The body has sophisticated mechanisms to detect and kill cells that are harmful. It is not uncommon for cells to develop problems. When this happens under normal conditions, the body detects and destroys them before they can propagate. Cancer occurs when the body’s natural ability to detect aberrant cells is somehow curtailed, allowing the damaging cells to multiply in both number and effect. Cancer is caused by environmental and genetic factors. For example, when certain people smoke cigarettes, their bodies start creating lung cells with thicker-than-usual cell walls that make damaged cells invisible to the mechanisms that normally destroy them. When a damaged cell happens to develop, the body has lost the ability to see it, and therefore can’t fix it.
Self-honesty is to your spirit as cancer detection is to your body. It is your mechanism to sort out what benefits you from what harms you. When you are dishonest with yourself, you willingly give away the mechanism God has given you to lead you to the most joy and happiness by turning off your ability to see what harms you.
Few people perceive the consequences of their character, and even fewer exercise the interest and intensity required to remedy it. This isn’t so much a problem of perception as it is a problem of honesty. “A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished.” (Proverbs 22:3)
Life will show you what you lack, even if you have only a little interest or intensity. “Much food is in the tillage of the poor: but there is that is destroyed for want of judgment.” (Proverbs 13:23) Where people diverge from the abundant life is in their honest recognition of signs that things could be better. They commit the same mistakes over and over again. “As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.” (Proverbs 26:11)
Through challenging situations, life constantly shows us where we lack the tools required to have an abundant life. Unfortunately, it is almost always the case that we deny these signs. We convince ourselves that our present situation isn’t that bad, or that there is nothing we can do about it, or that it is someone else’s fault, or that there isn’t a better possible outcome, or that the other possible outcomes are not as good compared to what we have as they actually are. All of these perceptions are manifestations of dishonestly—not the kind of dishonesty a child shows when he says he didn’t steal the cookie he snuck, but the kind of dishonesty we exhibit when someone asks us how they look and we want them to feel better than reality supports.
This kind of dishonesty is dangerous when inflicted upon others, but it is most dangerous when inflicted upon oneself. When we engage in selfdeception we willfully blind ourselves to the only guidance system we have to direct us toward the most abundant life.
What do the signs of self-deception look like? A recurring inability to provide the necessities of life for ourselves and those in our care, the existence of circumstances that make us feel overwhelmed, and the experience of sadness that overcomes our ability to have joy and happiness.
54 And he said also to the people, When ye see a cloud rise out of the west, straightway ye say, There cometh a shower; and so it is.
55 And when ye see the south wind blow, ye say, There will be heat; and it cometh to pass.
56 Ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky and of the earth; but how is it that ye do not discern this time? (Luke 12)
Jesus was saying that people were hypocrites because they were clearly capable of critically examining the clues around them, yet they conveniently ignored the signs that contradicted what they wanted to believe.
Dishonesty is the failure to exercise the required amount of interest and intensity in response to signs that you are at odds with reality. When you lose your job, you can blame it on something that lies outside of your ability to change, or you can make changes that make you more resilient against the next time it could happen: you could obtain a more valuable skillset, you could develop a more robust mental capacity to handle hard things, you could choose a job where you are more valued, you could save enough money to get you through unexpected unemployment, etc. None of these things are easy and they all require faith, but there is certainly a way to act so that you are less susceptible to suffering should something similar happen again.
Be honest about your past. So many entrap themselves in fairy tales about the past, making it seem better than it really was by either deliberately maintaining what they know is an illusion or by artificially inflating what they know wasn’t as good as they wish.
God warned the prophet Lehi about Jerusalem’s impending destruction. He fled before it happened. His sons had different perspectives on this event, as they had different levels of honesty. Nephi said:
...if my father should dwell in the land after he hath been commanded to flee out of the land, behold, he would also perish. Wherefore, it must needs be that he flee out of the land. (1 Nephi 3:18)
Laman and Lemuel didn’t believe that had they stayed in Jerusalem they would also have been destroyed. Laman and Lemuel insisted on viewing things in an imaginary way, comparing their present situation, which was difficult, to a situation that was not possible:
20 And thou art like unto our father, led away by the foolish imaginations of his heart; yea, he hath led us out of the land of Jerusalem, and we have wandered in the wilderness for these many years; and our women have toiled, being big with child; and they have borne children in the wilderness and suffered all things, save it were death; and it would have been better that they had died before they came out of Jerusalem than to have suffered these afflictions.
21 Behold, these many years we have suffered in the wilderness, which time we might have enjoyed our possessions and the land of our inheritance; yea, and we might have been happy.
22 And we know that the people who were in the land of Jerusalem were a righteous people; for they kept the statutes and judgments of the Lord, and all his commandments, according to the law of Moses; wherefore, we know that they are a righteous people; and our father hath judged them, and hath led us away because we would hearken unto his words; yea, and our brother is like unto him. And after this manner of language did my brethren murmur and complain against us. (1 Nephi 17)
Own up to the mistakes you have made. It will both prevent you from making the same mistake again and also yield transferred wisdom to different future situations. Honesty about your past is the key to securing freedom from guilt. Admit your fault, change your principles so it will never happen again, and trust in the forgiveness of Jesus.