SELFISHNESS

Each year senior military officers attending the Army War College choose a gift to present to the school. Because of differing tastes, this exercise of selecting a gift proves to be the most contentious challenge each class will face. Typically, students pick a reputable artist and commission that artist to paint a historical event the class chooses. Civil war themes are by far the most popular and sell the most prints. One year when the artist revealed his sketch, one southern student on the selection committee complained that there were no confederate soldiers present. Another member objected that no black Americans were depicted. So they sent the artist back to his canvas. Imagine their surprise when the clever painter produced a beautiful portrait of black Union soldiers guarding sullen Confederate prisoners!

Meditation
Psalm 199:36—Turn my heart toward Your statutes and not toward selfish gain.

Selfishness is like eating a steady diet of candy. It may feel good when we get what we want but in the end our rotted teeth and poor health testify to habitually making wrong choices. James, the brother of Jesus wrote, “But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth . . . For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice” (James 3:14,16).

Selfishness is an internal fixation on meeting our own needs. Unfortunately, because we are already a fallen race, self-pleasing is inherently flawed. Everyone cannot get what they want without depriving someone else. What makes Jesus so awesome is that He came to earth and abnegated His divine rights, focused on the needs of those around Him, and ultimately gave up Himself to rescue us from ourselves (our sin nature). Find a person in love with Jesus, fueled by a desire to be like Him and you will find a selfless person. In contrast, those who continuously manifest a self-promoting agenda reveal an inability to trust God and a faculty for hurting others.

Selfishness at its core is an unwillingness to believe that obeying God is sufficient. He asks me to put His will over my own, to look at the needs of others before I concern myself with my own things. Jesus’ paradoxical truth teaches me that when I die to self that is when I truly become alive! Often we don’t realize how subtle selfishness creeps in and corrupts. A good way to test how God-focused we really are is to measure how much of our time and thinking we give Him. Second, is our attitude more often acidic or angelic? There is a reason why God’s perfect painting often differs from our ideas, something to think about . . . in reveration.

Inspiration
Selfishness means that which gives me pleasure without considering Jesus Christ’s interests.—Oswald Chambers in Biblical Psychology