Selfishness
SELFISHNESS
See SELF-SEEKING.
Fuente: Theological Dictionary
Selfishness
an inordinate self love, prompting one, for the sake of personal gratification or advantage, to disregard the rights or feelings of other men. It is a negative quality that is, it consists in not considering what is due to one’s neighbors through a deficiency of justice or benevolence. Selfishness is contrary to the Scriptures, which command us to have respect for the rights and feelings of others, and forbids us to encroach thereupon.
Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
Selfishness
SELFISHNESS.The self-sacrifice which Christ demands of all who would be His followers might lead one to imagine that Christianity was a religion of asceticism; that the Gnostic dualism of good and evil, matter and spirit, was the logical outcome of the teaching of Jesus; that God required the renunciation of all earthly things, and even of life, for the sake of the sacrifice itself. But it is a total misconception of the religion of Jesus to suppose that He makes asceticism an end. What we find Him teaching is not that the world is evil, but that the soul of man is good; that the soul is eternal, not of time, and therefore that in God alone, to whom it is akin, can it attain its complete satisfaction (Mat 6:19-21 || Luk 12:33-34). He demanded self-renunciation (Luk 14:26-27; Luk 14:33), and at the same time He inculcated the absolute value of the self (Mat 16:26 || Mar 8:36-37). He sets moral self-love over against natural selfishness (Mat 16:25 || Mar 8:35), and He insists that the perfect, the eternal development of the human personality is to be found not in separation and independence, but in union and communion with universal life,life as it is in God, life as God has put it into the world (cf. Matthew 5, 6, 7). To pour out oneself in love, to lose oneself for Christs sake, to give oneself to God and to the world of men, is to find, to save oneself in Him. To make the law of God, the Creator of the world and the Heavenly Father of each human soul, the fundamental law of ones life, is to render all temporal and corruptible things innocuous. It then becomes possible to employ them, in a way of which the Stoic hardly dreamed, to the end of perfect self-development (Mat 6:33). What is a man profited, Christ asks, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? To preserve and to save his soul is thus a mans highest profit, his one great task. But to seek to save it in the worldly sense is to lose it in the spiritual and eternal. Natural selfishness is humanitys greatest dangerthe great source of sin. It is manifest that our Lord accepts the common division of human nature into its two spheres of flesh and spirit. He has, it is true, no explicit psychology such as St. Paul elaborated; but to Him the natural and the spiritual man are as evidently in continual conflict as to St. Paul. It is the natural self that must be denied, that must be subjected, if the spiritual self is to grow. Each of these Christ calls the self, the life; but it is the latter onlythe soulthat is of absolute value. The value of the former is but relative; and its good, which has a measure, must always be subordinated to that of the other, which is measureless. Even the gaining of the whole world by the natural self is worthless if it entails spiritual loss; for to lose the true self is to have but the life of time, is to miss that of eternity (cf. the parable of the Rich Fool, Luk 12:16-21, and the profound statement of the same truth in Christs Temptation in the Wilderness, Mat 4:1-11, Luk 4:2-13). Moral self-love, therefore, consists primarily in love to God; and whenever the good of the natural self conflicts with the dictates of that love, it must be denied as a temptation of Satan (Mat 16:21-23). To sink the self in the sensuous and finite, to cultivate the lower nature, to lay up abundant goods, and to imagine that the joy of ones soul is to be found therein, is to lose ones soul; and when death comes, the loss of all is immediately manifest (Luk 12:16-21). It is in the light of eternity that man must view the world. It is the aim of the true self to lay up treasure in heaven, that the heart may dwell continually in the atmosphere of the eternal life.
That the denial of selfish desires is not to be regarded as an end in itself, is made clear by a whole series of parables uttered by our Lord upon the subject of labour. An idle faith, an idle self-sacrifice, did not satisfy Christ. To serve God is the souls great aim, and at the same time its salvation (cf. parables of the Talents, Mat 25:14-30; the Pounds, Luk 19:11-27; the Servants Watching, Luk 12:36-48; the Ten Virgins, Mat 25:1-13; the Labourers in the Vineyard, Mat 20:1-15). From all these it is clear that the reward is in no sense proportionate to the work done, but to the zeal and fidelity shown; and, further, that the reward is the labour itself, and grows out of it. It is true that life eternal is the grand reward, but in that life he is already a sharer who makes Gods service his aim in this world. The complete perfection of the self comes only when sin has passed away with mortal life; but there will be no gap between this world and the next. To serve God hereafter will be the heavenly joy of the redeemed, just as it is their chief joy on earth. Heaven is not idleness, but holy service rendered in perfect freedom from the constraints of sin. It is thus manifest that there is not the slightest ground for bringing against Christianity the charge of inculcating a higher form of selfishness; for selfishness implies an opposition between the self and the not-selfthat the well-being of the former is sought at the cost of the latter, whereas in the religion of Jesus there is no such opposition. The good of the self is itself the good of the world, the fulfilment of the will of God; and even the reward is nothing other than the enlargement of the human powers so that the man becomes capable of yet greater labour for the worlds welfare. Selfishness is hurtful alike to self and to mankind. Spiritual self-love is the selfs completion, Gods glory and the worlds joy. By faithfulness in the unrighteous mammon, in that which is anothers, we receive that which is our own (Luk 16:10-12).
Literature.The Comm. on the NT; standard works on the Parables; Beyschlags and Weiss NT Theology; Mller, Christian Doct. of Sin, i. 94182; Martensen, Christian Ethics, ii. 282 ff.; Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics, p. 327 ff.; Laidlaw, Bib. Doct. of Man, ch. vi.; Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible , artt. Flesh, Psychology; F. W. Robertson, Serm. 4th ser. p. 42; J. Ker, Serm. 1st ser. p. 98; R. C. Trench, Serm. New and Old, p. 112; J. W. Rowntree, Palestine Notes (1906), p. 144.
W. J. S. Miller.
Fuente: A Dictionary Of Christ And The Gospels
Selfishness
General references
Gen 4:9; Num 32:6; Psa 38:11; Pro 11:26; Pro 18:17; Pro 24:11-12; Pro 28:27; Eze 34:18; Mic 3:11; Hag 1:4; Hag 1:9-10; Zec 7:6; Mal 1:10; Mat 19:21-22; Luk 6:32-34; Rom 14:15; Rom 15:1-3; 1Co 10:24; 2Co 5:15; Gal 6:2; Phi 2:4; Phi 2:20-21; 2Ti 3:2-4; Jas 2:15-16; 1Jn 3:17 Liberality; Poor; Unselfishness