by Gary Thomas
Kelsey looked so ridiculously small on that horse. The consent form I
had signed before she could ride it warned, “Horse riding is the only
sport in which a predator seeks to exert his control over an animal
three to four times his own size and power.” But eight-year-old Kelsey’s
heart was set on riding horses while we vacationed at the beach (“and
I’m not riding a pony!”), and besides, I thought, it can’t be too
dangerous or these people wouldn’t still be in business.
We opted for the trail ride, and soon my three kids and I were
slogging through the Oceanside forest. I was in the rear on the largest
horse, Kelsey followed the leader, and Allison and Graham were in front
of me. About 2/3 of the way into our ride, the lead horse caught scent
of something that scared him. He bolted back, and Kelsey’s horse reared
around in panic, passing Graham’s, running toward Allison’s, and
creating a general melee.
The last time I had ridden a horse, I was ten years old. I know
nothing about controlling an animal that you couldn’t pick up watching
Bonanza reruns. My horse tried to bolt right, but I jerked it back to
the left so I could keep Kelsey and the other kids in my sight. As the
three horses bolted toward me, I remember thinking, I don’t believe
this. I’m going to have to stop Kelsey’s horse.
I’ll never forget two things: the look on Kelsey’s face as that
massively larger animal decided to take over, and the way time seemed to
stop as I had no idea of what to do other than put myself in her path
so she couldn’t get by. I didn’t think about my own horse rearing. I
wasn’t thinking about falling off. I was consumed with the thought, How
do I get my daughter’s horse to stop?
The trail leader apologized profusely. She had never had something
like that happen before, and we slowly made our way back to the barn.
There’s a clarity to our vision when we completely forget ourselves
and concentrate solely on the task before us. It’s an energizing feeling
to be so focused on someone else that there is no thought of our own
welfare, predicament, or problems. Though it seems ironic, it’s a
blessed state, far more meaningful than when we are obsessed with our
own trials and tribulations—but it’s not one that naturally colors our
spirit.
Self-centeredness can creep up on us in so many ways. Our fallen
nature and our culture collide with the force of an avalanche to push
us ever further down the hill of self-centeredness, but true faith calls
us back to the summit of selflessness.
Giving When It Hurts
Paul taught that Christian faith leads us to be oriented around the
needs of others: “We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of
the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please his
neighbor for his good, to build him up. For even Christ did not please
himself...” (Rom. 15:1-3)
In fact, Paul took this line of thinking one step further. “Though I
am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win
as many as possible.” (1 Cor. 9:19) Because Paul’s writings are so
familiar to us, it is easy to glide right over the depth of Paul’s
willingness to put himself completely at others’ disposal.
The extreme to which Paul adhered to this selflessness is, in fact,
shocking to modern sensibilities. The great apostle tells the Romans
that he wishes he could cut himself off from salvation if in doing so he
might save Israel (Rom. 9:3). Again, let’s not quickly pass over this.
Paul was fully aware of the total horrors of hell—the physical pain, the
emotional angst, the spiritual alienation—yet still he proclaims, “I
wish I could be damned in hell for all eternity, if in my damnation the
rest of the people of Israel could be saved.”
Where did Paul get this selflessness? How could a man become so
others-oriented, so willing to play the role of a servant? I believe it
essentially comes down to this: Paul took the words of Jesus, “It is
more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35) literally, and found
that they were true! Throughout his letters, Paul is effusive with his
thanks and affection for others—clearly, his service on their behalf
brings tremendous joy to his life: “I thank my God through Jesus Christ
for all of you…” (Rom. 1:8; 1 Cor. 1:4) “For I wrote you out of great
distress and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to grieve you but
to let you know the depth of my love for you.” (2 Cor. 2:4) “It is
right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my
heart.” (Phil. 1:7) Paul’s affection for others was real; the enjoyment
he derived from serving them and sacrificing on their behalf was
tangible and at times intense. These are not the words of a man who only
grudgingly serves. These are the words of a man who has found service
to be the most meaningful life imaginable, creating an intimacy many of
us could only dream about.
Paul found the hidden, quiet blessing of a selfless life, the kind
Solomon talked about when he wrote, “A generous man will prosper; he who
refreshes others will himself be refreshed.” (Prov. 11:25) Ironically,
this attitude of selflessness actually creates a fountain of joy. It
seasons our faith with meaning and applies purpose to our pain.
“The pursuit of happiness”—for which aim our forefathers fought a
war—wouldn’t even register in Paul’s top ten priorities. His goal in
life was much more simple: “And [Christ] died for all, that those who
live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them
and was raised again.” (2 Cor. 5:15)
Everything Paul experienced was put through this grid. He even
learned to “rejoice” in suffering, because by suffering “I fill up in my
flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the
sake of his body, which is the church.” (Col. 1:24)
Paul didn’t look at what hardship did to him. He was entirely
preoccupied by what his suffering accomplished for God’s church. When he
was imprisoned, Paul took heart in the fact that “because of my chains,
most of the brothers in the Lord have been encouraged to speak the word
of God more courageously and fearlessly.” (Philip. 1:14)
The key to Paul’s joy is adopting Paul’s mission: i.e., become a
champion of God’s work on this earth. Sacrifice, serve, and tirelessly
work to build the Kingdom of God in this world. If you do that
faithfully, you may find, as did Paul, that the selfless life, though
not an easy life, though filled with much pain, anguish, and heartache,
is the most meaningful life that can be lived. When you know you’re
doing something solely out of love for God and a desire to see His
Kingdom prosper on this earth, there’s an unrivaled inner satisfaction
that fills your soul. This satisfaction has been testified to for ages,
beginning with the classical Christian writers.
The Classical Chorus
Augustine captured the spirit of Paul’s writing precisely when he
wrote that “God fashions us, that is, forms and creates us anew, not as
men—for he has done that already—but as good men, which His grace is now
doing.” In other words, when God’s Spirit transforms us and re-creates
us, He does so with a view toward making us different—i.e., less selfish
and more inclined to serve others, that is, to make us good. He doesn’t
just save us, but intends to change us.
What else is the meaning of Ephesians 2:10? “For we are God’s
workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God
prepared in advance for us to do.” But here’s the delightful irony: in
Augustine’s mind, acts of good will and charity, far from being a
nuisance and a burden, actually promote true happiness: “Acts of
compassion…towards our neighbors, when they are directed towards God…are
intended to free us from misery and thus to bring us to happiness—which
is only attained by that good of which it has been said, ‘As for me, my
true good is to cling to God.’ (Ps. 73:28)”
Augustine had plenty of opportunities to live out this thinking. When
he first became a Christian, Augustine’s ambition was to become a quiet
monk, living out his final days in prayer and contemplation. His piety
soon became noticed in high places, however, and church authorities
asked Augustine to become a Bishop, which led him into a very public
life—the opposite of what he wanted. Even so, Augustine agreed to take
on these responsibilities. He eventually discovered that a life of
service was preferable to a life of self-absorption, so much so that he
was willing to risk his life for others. Ultimately, this selflessness
led Augustine to an earlier death.
In 427, the Arian Vandals advanced into North Africa, where Augustine
lived and ministered. Genserik, the Vandal king, specifically sought
out Christian churches, as he heard they were particularly rich with
treasures. Refugees poured into Hippo, where Augustine was settled, and
soon, Genserik laid siege to Augustine's city.
The refugees brought more than heightened responsibilities for
Augustine; they also brought disease. So many people, packed into so
tight a space, inevitably created a sick environment, virtually over
night. At this point, Augustine had three choices: he could flee (as
bishop, Augustine could have abandoned his people and post and sought
safe sanctuary elsewhere in the kingdom, receiving sanctuary in the
highest and safest places), he could stay holed up in his palace and
ignore the needs of his people, or he could go out, get his hands dirty,
and risk becoming ill himself.
Augustine didn’t know how to be a bishop “from afar,” so he kept up
his active schedule, being with the people—and paid dearly for his
service. During the third month of the siege, in August of 430,
Augustine developed a high fever, from which he never recovered. He gave
his last hours offering refuge to a frightened flock.
The ancients were not masochists; they wanted true joy like any of us
do. Certainly, they sought fulfillment, and even happiness (properly
defined), but they discovered that happiness is best experienced in a
selfless life; that self-centered living creates its own misery.
Fenelon, a seventeenth century French mystic, wrote, “The forgetfulness
of self…does not mean never seeing anything in relation to ourselves,
but only never staying shut up within ourselves, concerned with our own
possessions or welfare. It is the preoccupation with ourselves, which
keeps us from love pure and simple, which contracts our hearts, and
which turns us from our true perfection, because it makes us seek it
with pressure, trouble and uneasiness, for love of ourselves.”
Rather than drink from the satisfying waters of selflessness, our
culture has developed a dangerous appetite for the bitter drink of
selfishness. “Obsession” is actually used as a popular and inviting word
when marketing a book or movie these days: “Obsession… passion… a great
read.” It’s as if we think nothing is more interesting to watch than a
man or woman in the throes of a genuine obsession. But if you’ve ever
met someone who is truly obsessive, there is no romance about it. Being
psychologically obsessed is a limiting, tyrannical state, with little
freedom, tremendous angst, and much anxiety. Obsession shrinks life
rather than focuses it. The word may seem romantically mysterious but it
is in actuality a painful foretaste of hell, a tremendously limiting
world that will ultimately suffocate our spirits.
Self-forgetfulness, on the other hand, leads us to increased joy
because we can truly celebrate when others face blessings, thus
multiplying our opportunities for celebration. Fenelon explains, “The
entirely pure and detached souls…regard the mercies shed on others with
as much love and satisfaction as they do the mercies which they
themselves have received.”
The literature of the classics is a veritable chorus of dying to self
so that we might truly live. In Beyond Personality, C.S. Lewis writes,
“The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up
yourself, and you’ll find your real self. Lose your life and you’ll save
it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every
day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fiber of
your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep nothing back. Nothing
that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you
that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself,
and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair,
rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and
with Him everything else thrown in.”
Self-centered faith ultimately becomes very disillusioning. In the
long run, living for our own good—even using religion to do so—leads
only to hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. Dying to
ourselves and living solely for God and his kingdom, and thus being
enlisted to do good to others and focus on serving, gives us God, and in
God we have everything.
Like Augustine, Lewis knew what he was talking about when he spoke of
the benefit that comes from selfless living. During the Second World
War, Lewis took in numerous children who were fleeing from London and
other cities vulnerable to German bombing. Bringing children into the
Kilns was a lot of extra work—not to mention the excess noise—but this
act of service also opened the door to one of Lewis’ greatest life
works. You see, one afternoon one of these evacuated children grew
interested in an old wardrobe and asked Lewis if she could go inside it
and if, perhaps, there was anything behind it?
Thus was planted the seed for perhaps the most beloved of all of
Lewis’ books, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. George Sayer, one
of Lewis’s biographers, writes of this period, “Having children in the
house benefited [Lewis] immensely. He had been shy and ignorant of them,
but he now gradually acquired the knowledge and affection for them that
made it possible for him to write the Narnia books. Without their
presence, it is unlikely that he would even have had the impulse.”
The truth is, we need to serve God more than He needs us to serve
him. Service can open doors of ministry we never would have dreamed of
otherwise.
The Choice
All of us have a choice to make. For most of us, this choice is
unconscious, the result of many mini-decisions, the implications of
which we may not be aware of. But whenever we choose selfishness, we
limit our life. Whenever we choose service, we expand it.
Let me explain. When our happiness is dependent on what happens to us
and when our self-focus determines our daily mood, our joy will
necessarily be limited to whatever good happens to fall within our own
limited experience. But when we truly learn to delight in the welfare of
others and rejoice in what God is doing in their lives, the potential
for increased joy skyrockets. Even when Paul was in prison, he could
rejoice over what God was doing in Colassae; as death drew near, Paul
took joy in the rise of Timothy’s ministry; as persecution followed upon
persecution, Paul rejoiced at the strength and witness of the
Philippians. Because Paul was so others-focused, nothing could get him
down. There was always someone to rejoice about and to thank God for!
This is the incredible miracle of joy that springs forth when
selflessness takes hold in our lives.
Selfishness, on the other hand, is a form of slow suffocation,
choking us on the limited air of our own self-interest. I remember Dr.
J.I. Packer telling a class at Regent College about a New Yorker cartoon
in which a smiling woman is talking to a glum-faced companion. The
smiling woman says, “Well that’s enough about me. Now let’s talk about
you. What do you think about me?” “The happy state,” Dr. Packer
commented, “which we know only rarely, is the unselfconscious state in
which all our attention is being given to the people around us, to the
situation outside us and we’re forgetting ourselves in the service of
others. You see that to perfection in the life of Jesus.”
Self-centered living is suffocated living; it reduces our world, our
focus, and our concerns to an almost unbearable degree, always
eventually leading to misery and, ironically enough, unhappiness.
Perhaps that’s why, scripturally, selflessness isn’t reserved solely
for mature Christians. Paul urges all of us to adopt it. “Do nothing out
of selfish ambition or vain conceit,” he tells the Philippians, “but in
humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should
look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of
others.” (Phil. 2:3-4) Spiritual health—in Paul’s mind, at least—is
marked by a vibrant, others-centered compassion and concern. Far from
simply absorbing blessings, we are called to lavish God’s love on
others.
If I find myself becoming disillusioned or apathetic about my faith,
one of the first things I check is my orientation. Am I focused on how
God is “failing” to serve me and answer my prayers the way I want them
answered, or on how I am serving God? Am I bitter over how others
neglect me, or am I concerning myself with noticing and encouraging
others? When I do this alignment, I find that selflessness truly does
set me free and lead to many of the Bible’s greatest promises: joy,
peace, contentment, and soul satisfaction.
Set Free From Self
My wife startled me with what seemed like a bizarre suggestion. “I
think we should let the Smiths borrow our van for the weekend,” she
said. Just weeks earlier, we had purchased our first brand new vehicle
in almost fifteen years. Finally, we were able to secure a minivan that
hadn’t been driven halfway into the ground and littered with a previous
family’s supply of fast-food and playground dirt. I was determined to
make the car last—and keep the mileage down—for as long as possible. The
thought of someone else taking our new minivan over the mountains,
dropping 1,000 miles on it in three days (when the car had just 700
miles on it to begin with) wasn’t a pleasant one.
But I knew God had set me up. My morning devotions that day had been
taken from the book of Acts, and these were the main verses: “All the
believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their
possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.” (Acts
2:44-45) Sometimes, it’s “safer” to schedule your Bible reading in the
evening, after all your important decisions have been made!
When I saw that Lisa was serious, I winced. Clearly this was a case
where God had provided and we could help out another Christian couple.
Even so, I was reluctant.
“If money wasn’t an issue,” I protested to my wife, “I wouldn’t mind
letting them borrow our brand new van. It’s just that this is our only
vehicle, and I want it to last. We’ve been trying to keep the mileage
down, and now we’re going to let someone else take it over the
mountains?”
Having been married to me for over sixteen years, Lisa knows how to
read my face. I wasn’t acting nobly, but I was certainly feeling guilty,
and guilt usually wins out. “Should I call them?” she asked.
“I don’t want you to,” I confessed. “But I think God wants us to.” Sigh. Deep breath. Second sigh. “Yeah. Go ahead.”
Here’s the irony: making that decision actually set me free. While I
selfishly held onto a piece of metal, it “owned” me. I winced when
neighbor kids slammed the door a little too hard. I became worried
whenever I thought I saw a new nick somewhere on the body. I began
looking for parking spots that might be farther away but which offered
increased protection for the minivan’s exterior.
Once I relinquished this van—emotionally and spiritually—I saw it as
the tool it was, something that’s inevitably going to get banged up a
little bit, but that’s what it’s for. Offering the car to someone else
risked increasing the mileage, but what I lost there I gained many times
over in spiritual freedom.
Some people are imprisoned by their demand for comfort. Others are
imprisoned by their demand to be noticed, or appreciated, or respected.
Some of us are imprisoned by being selfish with what we own.
God invites us to experience a new freedom and a new joy that is
found when we ignore our first selfish impulses and allow God’s Spirit
to give us a heart for others. He wants to expand our focus and turn our
eyes away from own small world, and to find ourselves by losing
ourselves in service to His people.
I can virtually guarantee you that this is one truth that will be
tested in your life within the next 24 hours. For your own sake, I pray
you’ll choose the blessed path of selflessness.
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Check out more of Gary's writing at garythomas.com
