The lies we tell ourselves

I've recently realized that one of the things I prize in a friend is introspection, a sort of self-honesty. It's a trait that my best friends all share. As for myself, I aspire to be honest with and about myself - that is in large part the purpose of this blog. Not to expose things that should appropriately be private, but to force myself to be candid with the few friends I've entrusted with this url.

I have to think about why this is so important to me. I mean, the easy answer is that I think there is an inherent value to honesty, but that is too glib a statement to be the whole answer.

I think a lot of it goes to 2 Corinthians 12:9. "And He has said to me, 'My grace is suffcient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness.' Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may dwell in me."

I made a comment about my cynicism to my lunch companion of the day before yesterday and she laughed. She said that I look way too nice and sweet to be a cynical person; that someone with my angelic demeanor could stab someone in the back and the person stabbed would never believe that it had happened, would rather deny that there was a knife in his back at all. And this, I think, is why I feel like it is so important for me to be honest. Because I know that I can pass myself off as a better person than I am, at least to other people. But I am a sinner and I sin against God in so many ways, every single day of my life. I can be jealous, and covetous, and petty. I harbor grudges and withhold forgiveness. I am impatient and prideful, sometimes to the point of arrogance. I can be a bully.

And yet He loves me. He has filled my life with blessings beyond anything I could ever deserve on my own merit. What He has done for me is not good things done for a good person, but the overwhelming and incredible love of a perfect God for His deeply flawed creation. Love so deep and incomprehensible that He died - a hideous, slow death - in order to save me from my sins. Denying those sins is denying the depth and awesomeness of His love. And that, I think, is why honesty matters.