My car glided down our suburban streets when I noted the silver Civic maneuver a hurried U-turn a hundred yards or so in front of me. “That’s quite an aggressive driver,” I thought to myself. I watched as the driver floored their Civic and closely tailed the SUV in front of them in the right lane. “Oh wow,” I thought. That young man is in a hurry or is angry. The Civic kept tailing the SUV even though the left lane was empty. “This must be personal,” I thought.
As we came up to the stop light, I was cautious. I imagined the driver of the Civic jumping out of his car with a gun, or pounding on the window of the SUV and initiating a fight. Instead, both cars sat motionless at the light. I slowly pulled past both vehicles in the left lane, observing the drivers. I eyed the Civic and lo and behold, the driver was not an angry young man, but the most peaceful-looking tiny elderly woman. Her head peered just over the steering wheel and with a serene look on her face. This, apparently, was just how my new senior adult acquaintance drove.
I chuckled to myself, apologized to teenage boys everywhere and continued on my merry way.
I was wrong. I could not have been wronger (and yes, I know that’s not a word, but it’s so much more fun than “more wrong.”)
We human beings are naturally self-confident creatures. We overestimate, have a false illusion of control, and rate ourselves as superior than others than we are. This isn’t just true for the average citizen but also for experts. This collection of attributes is called the “overconfidence effect.”[i]
Our culture provides very few checks and balances on our overconfidence. The median GPA in college has risen by 21.5% over the past 30 years.[ii] Scores in youth sports are sometimes not even tracked. Teachers are increasingly blamed for students’ poor performance.[iii]
But there is a cost to my self-deception. There is a cost when I misperceive how trustworthy I am. It distorts my view of God, my view of the world, my view of others, and my view of myself.
One of the great gifts Christianity offers our overconfident hearts is Morpheus’s red pill. And learning “how deep the rabbit hole goes,” applies first to our hearts.[iv]
When God revealed himself to the prophet Isaiah, Isaiah responded in horror to his own heart, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Is. 6:5).
The prophet Jeremiah came to a similar conclusion, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9).
My misjudgment of who a driver was ought to give me pause. How many things about myself, God, others, and this world am I wrong about? Far more than I think, I’m sure. To grow in trust in God is to grow in the understanding of the untrustworthiness of me.
[i] Overconfidence Effect, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overconfidence_effect.
[ii] Jane Nam, “Grade Inflation in College,” Best Colleges, May 23, 2024, https://www.bestcolleges.com/research/grade-inflation-trends-and-causes/.
[iii] Leah Cleary, “The Problem with a System That Blames Teachers When Students Fail,” https://leahcleary.com/the-problem-with-a-system-that-blames-teachers-when-students-fail/.
[iv] In The Matrix, Morpheus famously offers Neo the opportunity to take the blue pill and remain in ignorance, or take the red pill, coming to a true, but costly understanding of the world.
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