Psychologists, therapists, counselors, preachers, horsemen, wives, Paul and the Holy Scriptures all say it: the path to a healthier you is radical honesty. Amy has been telling me this for years. I am honest, I tell her. I’ve never cheated even once. She lets it go but I don’t like the way she looks at me when we talk of it.

Everyone who has what I want says it. Radical, deep honesty. This is not about if you’ve cheated or not. It’s a relationship with yourself. Know thyself, the ancients said. See if there be any wicked way in me. I spent a few days test-driving the idea. What would I find under my hood if I, to the best of my abilities, lay aside all explanation of myself to myself, and just observed what went on? Just took notes; an unbiased, dispassionate chronicler of a heart. Show me, I asked the Spirit. 

For two days I lifted aside and opened things in myself. By the third day, I hadn’t much to say.

“Why are you not talking?” said Amy. 

“I’m being honest with myself.”

She sipped her coffee. “And how is that going for you?”

“I tend to be a bit sleazy, it seems.”

The operating systems we run on are circuit boards of infinitely interwoven leads, steaming jungles of growth, thick books of fine print. Our past experiences, our present thoughts and actions and our future visions overlap and intertwine in deeply complex patterns.

We also carry with ourselves an owner’s manual of ourselves, written by ourselves. It has flow charts, graphs and diagrams. Explanations of who I am, what I do, and why I do it. It was written with a single objective: to make me feel good about who I am. 

When I was in my early twenties, when testosterone had a head start on maturity, I was grinding up the every-mans-battle road of sexual integrity. I was winning the war, but losing more battles than I knew were healthy to lose. In my head I checked the boxes. In my owner’s manual, things lined up: 

1. I loved God with all my heart.

2. I would do anything, give up anything for Jesus.

3. I desired purity and victory with all my heart. 

Up the valley, on the western slope of the Mission mountains, lay the Pope Ranch. Hundreds of acres of heaven on earth. A blanket of heavy timber lay on its eastern flank where it rose into the granite headwalls and cirques of east and west McDonald peaks. In the spring, lines of elk filed out from the trees, in the summer, when the darkness fell, the drifting hulks of grizzlies moved down off the mountain. Ashley Creek ran across the ranch, watering the hay ground and the grass where herds of Angus grew fat and heavy. 

And I remember the day, a Sunday afternoon, when honesty had its way with me. It came to me that were I to broker a deal with God where if I stayed clean for two years He would hand me the Pope Ranch on a platter, I would go at this project very differently. I would do what it took. There was no way I would even once “fail”. Eyeballs and right hands would litter the ground around me. I’d handcuff myself to a fencepost if need be. 

So there it was. A real estate transaction could motivate me more than the God who I claimed I’d do anything in the world for. The operating assertions of years collapsed under one four minute thought experiment. 

In June of this summer I was crawling through my garden pulling weeds. The evening was full of light and the air was quiet and clean. My tomatoes were lush, the soil under my knees was rich. When I was done, my gardens clean, two things occurred to me: I loved pulling weeds and I could not quite be honest about this. Around me, men rule countries, orchestrate revolutions, write books, climb the Himalayas, and what makes me happy? Pulling bindweed in my gardens. It took some doing before I could stand tall and own it. Pulling weeds in my garden makes me happy. Things like this about myself that I’ve never made eye contact with and nodded assent to have cut me down to size, inch by painful inch. I am deeply shy. I speak haltingly in a thin voice with much vocal fry. I am relationally risk-averse, a pleaser who says what people want to hear. 

Honest self-examination is holy ground. It is the beginning of all good things, where scales fall from your eyes and God is near and immediate. It is where you feel small, petty, naked. You’ve been conned by desires and misled by impulses, and when you see this and speak it, you have come to a place few humans–less, maybe, than have climbed the Himalayas–ever get to.

So start with this: what makes me happy? Immediately you will quibble with yourself about happy or true, deep joy. Let it go and lift the layers, slowly and gently. There will a rush to load every revelation with moral weight and meaning. This too must be laid aside. When the need to condemn or commend clamors at you, tell it what you tell the help at the bookstore: just lookin’.

Pray to the Spirit of Jesus to guide your lookin’, because the most religious could be argued to harbor the most dishonest hearts. The pressure to be sanctified, born again, to have a good testimony, has driven all of us to shortcuts and hacks. Breathe deeply, ask: show me Jesus, who I am.

Try it, you won’t like it.