Self-Justification and Self-Deception 2
In the previous post I described the genesis of self-justification as it transpired in the fall. After the fall, self-justification becomes man's raison d'être, his reason for being. Man lives to prove to God, himself and the world that he is right(eous), and good and in control of his own destiny. To do this he lives a life turned inward upon himself and expects to live in a world turned toward him.
When the world fails to turn inward upon man things get ugly.
Canonization and Horribilization
The story in the introduction and the story of Adam and Eve illustrate what I will call a process of canonization and horribilization (a term borrowed from C. Terry Warner).
Canonization
Canonization is a process in the Roman Catholic church whereby a deceased Christian becomes a saint. Right now this is going on with Mother Theresa. She has many supporters who want her to be declared a saint by the church and so what they are doing is researching her life, collecting evidence and documenting all of the good things she did and why she deserves this title of saint.
Let’s go back to the man who took care of the baby. Can you see a process of canonization going on in his life?
This guy went to bed as just a regular guy, one human being among a world of human beings, one human being sleeping next to another human being.
But within a couple of minutes of listening to a crying baby, this guy had morphed into this magnificent, magnanimous being who was one part Mother Theresa, another part Florence Nightingale, and another part William Wallace.
We are all meaning makers and story tellers and in the process of canonization we tell quite a great story about ourselves. Can you see the evidence he produced to document his saintliness? He was a hard worker, he was a provider, he was a loving father, a great and I do mean great husband, a far better husband than any woman deserved.
And by the way, in the process of canonization there is one element that really means a lot, that accelerates the process of canonization – that is suffering. The great saints of history are those who have endured great suffering and triumphed in the midst of that suffering.
Well, this man indeed suffered. He stayed up late, wearily working on presentations that would help secure his family’s well being for generations to come. When he should have been resting from his labors, he arose from sleep to tend the needs of the unfortunate children who had neglected, nay, cast off by their own mothers. The toll on his body continued as he woke up the next morning, not to thanks, but to the opportunity to sacrifice and suffer some more.
I’m being dramatic but you can see that I’m not too dramatic, because this is the story he constructed in his own mind – you can see all of the evidence he brought forth to document just how great a saint he was.
I mean this guy turned himself into a magnificent creature. When he woke up the next morning he didn’t deserve to awakened by an alarm clock, this guy deserved trumpets, an orchestra and ovations. If his wife had a clue who she was sleeping with, then when the man awakened in the morning she would have gone into the hallway and announced “My children, I bring you good news of a great joy which shall be for all the family – he is risen!” And when the children saw dad they would have responded with joy “he is risen indeed!”
This is what Adam did, isn’t it? When God confronted Adam he took on the saintly martyr role. God asked him why he was hiding and if he had eaten from the tree look how Adam responded.
Adam is thinking to himself – God I know that, to the untrained eye it might appear that I have erred. But you have to realize who I am, I am Adam. I am “The Man” literally. I am too wise, too pure in and of myself to err in the way you seem to be suggesting. God you should know enough about me to know that my conduct is beyond questioning and beyond reproach – what we really need to talk about here is not me, it’s this woman. And oh by the way, I really hate to bring this up but I never asked you for a woman, I liked my rib right where it was. You made the decision to take my rib (without consulting me) and create this thing called woman and looked what happened. Nobody asked me about this woman thing and now look at the trouble she has caused.
Do you see how Adam has canonized himself and a made a saint out of himself? And that leads us to the second word I want to give to you to describe this process – horribilization.
Horribilzation
Great saints need a standard to measure themselves by. Most of us understand that we don't meet God's standards, so we instinctively turn to other human beings to give us a standard to measure ourselves by. Saints are a cut above other mortals, so to document their saintliness, they need to document how they are better than others. Hence, they need to horribilize others.
The word “horribilization” describes what we do with the other person. It’s the mental and emotional process we go through to convince ourselves that someone else, be it a person or a thing, or maybe even society in general is horrible. It’s the blame shifting process – it’s the process by which we excuse ourselves and make others responsible for all that is wrong with our lives and the world for that matter.
Again, you can see this in how the man thought about his wife. When they went to bed she was a regular woman, a human being, even a good human being, a one whom he felt warmly affectionate toward. But within a few moments of a baby’s crying she had become a monster, she had become thoroughly horribilized.
She was unthoughtful and uncaring, the kind of woman who would shut her ears to the plaintive wails of a dying baby. She was selfish – Nero fiddled while Rome burned, she slept while children starved in the very next room. And devious, don’t get me started on how devious and manipulative she was. There are liars and con men in this world and then there is this woman lying in the bed next to the man.
And, as we have seen, this is also how Adam viewed Eve. She went from friend, lover, wife, partner, and companion to evil, seductive temptress. Adam justified himself in his own eyes (and he attempted to convince God of the same) based upon the perceived evil conduct of Eve.
It's important to see this point. For Adam to feel good and right(eous) he needs to see Eve as bad and unrighteous. He must become a spin doctor who can spin her actions in the worst possible light.
When I first shared this with a group my wife said that another word for horribilization is cannibalization. When we horribilize people we cannibalize them, we bite and devour them.
She's right about this and it's all part of the process. Becoming a spin doctor is the next logical step in the self-justification process. Self-justification is the foundation of the canonization-horribilization-cannibalization process, but there is another aspect to self-justification that must be addressed. Think of self-justification as one side of a coin, the coin that you put in the gumball machine in order to get a canonized-horribilized-cannibalized relational existence. The other side of the self-justification coin is self-deception.
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