January was a strange month. It started out in one of my favorite places with some of my favorite people Ottawa, with my friends from Augustine College. I returned to Toronto to face a few realities though.
First among these realities was that 2009 was not the best year of my life, not even close. Somewhere in the process of coming home from school and turning a long distance relationship into a regular relationship I lost sight of the big picture. I realized last month just how self-involved I had been, and to some extent still am. I realized that I had not been able to see past my own nose, my own problems, and my own wants and desires to recognize the deleterious effects my self-involvement had on my relationships.
What I’m starting to realize is that when Christ told his disciples to die to themselves it was because the self is selfish. When we live in Christ all our relationships find a new, right, ordering. This ordering operates according to the original design for human relationships. I have realized in the past month, as I’ve tried to incorporate disciplines of prayer, study, and fasting into my life, that the more I lean on Christ, the better my peripheral relationships become. The more I turn inwards, the more I treat others like objects. My prayer while attending Candlemas tonight was this: “Lord, let me love you first, so that I may love others through you.”
I can only care, and love, so much from myself, before what I want gets in the way. I write this like I’ve got it figured out, but those who know me well know that the selfish me lurks and rears his ugly face far too quickly still. I can only say I’m growing.
Very true, and very well said!
I have been finding the same thing as I have refocused myself on God, prayer, and study of the word this month. Seems like we are on a very similar journey!
Aren’t we all.
Thanks for the honesty here. It is a paradox: we lose our lives/selves to find them. Looking forward to sharing more of the journey with you…
I like this point. I find that this is true even when I simply engage in a conversation. In having a conversation with another person, I naturally extend outside of myself, and focus my attention on the other person or the subject they are addressing. My question is this: do we need Christ in order to have the death of self that you are describing? Are conversations only little “deaths of selves?” Does this mean that “the death of self” is something we can experience in greater and lesser forms? If so, what is complete death of self?
hahah, just trying to stimulate a little conversation here. I have been wrapped in my own thoughts for quite some time 🙂
The thing about conversations is that as much as they can require listening, they can also be opportunities to drive your own agenda. I can have a conversation where I listen only to make a smart/funny/insightful comment. A conversation, as much as it requires external focus, can still be an opportunity for self-aggrandizement and selfish motivations.
I think what I was trying to say, from my own experience at least, is that we cannot have any truly unselfish acts apart from redemption. Paul says that “all our righteousness is as dirty rags.” which used to really confuse me. The way I see it now though is that I can do no good deed that does not also feature some selfish motive, it varies how much selfishness is involved, but it is always there.
Those are just my thoughts anyway. Thanks David, Cassandra, and Kaili for your comments.
Good point about conversations, they can involve selfish motivations. However, I think there might be a problem with this claim that there are no acts which do not involve a selfish motivation. By selfish, I think you mean our acts involve some notion of how we are going to benefit from the action. This is important to distinguish from the claim that there are no selfless acts, because to say that there are no selfless acts means there are no acts where we can remove ourselves from the act. I can think of plenty of actions where I did not consider a way in which I was going to benefit from the act, but I cannot think of an act in which I wasn’t involved in the act. A purely selfless act is an act which doesn’t involve me, and that’s why it seems like a contradiction in terms.
And this is why your comment about acts not being purely selfless apart from redemption is true. Redemption, as I understand it, is the process by which God grants us the grace to be forgiven of our sins. This action, when you think about it, hardly involves us at all. It involves God acting upon us in order that we may be redeemed. The grace and the forgiveness of the sins take place in the human person, and the person is therefore in a state of action. But the action is completely selfless, it doesn’t involve the person, but rather, God acting through the person. In this way, it is a purely selfless act.