You can even fool yourself

A few years ago Al Franken wrote an anti-Republican book called, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them". He could have written the book about Major League Baseball players from 1996-2005 or so just as easily. Last week the news broke about Alex Rodriguez's steroid use. The news coverage was so massive that President Obama was even asked about it during his live press conference on Monday night. What was especially upsetting to some folks was the fact that a couple of years earlier in an interview with Katie Couric, A-Rod had flatly denied any steroid use. He even went so far to say that he had never been tempted to use them. It's very easy for us to be offended at that type of behavior, and we can even convince ourselves that we would never tell a bald-faced lie like that. Something he said in his interview with Peter Gammons earlier this week caught my attention:

PETER GAMMONS: Now, you mentioned the Katie Couric interview. You were asked if you ever used steroids, human growth hormones or other performance-enhancing substances. You said no, flat-out no. In your mind, that wasn't a lie?
ALEX RODRIGUEZ: At the time, Peter, I wasn't even being truthful with myself. How am I going to be truthful with Katie or CBS?
(read the full interview here)

Before we are too harsh with A-Rod I think we should consider his comments about not being truthful with himself. One of the ways that lies are so destructive to our character is that the longer we tell them the more we believe them. Soon we are not only lying to those around us, we are also successfully lying to ourselves. Up to the point he discovered he had failed a drug test A-Rod was believing his own lies. The positive drug test was a sudden reality check. I have to ask myself, are there areas in my life where I am not being truthful with myself? Is there any untruthful behavior or thought pattern that I've participated in for so long that now it seems reasonable?

Let's learn a lesson from A-Rod's pain. Don't wait for the reality check to reveal you've been living a lie. Ask God to help you see things through the eyes of Truth. Evaluate your own behavior and thinking before someone else has to.