Who knows what they’re doing? It depends on who you ask. If you ask an unsaved person, even if he is labeled (by mankind; not God) as an expert in the field of human behavior, he may say like George K. Simon, Jr., Ph.D. does,
Character disturbed people (e.g., covert-aggressive manipulators) are aware of what they’re doing. Neurotics are not.
Or an unsaved psychologist may follow traditional therapy and say,
Most people don’t know what they’re doing or why they’re doing it.
Such thinking makes profitable careers.
If you ask God, He said (via His son in Luke 23:34),
…they know not what they do.
Jesus wasn’t just referring to those who were verbally demanding Him to be crucified. We know this because of what God tells us in Jeremiah 17:9, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”
Can anyone ever know what they’re doing? If so, when and how? God tells us in 2 Corinthians 13:5 it’s only possible for His elect to know, “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?”
Do we examine ourselves by comparing ourselves to others or to ourselves? Only the spiritually blind would think one or the other. Christians should know we can only compare ourselves to the perfect man, the only one who was born and died without ever having sin in His life — Jesus Christ. He alone is our standard of measure. The only way to know what we are doing can only come if God’s Spirit is abiding in us; then we can examine ourselves against the criteria listed in Galatians 5:22-24, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.”
No one should judge Christians by other Christians, but yet that often happens. That wasn’t what God meant in 1 Corinthians 2:13 by saying to compare spiritual things with spiritual. Comparing scripture with scripture is how we are to study the bible. Comparing Christians with Christians is how people excuse themselves to act like god.
What the heart loves, the will embraces. Therein is the great divide of humanity! Either our heart embraces God’s own heart or it does not. If it does not, the will (unbeknown to that individual) embraces self-deception. An unwholesome heart seeks to satisfy lusts, such as preferring to examine and judge others rather than examining and judging one’s own self. Their mind justifies their judgments. They will lead others of like mind/heart to follow them or they will follow those of like mind/heart and act like sheeple. Either way, each group is a slave to their own will.
They cannot know what true freedom is, because they’ve never experienced it. That’s why they lack the courage to fight for freedom.
Christian martyrs experienced life abundantly. Their faith gave them the kind of freedom to die for; the kind that’s packaged with eternal life.¹
If a heart embraces God’s own heart, the will seeks God’s will more than one’s own will. That’s why what’s in their mind won’t get justified. That’s also what enables psychology self-help books to be misleading. Mental health and psychologists focus on what’s in the mind. They’re ignorant about mankind’s heart. That’s why they don’t know as much about what they’re doing as they think they do.
It’s okay to glean what you can from self-help books and articles, but it’s only accurate if you take what’s said and compare it against what God says in the bible.
Those who don’t do so risk being manipulated by even those who are trained to help you recognize manipulative behavior!
Fools may think they changed someone else’s mind, but such things are not possible unless God allows it. No one has a mind powerful enough to sway someone else’s heart or even their own heart. God is the King of Hearts. He is the potter. We are the clay. Pride turns clay to stone. Only God can shatter such hard rocks. He only saves those who have a broken heart and contrite spirit.²
People may act like they have a broken heart and they may fool others (including their own self) into thinking they have changed, but only God is never fooled. He can be trusted to tell us [i.e., humbled for salvation] what we’re doing.
As for those who have never been humbled to the point of begging for God’s mercy, God doesn’t care for them. This is evident from what’s said in Romans 1:24, “Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts,…”
¹Matthew 10:28, “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”
²The bible is the only environment where one may be saved. Romans 10:17, “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”