the power of His enfoldment

I used to only interact with and appreciate people who I could tolerate (in terms of who they were and what they thought and believed), persuade, or convince of something about me or about the truth. I was a rather closed-minded (and heavy-hearted) person, largely because I was a deeply hurting person who couldn't afford to let anyone really know me and the deep "why's" of my hurting (way deeper than I had conscious access to). I somehow was convinced that that would be the death of me, so I included very few human inputs in my life, really, faking it with some, avoiding many, and did a whole lot of excluding, dividing, categorizing, berating (without them knowing it, of course), and adjudicating (in all of my high and mightiness). I have found that the more I "get God" - experiencing and feeling Him, vs. intellectually understanding (yea, right) Him - the more I am amazed by the beauty and fascinating capacities and potentials of all human beings, starting with myself, who is a real beaut and an absolute hoot! God's real and tender embrace sure does change things.

"Exclusion. One of the darkest, most divisive attitudes that counteracts the gracious embrace of God is exclusion. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount can be viewed as a rejection of any form of human exclusion. Exclusion can be subtle. Anger, too, is a form of exclusion because by it we say things and do things that prevent true communion with others. Jesus finds the produce of exclusion in lust, in divorce, in not telling the truth, in vindictiveness, and in justifying hate for one set of humans by justifying love only for another set. Exclusion needs to be seen for what it really is. Exclusion in its very essence is the choice to embrace ourselves as the only embrace needed. Exclusion causes us to turn inward instead of outward. The deadly sin of pride finds its true meaning in exclusion. In contrast to exclusion, God calls us to openly and graciously embrace others. A gracious community will find its joy in loving others for who they are, where they are in their journey, and what they might become. Too often, far too often, churches make people aware at the visceral level of ‘who is in’ and ‘who is out’."

-- Richard J. Vincent

"Life at the end of the twentieth century presents us with a disturbing reality. Otherness, the simple fact of being different in some way, has come to be defined as in and of itself evil. Miroslav Volf contends that if the healing word of the gospel is to be heard today, Christian theology must find ways of speaking that address the hatred of the other. Reaching back to the New Testament metaphor of salvation as reconciliation, Volf proposes the idea of embrace as a theological response to the problem of exclusion. Increasingly we see that exclusion has become the primary sin, skewing our perceptions of reality and causing us to react out of fear and anger to all those who are not within our (ever-narrowing) circle. In light of this, Christians must learn that salvation comes, not only as we are reconciled to God, and not only as we 'learn to live with one another,' but as we take the dangerous and costly step of opening ourselves to the other, of enfolding him or her in the same embrace with which we have been enfolded by God."

-- Miroslav Volf, in Exclusion and Embrace

When you truly feel His loving embrace, there is nothing that could ever replace that joy and peace. No amount of "being right about what's wrong" with other people, and no granting of their self-protective exclusion from your life, either personally or categorically, would ever come close. You would naturally enfold all around you, which would be a totally irresistible and reciprocated gesture of love. I have found "being seen as His child" and "having my all-too-clear-to-me shortcomings overlooked" to be the most captivating approach to me possible, and I humbly and invariably melt into it and seek out ways to return it.


(entitled "Enfoldment")

"Love ignites the heart, energizes the emotions, resurrects the soul and nourishes the spirit. Love is the light that pierces the darkness, that fills the emptiness. Love infuses. Love permeates. Love enfolds. Love finds itself in itself."

-- Patrick Thomson

Allow yourself to be startled by what is possible and so readily available.

"To love - simply and truly - is so startling it leaves little time for anything else."

-- Emily Dickinson

Truth, and real life, and genuine loving are more crazy and peculiar than any fiction. True life is really a startling place."

-- Mira Nair

"A tree growing out of the ground is as wonderful and amazing to me today as it ever was. It does not need to adopt new and more startling methods in order to more thoroughly dazzle me."

-- Robert Henri

"The feelings, thoughts, and physical voice we use in our prayers need not be great nor startling; even should we not lift up any great cry or shout in order to get His attention; God will hear us perfectly and knows better than us what we need."

-- Unknown

We often insist that God (or someone) do something in particular for us, something that will dramatically and miraculously solve a current dilemma or very specific problem we think we have, something that looks like winning a lottery, maybe, showing us that our bad luck has changed. And we usually have ample evidence that we do indeed have that problem, not seeing the much deeper truth, that our relationship to everything - to Him, to life, to ourselves, to others, and then to the so-called problem itself - is what really matters, and we've missed it completely. Usually He is aware of this much deeper lack of awareness and insight, and as He is helping us identify and then fill that void (eventually, if we allow and receive it, and so often through a rather circuitous, mysterious path we must truly seek and then ultimately choose), we often feel nothing but frustrating lack and downright annoyance with the whole process. In these situations, we are so missing the dazzling show, refusing to be startled by what is not only possible but so totally available, usually laid right at our feet, usually packaged in something that (in retrospect only) makes a complete mockery of our complaining, while we are so feverishly insisting on our grievance and our limitations and our suffering. Unfortunately, if not tragically, there is nothing that can help us in this state but more suffering, and He will stand by in tears, waiting and hoping we will choose Him and reach out to dance with Him again. We must first open our hearts, and then our eyes, and then our arms to do so - yes, even being willing to look like a total fool to do so. In the final analysis, it is so clear that we are all such lovable fools.

The difference between optimism and hope

I hear so many people trying so hard to be or sound optimistic (because they've been told and "sold" that it's "good" to be that way), and so many failing to sustain it and feeling very pessimistic about life and themselves (You know, they say that a pessimist is just an optimist who has been burnt one time too often.). What if there is no point to optimism the way so many know it? What if it is just a well-intentioned notion based on faulty logic? What if it is only relevant in a very broad and expansive and truly Godly sense? Man, would that relieve some heavy burdens from so many who are striving so hard to see a bright side to things (Not that there aren't any "bright sides" - there are plenty.), and it would sure welcome in some would-be pessimists (teetering so close to that one burning too much) into a whole new and expanded belief about life and where it's going and what He's up to. The world is beautiful, and it's deadly. We are beautiful, and we can be deadly to each other. He has worked it all out perfectly for all time. We can relax into that expansive awareness. We can then see and be with the deadly less "dreadly," which is totally beautiful! I hope. :-)


Living with Hope (Henri Nouwen Society)
Optimism and hope are radically different attitudes. Optimism is the 'expectation that things' - like the weather, human relationships, the economy, the political situation, and so on - will get better and be more pleasing, based on nothing tangible, really, just a 'positive (sometimes delusional) mental outlook.' Hope, on the other hand, is the absolute 'trust that God' will fulfill God's promises to us (and, in fact, already has) in a way that leads us to true and lasting freedom and peace. The optimist speaks about the belief in desired concrete physical changes in circumstances in the future. The person of hope lives in the moment with the knowledge and trust that all of life is in good hands. All the great spiritual leaders in history were people of great and unconditional hope. They were rarely optimists in the way described above. Abraham, Moses, Ruth, Mary, Jesus, Rumi, Gandhi, and Dorothy Day all lived with a promise in their hearts that guided them toward the future without the need to know exactly what it would look like. Let's live with hope, more than just being optimistic.


"Optimism is the superficial view that everything's going to work out fine, 'because it has to.' That's not true, by the way, not according to our surface level desires, anyway, and in fact it can be a dangerous illusion. Hope, on the other hand, is the confidence that there is ultimate meaning even in loss, and that (from a Christian point of view) everything works to the good in the fullness of time, even if it is only given to us to know defeat and suffering in our place and time. People can live without optimism -- indeed, I suspect most people do -- but people cannot live for very long without hope."

-- James Poulos

"I believe that by disposition I'm sunny and warm. I'm not an optimist, really, but I'm a serious hoper. I think it was Albert Schweitzer who once said that if he's told that every morning he's supposed to jump out of bed and be nothing but happy, expecting only great things, then he's not really ready for what he will invariably see as the day goes on - in other words, the good, the bad, and the ugly of life. Hope, on the other hand, is always ready for anything, can see and be with anything, knowing that no matter what shows up, it will be for the ultimate good, regardless of how things might feel or look in the moment."

-- Martin Marty in "The Life of Meaning: Reflections on Faith, Doubt, and Repairing the World"


Yes, things rarely if ever go according to my plan, by definition (me being a normal human being), so to expect positive short-term results from or to get rewarded for my "efforts" or "intentions" is a little naive on my part, and a perfect set-up for disappointment. However, things always go according to God's plan, also by definition (Him being Who He is), so I am free to always expect that His will will eventually be done (in my consciousness), delivering a better, more meaningful life than mine ever could, so I can relax (giving up any "need to be optimistic") into the pure "hope" spoken of above.

The "power of positive thinking," which has longstanding "apPeale" to many in our society (get it, Norman Vincent Peale's book by the same name - ha ha!), is not just about "pretending to be positive and upbeat," hoping that it produces good karma or better luck (a la "The Secret" or the "Law of Attraction"). But the biblical notion of "as a man thinketh" in the book of Proverbs is much deeper than this. It refers to deeply noticing our heart and consciously "aligning with divine intentions and thoughts," vs. "improving my faulty thinking." In fact, and here's an interesting irony to consider, to think that "I" must "improve my" thought processes, knowing that "as I think in my heart so I will be," invites me into a very self-limiting process, because if I believe myself to be faulty and wrong to begin with, my grounding is in what's wrong with me (instead of what's right with Him), and even short-term attempts at "thinking better thoughts" (or at least pretending to be doing so) will be weighed down and destroyed by that paradigm of my weakness or wrongness.

Conversely, what if my thinking is not the problem at all (and there actually is no problem), because it is perfectly human, but that His intentions are invitations to a radical upgrade in thinking and being that is at NO cost to me - in fact, total benefit. In simply accepting and choosing His way, without judging mine or expecting it to be more than it is, lies the total freedom and peace I seek. I don't have to "work hard to improve" anything this way, just fully accept His perfection as my own, and Voila, I am brought to life as if by magic!


So, what if life is not about choosing me or improving me, but is instead simply about choosing and allowing Him to "breathe life into me" through His perfectly tender touch.