Tonight philosopher Gregg Ten Elshof, author of I Told Me So: Self-Deception and the Christian Life (Eerdmans) shone a light on the many ways we deceive ourselves. experiences.  He shared five strategies we can, and often do, use to deceive ourselves:

• Attention Management: we avoid knowing the truth about an issue by focusing only on what we've always believed and only hanging around with people who reinforce that view.
• Procrastination: we tell ourselves we'll do something later - like apologizing, or paying someone back money that we owe them - when really we know we're going to neglect it for so long we'll never get around to it.
• Perspective Switching: is what we do when we tell ourselves something we did was ok just by looking at it from a less uncomfortable perspective.
• Rationalization: we can justify unethical behaviour at work or in a relationship, for example, by saying our behaviour filled some kind of greater need.
• Ressentiment: perhaps we cry sour grapes because we didn't get a promotion or a job, or because someone we were interested in didn't love us back, when the truth was that we had areas where weneeded to improve.

Looking back, has there ever been a time in your life when you (now) realise that you were deceiving yourself? How were your eyes opened to that deception, and how were you able to move forward into a more honest way of living?