Self-Deception by Roswell F. Cottrell

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 6, 1870

Self-deception.

By Roswell F. Cottrell

It is an easy thing to deceive ourselves. Self-esteem and self-love lead to self-deception. It is easy to persuade ourselves that we are right, and that those who do not agree with us are wrong. A person may imagine that he has attained to a state of perfect humility, when in fact it is only the perfection of self-complacency and pride. And he may become so extremely selfish as to think himself perfectly free from selfishness.

These conditions are hard to cure. The persons thus afflicted imagine that they are so completely given up to the will of God, and have no will of their own, that the thought of renouncing their fancies would horrify them, as it would seem to them to be a renunciation of the work that God had wrought in their soul by the Holy Spirit. They think they have yielded up all to God; but what God has wrought in them they cannot yield—they cannot deny him! And so their perfect submissiveness to God, results in perfect stubbornness against all attempts to correct their errors. They are ready now for martyrdom. The genuine martyrs to the truth seem stubborn, of course, to their persecutors; but it was only their fidelity and submissiveness to God.

How shall the case be reached? Humility on stilts, proud of its perfection of beauty, self-renunciation clothed in supreme selfishness, and submissiveness steel-clad in stubbornness, are hard things to meet. It was commendable for the martyrs to stand stiffly for the truth. What then can be done in the cases of self-deception? I can see but one chance of hope; and that is, by some argument or motive to cause the subject to call in question his or her infallibility. If this can be done, we may report progress. The martyrs did right to stand for the truth at the expense of their lives; but are you absolutely certain that it is the truth that you are ready to die for? Is there not a bare possibility that what you esteem sacred truth may not be the mere fancies of a disordered imagination? Let us make a distinction between clearly revealed truth, and our own imaginations and feelings. Let us get a humility that is teachable, an unselfishness that prefers others’ judgment to our own, and a submissiveness that yields to the instructions of others whom God has blessed with an experience possibly quite equal to our own. When an individual stands against the whole church, as well as the whole world, there is the greatest reason to believe that he is laboring under self-deception. R. F. COTTRELL.