Selfishness

I was talking with someone today, and the topic of "selfishness" came up. The back of my mind starting analyzing the selfish nature of man. What really popped out in my mind was the fact that, though selfishness is rooted deeply into the nature of man, when God created us, selfishness was balanced out and did not rule the thoughts of the original man and woman - originally.

We all know the story of the fall of man, how Adam and Eve ate of the apple and were thrown out of the Garden. It was after this that selfishness really began to take root in man's psyche. Why? I wonder if it's related to man's drive for self preservation. That drive isn't like a switch that God just flipped on when he was kicking Adam and Eve out of Eden. No, it was already present. But (and here's the key) it did work differently. I don't want to get into the theology of Eden, and try to pick apart what it was like there (hey, I'll just do that in another blog!), but I do want to point out that God placed within us all the desire to avoid pain and discomfort.

Self preservation, in it's truest state, is the assertion of a form of selfishness (you protect yourself because you find yourself more important than that which you're protecting yourself from). It's what keeps one from running into a burning building - yet there are those who do run into burning buildings. Firefighters have found within themselves the strength to deny their basic instinct of self-preservation because they choose to hold others as more important than themselves - the most basic tenent of selflessness.

I wonder if that's why Jesus told us to 'hate' our lives (Luke 14:26 KJV), because he wants to get to the root of the problem, for us to let go of our tendency towards self preservation.

Once we have let go of the importance of ourselves, we can finally see the importance of others.