Have you ever tried to identify the inconsistencies between what you believe and how you live? Such inconsistencies can be surprisingly difficult to recognize in ourselves.
Seeing them can be a little like looking at an autostereogram – one of those images that at first appears to be nothing more than a confusing pattern. The hidden image is there, but you will not see it by simply glancing at the surface. You have to stop, focus differently, and learn to look beyond what first appears obvious. Recognizing the contradictions within our own lives can require the same kind of deliberate, concerted effort.
Squirrel autostereogram:
On the surface, our behavior may seem perfectly consistent with what we believe. We have good intentions, and our motives may seem pure. That can make it difficult to see a contradiction that might be obvious to someone else.
Recognizing inconsistency in ourselves often requires more than a casual glance inward. It requires deliberate self-examination. We must be willing to look at ourselves from a different perspective – to hold our motives, judgments, words, and actions up against the light and ask whether what we see on the outside truly matches what is happening within.
Like the hidden image in an autostereogram, the inconsistency may have been there all along. The challenge is learning to see it.
There is a word for this kind of inconsistency: hypocrisy.
The Greek word translated hypocrite was used of an actor who performed behind a mask. By the first century, the idea of public performance had taken on a moral meaning, describing a person who feigned virtue – someone whose outward appearance did not correspond with inward reality. That imagery is powerful.
A hypocrite wears a virtuous mask. But the mask is not always worn for the benefit of others. Sometimes we wear it for ourselves – to soften, conceal, or justify something within us that we would rather not confront. We construct an image of ourselves that is easier to live with, and over time we may begin to believe it. In that sense, hypocrisy can become more than deceiving others; it can become a way of deceiving ourselves.
Once we do discover inconsistencies we often choose not to wrangle with them because they seem like such a fundamental part of who we are.