Journalist Joseph T. Hallinan wrote an article for Reader’s Digest entitled “7 Dumb Things We Do and 8 Tricks to Keep Errors at Bay” (March 2009, p. 166). He is also the author of a book entitled Why We Make Mistakes, from which points in this article were excerpted.

Hallinan certainly doesn’t harbor any delusions about the perfection of the human race. What really piqued my interest, however, were the reasons Hallinan listed for some of the “dumb things we do.” For example, error number 2 was “We wear rose-colored glasses.” He observed that people remember events in their lives differently than they actually happened. Hallinan explains: “Time and again, people have been shown to reconstruct their memories in positive, self-flattering ways” (emphasis mine). Likewise, error number 7 was “We think we’re better than we are.” As if that isn’t candid enough, Hallinan states pretty bluntly: “Most of us hate to think of ourselves as average or, heaven forbid, below average. So we walk around with this private conceit that we’re above average, and therein lies the seed of many of our mistakes.”

The problem that Hallinan exposes is that we tend to make some mistakes because we are too focused on ourselves. Consider some of the scandals exposed in our newspapers. At the heart of each of them you have people who were being, well, human. Fallen human beings are focused on themselves, often to the detriment of others. Human beings want money for themselves, fame for themselves, time for themselves, approval for themselves. Isn’t it interesting how error numbers 2 and 7 even suggest that we change reality to flatter ourselves?

This isn’t just true of the “world out there,” is it? Test yourself when someone sends you a picture they took of a group you were in. Whose picture do you look for first? Why? Isn’t it because Self wants to be sure it looks good? How many times have you thought, “I just need some time for myself” or “I’m going to do this for myself”? When was the last time you passed a mirror and didn’t check yourself out?

The Bible teaches us about this self. It is the old self. It loves itself. It dotes on itself. It flatters itself. This is the self that Jesus insists we each must deny if we are to be his disciples (Luke 9:23). This self is in error. It thinks it is something when it is not. It thinks it has control when it does not. This self will lead us not just to make mistakes, but into eternal destruction.