So bear with me as I take you way, way back to when my parents invested $500 of my bar mitzvah money in a nice, safe company called Rochester Telephone. The stock was my security blanket. It sent me dividends four times a year. In 1979 I sold the stock for a $765 profit to get money for a house down payment. But I had forgotten about $200 of Rochester Telephone stock that had built up in a dividend-reinvestment account. Flash forward 20 years. By 1999 I had re-invested $1,200 of dividends, the world had changed and my $200 stake in Rochester Telephone had morphed into $5,000 of Frontier Corp. stock. Then fortune smiled: Global Crossing, then a hot company, bought Frontier. I found myself with 257 Global Crossing shares, worth about $6,000. Lucky me.

Now, let’s be clear. I’m a conservative investor. I would never have written a $6,000 check to buy Global Crossing stock. It was a go-go company with a ton of debt. Its bookkeeping was opaque. Insiders, including founder Gary Winnick, were selling lots of stock. Not encouraging signs. So what did I do? Nothing. To my surprise, Global stock caught fire. My stake rose and rose, topping $15,000 in early 2000. I felt as if God had smiled on my bar mitzvah remnant. I took to fantasizing about what my Global stake would have been worth had I kept my original Rochester Telephone stock. (Answer: about $125,000.)

I should have known. In the spring of 2000, Global Crossing started to deflate as the Internet-telecom stock bubble burst. Global’s financial statements started looking like body parts that Mike Tyson had gnawed on. The company was (apparently legally) inflating revenues and understating expenses. Did I sell then? No. I advised other people to sell, but I didn’t sell. Why did I freeze? Because back when my stock was worth $15,000, I deluded myself into thinking it would go higher. And then when it fell back to $6,000, I felt like an idiot. Clearly, I was emotional about this symbol of my youth. I didn’t really lose $15,000–my actual investment was only $1,400–but I feel like I’ve lost $15,000. The current value of my 257 shares: zero.

So in my own way, I feel Enron investors’ pain. Especially employees’ pain. I can imagine how hard it must have been for loyal employees to even think of selling Enron stock in their 401(k) plans. Despite what you’ve heard, people who had most or all of their Enron 401(k) in company stock could have sold most of it at any time. The company wouldn’t let you sell the stock it contributed to your account until you were 50 years old. (It waived that rule with the stock at 26 cents. Thanks, guys.) But you could always sell the stock you had bought with your own contributions. Employees complain about not having been able to sell for a few weeks during the fall. But by the time that “blackout” started, the stock was $12, down 85 percent for the year. It was $9 when the blackout ended. Now it’s about zero. The blackout’s not the problem. Human nature’s the problem. It’s natural to think that what had been a great stock will be great again. Besides, you want to show faith in your employer.

Terrance Odean, a financial-behavior specialist at the University of California, Berkeley, tells me that the Enronites and I have plenty of company. He explains that it’s hard to bring yourself to sell a stock that’s fallen sharply, and especially difficult when it’s your employer’s stock. “When you sell stock at a loss, you don’t want to have to look at it again,” Odean says. “If you’re working at the company, you have to look at it every day. " And, he adds, “people are in denial that something that was worth 80 is now worth 15. You don’t want to believe it. You want to have faith in your company, and in your co-workers.”

Since we started with religion, let’s tie this all up with a Biblical reference. Let’s turn to Leviticus 19:14, which discusses business morality: “Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind, but shalt fear thy God.” The rabbis’ interpretation: don’t help people mislead themselves. Maybe you can blame employees for not selling–but Enron and chairman Ken Lay tempted them. In September, Lay told employees that Enron was “an incredible buy” without telling them that in August, he’d been selling. You don’t need a religious ceremony to know that’s a sin.