Flattery and Vanity

I’ve been getting a ton of mail these days from people who just love everything about me.  Here are a few samples of the effusive praise I get, several times an hour:

Hi there, just became alert to your blog through Google, and found that it is really informative. I am gonna watch out for brussels. I’ll be grateful if you continue this in future. Many people will be benefited from your writing. Cheers!

I’m not sure what “watch out for brussels” means, but since she’s so clearly grasped my greatness and is urging me to continue being the informative and beneficial man I am, I will let that slide.  Meanwhile, somebody else writes:

Amazing web site you’ve here however i was curious about should you understood associated with a community forums which cover exactly the same subjects talked about in the following paragraphs? Identification enjoy to be a a part of online community where I’m able to get reactions from other experienced people who reveal exactly the same curiosity. For those who have any recommendations, make sure you let me know. Many thanks!

This one is even harder to parse, but just so long as somebody tells me I’m amazing, I will certainly click through to their links.

Yet another reader sez, in somewhat mysterious prose:

I be aware like Im continuously searching by cause of inviting things to pore more than close by numerous topics, however i succeed to include your set up amongst my personal scans each and every life time since you give delivery to compelling entries that I look forth to.

Did you hear that?  Evidently, the author of English as She is Spoke thinks I write compelling entries and he looks forth to them!  He likes me!  He really likes me! *Gush!  Sob!*  Another person writes me:

The actual web site is actually exceptional and also intriguing.

What?  Not “also actually intriguing”?  I feel insufficiently complimented for my greatness.  Moving on, here’s another of the thousands of raving appraisals of my awesomeness:

I,myself adore your article so much, hoping you can compose far more outstanding ones

Only my due, only my due.  It’s so beautiful to receive such personal adoration from a reader.  Keep it coming!:

After study a few of the blogs inside your website now, and that i really like your own method of running a blog. I bookmarked this to my personal bookmark website itemizing and can be checking again soon. Pls check out my personal web site because nicely as well as tell me what you think.

Wow!  So many total strangers who just love me!  I’ll just go check out that personal website and meet my new friend and… hey!  Wait!  That’s not a personal website!  That’s somebody trying to sell me something!

Hey!  Every one of those “people” turns out to not be people at all, but a spambot generated by a computer somewhere. It’s like they don’t care about me at all and are just saying nice things so that I’d click on their links and buy their stuff.

On a somewhat more serious note: Vanity is one of the dumbest sins we can fall for (and I speak here as an expert in this particular sin) and flattery one of most venal.  Vanity is not the same as pride, though a lot of people think it is.  The difference between the two is that vanity cares intensely what people think and pride does not care a jot.  Vanity is, as C.S. Lewis notes, a fault, but a humble fault.  Flattery is its natural exploiter because the flatterer is looking for a weak will to manipulate, not a person to love.  Flattery looks like love, of course, because it says nice things to us that resemble the words of somebody who loves us.  But as the spambots illustrate, flattery proceeds from motives so loveless and self-serving that you can literally program a robot to flatter.

It is a sign of the love God bears us that in the hour immediately preceding the ultimate revelation of God in Jesus Christ, God sent us John the Baptist to speak, not flattery, but the healthy and tonic word, “Repent!”  Jesus came into this world, not to say, “You are a genius!  Keep it up!  Don’t change a thing! I’m bookmarking your website!” but to echo John by saying, “Repent!  For the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”  In that, he gave us something much more precious than flattery for our brainless vanity: he gave us the truth about us and about him.

Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy. - Proverbs 27:6