One Of The Reasons Why People Overestimate Themselves

"People don't lie awake at night wrestling with the outrage of their indifference to God." (John Piper)

The Flattery Machine

We're in another presidential election season. That means we'll be getting a lot of flattery from a lot of politicians trying to get our vote. We'll hear about how we're such hard workers who deserve better leaders, how the nation's problems are so much the fault of some small minority of people rather than the average person, etc. Businesses and advertisers flatter us in an attempt to get our money, and politicians flatter us in an attempt to get our vote. And all of that is accompanied by a lot of talk about self-esteem, not letting anybody judge you, not letting anybody put you down, following your heart, etc. The fact that people are aware that they live in that sort of atmosphere of flattery and realize how misleading it is doesn't mean that it doesn't adversely affect them. You don't have to buy all of it in order to buy some of it. "Flattery is like perfume. Sniff it. Don't swallow it." A few facts to keep in mind as you take in all of the flattery of the presidential election season:

Flattered To Death

As good as things like capitalism and democracy are, they come with some downsides. One of those is that we're often flattered by people who want our money, our vote, or both. We're surrounded by it. We swim in an ocean of it. And since this is a presidential election year in the United States, the situation is especially bad. We hear a lot about how the problem is with corrupt leaders in Washington (and wherever else), how good the American people are, what hard workers they are, how they deserve this and deserve that, are entitled to this and entitled to that, etc.

It would be simplistic to say that all of this flattery goes to people's heads. But some of it does. And that's added on top of all of the teaching of self-esteem in schools, in books, on television, and elsewhere, all of the popular sayings of a similar nature ("don't let anybody judge you", "don't let anybody put you down", "be yourself", "follow your heart", "you deserve a break today", "the customer is always right"), and so on.

For a partial antidote to all of this, see here. We should ask what we're doing to make the problem worse. Do we accept and repeat claims that most Americans are political conservatives or that most are traditional Christians, for example, despite the lack of evidence for such conclusions and the evidence to the contrary? Do we repeat common false notions of how Americans are such good people, but that a small group of political leaders (or the media, academia, Hollywood, etc.) are holding them back and bringing about most of our problems? How much of your view of America is based on wishful thinking or false notions you've accepted without subjecting them to much analysis?

Many years ago, I heard Alistair Begg tell a story from his childhood on his radio program. Listen at 17:18 here. A worker in a candy shop, apparently after hearing somebody compliment Begg about something, told him, "Sonny, flattery is like perfume. Sniff it. Don't swallow it."