The sincere person is one who is not conscious of being willfully deceitful. Of course, sincerity can be faked. Entertainers and politicians are perhaps our best examples. But when Scripture tells us we are deceitful because we are sinful, it is not affirming that we are always conscious of our deceit; our sin is expressed in ways hidden from us.  

Dear Theophilus,

Since God’s word makes abundantly clear that the human soul is “deceitfully sick, beyond cure”—that is, human cure—and that God alone knows it (Jeremiah 17:9), we are wholly incapable, on our own, of accurately discerning the biblical validity of our desires, thoughts and actions. Even as redeemed sinners, our best of intentions and thoughts are stained by our sin. This is why I believe that the greatest danger facing the church is our tendency to be primarily oriented towards, and trusting of, our sincerity.

We could define sincerity as that quality of mind in which we believe ourselves free from deceit, dishonesty or pretense. The sincere person is one who is not conscious of being willfully deceitful. Of course, sincerity can be faked. Entertainers and politicians are perhaps our best examples. But when Scripture tells us we are deceitful because we are sinful, it is not affirming that we are always conscious of our deceit; our sin is expressed in ways hidden from us.

It is easy in our time for Christians to focus on their and other people’s feelings. How we arrived at this point has been presented by many. Read especially David F. Wells’ books over the past 25 yrs. He not only analyzes these matters historically, culturally and theologically, but will direct you to the work of others. This way of thinking and functioning primarily according to our feelings is nothing new. What’s “new” is the precise way it is demonstrated and how it relates to the specific features of American culture.

What we have seen in the West is people thinking and acting as if there has been a collapse of external realities with the individual’s internal life. I say “as if” because in reality the two cannot actually be collapsed. Yet we live at a time when the internal life is regarded as authoritative over the external realities, so that what we feel is regarded as determining the actual existence and identity of the external realities, and how we act in relation to them.

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