A page from Jane Austen

There is a turning point in Jane Austen’s 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice where the protagonist Elizabeth reads a letter. It is from Mr. Darcy, a man she has long held prejudice against (hence, half of the title). In the manner of the sudden shifting of perception afforded by “figure-field art”—in which what was perceived as a vase suddenly appears as the profile of two women face-to-face, or a flock of black geese flying in one direction suddenly gives way in the mind to the image of a flock of white geese flying the other way—Elizabeth suddenly sees everything differently. Upside down. Clearly at last. All her truths are now falsities, all her falsities truths:

“She grew absolutely ashamed of herself … ‘I, who have prided myself on my discernment! I, who have valued myself on my abilities! Who have often disdained the generous candor of my sister, and gratified my vanity in useless or blameable distrust. How humiliating is this discovery! Yet, how just a humiliation! Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly. … I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either as concerned. Till this moment I never knew myself.”

Many of us have had such moments, where we see in an instant, as it were, how wrong and how deceived we have been. My husband tells me of the time in solitary confinement in a county jail, stripped both literally and spiritually of all covering, when he had the epiphany that changed his life—a vision of himself as the selfish person he had become in his years of drug addiction. Then and there he asked the Lord to either change him or to take his life. It was the beginning of transformation.

My case was less dramatic, outwardly, but every bit as total in its scope. Like Elizabeth, I had been blinded for years from seeing facts and truths that should have been most obvious. And great was the cost to my family and myself.

What is missing in Ms. Austen’s portrayal of Elizabeth, and what I hazard to supply here, is a thoroughly Christian understanding of the spiritual dimension of self-deception. Romans 1 speaks of it in its attribution of homosexual love to a delusion foisted on men’s minds by hell (though it applies to other sin strongholds as well). The point is reinforced several times:

“… they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened” (verse 21).

“… God gave them up to dishonorable passions” … [they] exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature” (verse 26).

“… God gave them up to a debased mind …” (verse 28).

James, the brother of Jesus, concurs on the origin of twisted thinking:

“This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic” (James 3:15).

Ms. Austen has uncommon insight into the workings of the mind, but psychology takes us only so far. There is a 30-year period of my life of which I can say, “Satan deceived me and I was deceived.” The Lord removed blinders and everything shifted and I saw things as they were. Abiding in God, fearing Him and obeying Him are the only bulwarks against a demonic self-deception that is subtle, pervasive, and destroys like fire.