The Cure for Selfishness

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”
- Oscar Wilde


It is amazing to me how seemingly random events and indiscriminant moments can come together to teach me such specific lessons. I find the more I recognize my great need for education the more frequently such alignments of time and occurrence take place. It is as if someone much smarter and everywhere and everywhen at once were powering the universe to teach me. It’s simply amazing and at the same time wholly disturbing. Under the weighty evidence of such obviously supernatural intervention I am revealed to be a poor center for my own existence. In fact with me in the middle the whole thing becomes some kind of farcical joke.
The spirit of God is moving all of creation forward through time on a song. Concurrently the Father our creator conducts His creation outside of the timeline of history but interwoven intimately within. He makes all things new and births purpose into a cosmic void of chaos but somehow still empowers choice. It is a mystical dance of the divine will and the free spirit of man orchestrated in concert to make the music of destiny. The great and terrifying miracle of the composition is that we are instruments and the music we make is part of the song of creation. We play our parts in tempo but the beat is preordained. We can count on that. The beat goes on!
Have you ever wondered at the rhythmic nature of the universe? Such as the way ocean waves spill onto the beach with mesmerizing consistency. Like a moist metronome. Or consider the cyclical predictability of the seasons. Both the natural seasons of the earth’s rotation and the more subtle but still relevant seasons of birth, death, and rebirth are ageless in their regularity. It seems there is an undercurrent beneath the stream of consciousness, a law of motion beneath the commotion if you will. I wonder why it’s there, and further I wonder if we can trust it?

To me we are living in a time of great promise and opportunity. I am sure that every generation has people in it that believe this about the world in which they reside. It is part of what makes the free spirit work, the great irrational human tendency towards optimism. It is that belief within us that says yes I can trust the rhythm that is driving creation forward.
I am excited with the anticipation of what the future holds both the immediate future and the long term. However there is a part of me that looks at creation with distrust. This part looks at the frailty of the free spirit of humanity. It gets caught up in the fear that the knowledge of the evil nature of mans heart promotes. It gives too much credit to the anti-rhythm that opposes the spirit of God. It wonders what happens if the beat just suddenly does stop?
I label this part selfishness, because it looks inwardly. It places its own preservation and outlook at the center of creation. It strives to control the uncontrollable wildness that is Elohim. It makes its self God and makes God= god, a dying whisper on the wind.

There is law underneath creation. God himself wrote it, or more accurately, it is, because He is. Where He exists the law exists because it flows out of who He is. Man can’t control it change it or enforce it. We all try, but all of humanity has this thing in common, we all fail. The law is as unchanging as the God it flows out of. Jesus Himself proclaimed the sanctity of this law. Matthew 5:17-18 (New American Standard Bible) 17"Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. 18"For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
We spend so much of our time attempting to rewrite Gods law, whether this is done accurately or not is not my point here, my point is this. Fulfillment of Gods law can only come one way, through Christ. Often we expect the world at large to obey Gods law. What a waste of time this is. The world simply can’t obey. It is no more complicated than that. We find it hard enough to be obedient as we learn to walk in the faith. Without faith it is absolutely impossible.
Let me interject here that I am not proposing that we do away with laws. Neither am I promoting a world view grounded in anarchy. We must have laws that govern our human interactions. We may disagree on what these laws should be but I believe we can agree that we have to have rules. These human laws, which should be decided on as a society are totally different than the divine laws that flow through creation. We may decide to break a societal accord and we often do. Many times our breaking one of these laws makes that rule null and void for us. The old it’s not illegal if I don’t get caught thing is true in the most basic sense, no punishment equals no illegality. Try that with Gods law and you will find that it is always in full effect and full enforcement.
Instead of expecting the _______(pick your word here; government, president, principal, teacher, child, husband etc. etc.) to adhere to divine law we need to expect it of ourselves. We need, I need, to let the law, fulfilled through Christ’s work in me flow out of me. I can only do this if I am fundamentally changed. I need a foundation built on the rhythm of creation. A foundation built on principles of the kingdom.
I can start by practicing love, which serves and keeps no record of wrongs. Love means that though I may fundamentally disagree with another person’s choice, and am perfectly free to do so, at the end of the day it is their choice to make and the law states that I am to serve them and hold nothing against them. Now we can argue about the nuances of how this should be applied etc. I hope we don’t get caught up in that however. We can even argue with the governing principal if we so choose though we are choosing a road of frustration because it is unchanging.
I really like what Paul has to say on the subject myself. Galatians 5:17-18 (The Message) 16-18My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God's Spirit. Then you won't feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. Why don't you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence?
Anyway to close, learning to love for the sake of love is greatly challenging me. It is making me come to terms with my prejudices and predispositions. It is making me ask hard questions, and it is making me fall in love with my savior more and more as I struggle to submit to it in principal. He was able to accomplish this and He did it so that I would be afforded the opportunity to follow after Him.

So my friends, I pray that today is a day that sees you firmly planted in the pursuit of the foundational principal of love. I pray that you hear the beat down beneath the ground you walk on, and that it calls to you, “Sing my child. Sing a new song”. I pray that the song you sing would create joy and peace in the world around you. I pray that in this atmosphere the law would come in love to bring a miracle of freedom to those in need.


One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.”
- Mother Teresa