Chapter Twelve: Selfishness
CHAPTER TWELVE
Selfishness
Recently I learned, to my dismay, that one of my theological heroes from a bygone era had “feet of clay” — that is, some notable character flaws. One of his friends and admirers once wrote of him, “With all his glaring faults he was the greatest man I have known.” What were those glaring faults? Elsewhere, this same friend described him as heartless, selfish, and domineering.
What a warning this should be to all of us. We can be very learned in our theology or very upright in our morality and yet fail to display the gracious qualities of Christian character that Paul called the fruit of the Spirit (see Galatians 5:22-23). Or to say it in another way more in line with the subject of this book, we can be orthodox in our theology and circumspect in our morality and yet tolerate in our lives some of the subtle “acceptable” sins we are discussing in these chapters. I believe that all of us have “blind spots,” character flaws, or subtle sins, that we are not aware of. I doubt my hero deliberately tried to be heartless, selfish, and domineering. Those were blind spots that had never been dealt with. May God help us to deal with our own blind spots, including selfishness, as they occur in us.
In studying the sin of selfishness, it is helpful to start with the obvious truth that we are born with a selfish nature. One has only to observe preschoolers playing together to see that. How many times does a mother say, “Billy, share your toys with Bobby” or “Bobby, you mustn’t grab toys from Billy like that”? As Billy and Bobby grow older, they learn that such obvious acts of selfishness are socially unacceptable, so their selfish acts become more subtle, but the problem is still there. Even after we become Christians, we still have the flesh that wars against the Spirit, and one of its expressions is selfishness.
Selfishness is a difficult sin to expose because it is so easy to see in someone else but so difficult to recognize in ourselves. In addition, there are degrees of selfishness as well as degrees of subtlety in expressing it. One person’s selfishness may be crass and obvious. Such a person usually doesn’t care what others think about him. Most of us, however, do care about what others think, so our selfishness will likely be more delicate and refined.
Selfishness may express itself in many ways, but for purposes of looking at our “respectable” sins, I am going to address four areas of selfishness that may be observed in believers. The first is selfishness with our interests. Paul wrote in Philippians 2:4, “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” In using the word interests, Paul was undoubtedly referring to the concerns and needs of other people, but I am going to use it in a narrow sense to mean subjects we are interested in.
What are our interests? At this stage of our lives, my wife and I are interested in our grandchildren. We like to talk about them and show pictures of them to our friends. The problem is that our friends like to do the same. So when we are with them, whose grandchildren will we talk about? The answer, of course, is both if we and our friends are sensitive to the interests of each other. But if one or both couples are not sensitive, then the conversation is apt to be one-sided, or else we find ourselves waiting for our turn to share instead of showing a genuine interest in the other couple’s grandchildren.
Now, I’ve used a specific example of talking about our grandchildren only to illustrate the tendency to be so interested in our own affairs that we have little or no interest in the affairs of others. Our interests might include our work, our hobbies, or anything else. My wife is a quilter, so it’s natural when she’s with other women who quilt to talk about their latest projects. Again, she needs to be (and fortunately is) genuinely interested in the other women’s work and not just her own.
At this point in time, I’m trying to write this book. I’m very interested in it, so when someone asks me a typical question, “What are you writing about these days?” it is so easy to get carried away and spend an inordinate amount of time talking about my book. But the person who asked me the question has interests of his own. I need to be sensitive to ask the other person about subjects (work, hobbies, children) that will give him an opportunity to talk about his interests.
A good test of the degree of selfishness in our interests would be to reflect on the conversation after you have been with someone (or with another couple) and ask yourself how much time you spent talking about your interests compared to listening to the other person.
Now, this form of selfishness may seem so harmless that you question why I include it in this chapter. At worst it seems only rude and usually is considered merely unthoughtfulness but certainly not sin. But it is a symptom of self-centeredness. It indicates we are concerned mostly about ourselves. In 2 Timothy 3:1-5, Paul provides a list of really ugly sins that will be characteristic of the “last days” — that is, our present age. Included in this list is “lovers of self.” Lover of self is a good description of a selfish person. This person is first of all self-centered. At its extreme, the self-centered person cares little for the interests, needs, or desires of others. He is interested in only himself, and his self-centered conversation reflects that.
A second area of selfishness is in regard to our time. Time is a precious commodity, and each of us has only a fixed amount in a day. One can grow financially wealthy so as to have discretionary money, but few people have discretionary time. We all are busy, so it’s easy to become selfish with our time. A husband was overheard saying to his wife, “My time is always more important than yours.” This is obviously selfishness, but all of us can express a similar attitude in more polite ways.
Whether we are men or women, young or old, we tend to guard our time for our own ends. A student asks her roommate for help with an assignment, but the roommate is busy studying for an exam. Will she give up precious time to help her roommate, or will she guard it for herself? Or will she take time to help but do so in a reluctant manner?
What about the first student? Is she acting selfishly to ask her roommate for help when she knows the roommate is busy studying for the exam? We can be selfish by inordinately guarding our time, and we can also be selfish in unduly imposing on another person’s time. In either case, we are thinking mainly about ourselves and our needs.
Selfishness with one’s time will frequently be observed in the home. Usually husband and wife, and to some extent children, will have certain responsibilities and duties. Oftentimes there is a reluctance to step outside one’s normal responsibilities. “That’s not my job,” is a response a child may make when asked to do something that’s not his usual duty. Adults will usually not be so direct, but the selfish person will rarely see the needs of others in the family and will feel no sense of compassion toward one who seems overwhelmed at the time. There is seldom any expression such as, “I’ll take care of that for you.” Yet the Scriptures say that we are to “bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). Going beyond our normal duties to help someone else is one way we can bear each other’s burdens.
A third area of selfishness is with our money. Surveys show that Americans, who live in the richest nation in all of history, give less than 2 percent of their income to charitable and religious causes. While we pride ourselves on our generosity following major disasters, the facts state that we Americans as a whole are selfish with our money and relatively indifferent to the physical and material needs of people less fortunate than us. And even our relief giving tends to be a response to the more dramatic events. There was a great outpouring of money following the tsunami of 2004 off the coast of Indonesia but almost no response to the almost equally devastating earthquake of 2005 in Pakistan.
This is an especially crucial issue for believers. The apostle wrote that we are to “rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15). And the apostle John wrote, “If anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” (1 John 3:17). Taken together, these verses tell us that we are to cultivate hearts of compassion toward those in need and then put that compassion to work through our giving.
As has already been observed in an earlier chapter, every dollar we receive, even when earned by our work, is a gift from God. We are to be stewards of that money and not consume all or most of it on ourselves. To do so is to be selfish with our money, while ignoring the needs of others. (There is more on this subject in chapter 20.)
The fourth area of selfishness we will look at is the trait of inconsiderateness. This trait may be expressed in several ways. The inconsiderate person never thinks about the impact of his or her actions on others. The person who is always late and keeps others waiting is inconsiderate. The person who talks loudly on his cell phone to the disturbance of others nearby is selfishly inconsiderate. So is the teenager who leaves her mess on the kitchen counter for someone else to clean up. Any time we do not think about the impact of our actions on others, we are being selfishly inconsiderate. We are thinking only of ourselves.
We can also be inconsiderate of the feelings of others. Far too often, Christians are rude to waitresses and store clerks. Or, at the very least, we are indifferent to their feelings. Instead of being rude or indifferent, we can with no expenditure of energy brighten someone’s day with a simple thank you. Just as we need to cultivate the habit of giving thanks to God, we also need to develop that habit with one another. And in the home, a simple “thank-you” toward other family members goes a long way.
The person whose attitude is “I just say what I think and let the chips fall where they may” is selfishly inconsiderate. This person is completely indifferent to the possible embarrassment, humiliation, and put-down feeling of others. He is concerned only with expressing his own opinion.
We are to look not only to our own interests but also to the interests of others. If we broaden the meaning of interests to mean, as I believe Paul did, the needs and concerns of other people, we can see that the unselfish person is always balancing his or her needs and concerns with the needs and concerns of others. By contrast, the selfish person not only is indifferent to the needs of others but actually expects them to meet his needs and desires. This form of selfishness is found in marriages where each spouse expects the other to meet his or her needs, instead of thinking of how they can serve each other.
The greatest example of unselfishness is the Lord Jesus Christ, who though He was rich, for our sake became poor so that by His poverty we might become rich (see 2 Corinthians 8:9). And Paul urges us to cultivate the same frame of mind (see Philippians 2:5). Apart from Christ, one of the most notable examples of both selfishness and unselfishness occurred during the time of the bubonic plague that reached Europe in 1348 and was responsible for the deaths of 30 to 40 percent of Europe’s population. The plague spread so quickly that when one member of a family was infected, often the whole family died. Because of that, sometimes the entire rest of the family would quickly get out, leaving the sick one to die alone. Many priests cared for the sick and dying, and as a result, they too died. Other priests refused to help. It was said at that time that the best of the priests died and the worst of them lived.
Living unselfishly will likely not cost us our lives, but it will cost. It will cost time and money. It will cost becoming interested in the interests, concerns, and needs of others. And it will cost in learning to be considerate of the emotions and feelings of others.
A lot of selfishness is exhibited in the home among family members. Outside the home we are apt to be on our best behavior and act as we know we should (though there are plenty of people who are selfish wherever they are). But in the home we tend to put aside those artificial restraints that are not part of our true character. And since selfishness is so difficult to see in ourselves, it would be good to ask other family members to point out any tendencies toward selfishness they see in us. And we should do this without becoming defensive or retaliating by bringing up selfishness in the other person. And then we should genuinely repent of our various sins of selfishness and begin to pray that the Holy Spirit will enable us to deal with those selfish traits.
I said early in the chapter that selfishness is easy to see in someone else but so difficult to recognize in ourselves. I suspect all of us have tendencies toward selfishness in one form or another, because we all still have the sinful flesh waging war against our souls. So please don’t disregard this chapter as not applying to you. Rather, I urge you to go back through it, putting yourself in situations similar to the ones I have used for illustration. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you evidences of selfishness in your own life, and let Him use your family members as His agents.