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Suppose I say, "I am not a racist!" I may be sincere, but it will be only when I start looking at my thoughts and attitudes in different situations that I will be able to see whether it is true. This is an example of how we can have certain positions in our mind about different things and imagine that they are true about us in practice also, without checking to see how things are at the detail level. The problem here is that since we imagine we are all right, we don't take actual steps to cleanse ourselves in our heart and mind (2Cor.7:1).

A similar thing happens if we try to point out someone else's fault. Usually, the immediate reaction is that they are not like that but quite the opposite. That is what they sincerely think about themselves. They are pained that someone should think otherwise. This is our human weakness. We don't know ourselves much. We remember one or two times when we helped someone and think we are not selfish! We are, generally speaking, blind to many actual faults in our life. Because it is painful to look at our faults, we tend to avoid addressing them, or find some justifications for what we do.

If our parents 'always' found fault with us or were never happy with whatever we did, the chances are that we may have developed our own defence mechanisms to protect ourselves from our faults. We don't want to hear about our faults, and we find different ways of avoiding the truth about our faults from entering our mind. One of the results of this kind of attempt is that we make ourselves think that we are the opposite of those faults.

Another thing that happens is that when we hear about how God wants us to live, and we agree that we want to live that way, we begin to think that we have become like that. If we hear about loving our enemies and we really want to do that, we somehow imagine that we love them. But for these truths to become real in our life, we need to 'apply' them in practical situations.

One thing we can to do at first is to think about how this truth is to be applied to our life. We think of different situations that we have come across, and see how we have actually behaved. Then we can imagine possible scenarios and see how we would behave. Finally, when we face real situations we try to apply what we have learnt and realise that we have a battle within us – between what we want to do and what our flesh tempts us to do (Ga.5:17). Then we can see if we have become what we wanted to be. e.g., if we are able to love our enemies.

If we don't work out our salvation in this way, it may even be that we remain with a lot of good ideas which have not affected our actual way of life. God is able to see the real us, and people around us can also see where we are failing. So, it will be foolish if we remain defending ourselves and deceiving ourselves. If we continue in this way for a long time, God may even allow us to totally get deceived (2Th.2:10). Let's teach ourselves to be honest.

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