"The Mania of Selfishness"
Rev. Alan Breems
Oasis Community Church, Moreno Valley, CA
Text: Luke 10:25-29
The mania of Selfishness, what's love got to do with it? Goal: For Oasis
members to see that our degree of financial selfishness is commensurate
with the degree in which we obey the great commandment. God is going to
knock down two pre-conceived ideas. One has to do with the way we interpret the most important commandment
and how Jesus explains it secondly in a very familiar parable. The parable
of the Good Samaritan.
It is obvious! There is much talk about self-enhancement and self-esteem.
Our entire generation is self pre-occupied. We want to be self-reliant
so we become self centered, because we value our self-importance, we engage
in diligent self service, and so doing experience self indulgence, which
is really just a sign of self-respect and self expression, the independence
which is a mark of self-government, basically self-obsession.
Erich Fromm has said, "our highest calling is to take loving care of
ourselves". You can even hear on the trash shows of Jerry Springer. 21st
century, priest, pundit, and psychologist, helping us deal with all our
family problems. At the end of his show, I believe to justify all the trash
he has just made millions of dollars of: Take care of yourselves and each
other.
It should be no surprise that this mania of Selfishness affects us.
It sets our priorities in life, to be self focused priorities with which
nothing is supposed to interfere, and it also sets our financial agenda,
we want to make sure that we are taken care of. Sit down sometimes and
read through the book of Luke in its entirety and you will see Jesus that
calls into question the status quo. Jesus is the one that questions the
cult of the self constantly. And basically says, if you want to find yourself,
you have to lose yourself.
Jesus is basically saying. No. When you follow me, you take up your
cross, die to yourself, and you lay down your life at the disposal of the
kingdom, poured out, no place to lay your head, no home, no hearth.
Love yourself. Jesus commands it right? Sure we like that. Our culture
finds room for Jesus. Because we have finally found out that His statement
to love yourself is really quite enlightening. After all the two mottos
of our culture are:
a. Know yourself,
You need to get in touch with yourself, discover yourself. Take yourself
on dates and creative excursions to find out what you really love, and
look through a magazine to find pictures of what's really you. (Oprah Friday
afternoon.)
b. Become yourself. You be you. Maybe you remember Reebok's botched
commercial campaign, they tried so hard, it failed in spite of them trying
to sum up the anthem of the nineties. Be yourself. Don't be someone else.
Here's the irony, you only see those ads in magazines where they have pictures
of the rich, thin and famous to which you can then compare yourself.
No, Jesus sure knew what He was talking about. You've got to love yourself
before you can love anyone else. It is just impossible. Unless you realize
that you are the beloved, that you have value, that you are meaningful
and beautiful. You can't start loving other people. And sometimes those
truths take a lifetime to figure out. Self love as a pre-cursor to neighbor
love. It's a necessity.
Is that what Jesus meant when he said: As you love yourself? The commandment
is misused. We take this as a commandment. Love yourself. Is that really
a legitimate interpretation of this text. I think not and I will show you
why. Three reasons.
1st of all grammatically it is impossible to put these words together
as a commandment. When you supply the verb for the commandment, it reads
you shall love your neighbor as you, in f act, already love yourself.
Secondly, Scripture implies self love. Ephesians
5:29. In other places in scripture we find that self-love is implied,
it does not need to be commanded. We find ourselves precious, and worthy
of pleasure and comfort. No matter how low your self-esteem, we all want
to be happy. You all want to live and to live with satisfaction. You want
food for yourself. You want clothes for yourself. You want a place to live
for yourself. You want protection from violence against yourself. You want
some friends and spend some time with you.
Some say; well, I'm on the brink of suicide. I don't want to live at
all. The same is true for you. The reason you're trying to find an escape
is because you find this painful life intolerable. You think you can't
get any worse. So suicide is self-love in that it tries to avoid and escape
your painful and intolerable existence. This is not something we have to
learn. We have been created with it. This natural God given desire to live
is different from the non-scriptural concept of living for you. Because
we are precious we want to avoid pain and discomfort.
Thirdly, it is unscriptural to seek your own. Corinthians
13:5: "Love does not seek its own". Self-love is implied not commanded.
Love your neighbor as you in fact, already love yourself. Make the measure
of your self seeking, the measure of your self-giving.
If you long for food clothing and rent and braces for your kids and
you experience God's goodness in these areas, as you pursue your happiness
in those areas. Start pursuing someone else's happiness with the same intensity.
There is no better measure of a person's proximity to God, than the amount
of grace they dispense daily to an ungracious world. How is this possible?
Is self giving at odds with self-seeking? Are they on a collision course?
This feeling of we can't both be happy. Will loving be at the expense of
my well being? Is this suicide to my happiness? No. The First commandment
is to love God. Find some satisfaction in God that your heart is just full
with Him, overflowing with him. Meaning. Loving Him with your mind, means
all your ideas and thoughts are focused on Him, steered towards Him, and
your mind is trying to contain the beauty of God. You are exercising strain
and effort to see the love of God poured out in your life and all around
you.
The First commandment makes the second one doable. As you overflow the
joy in God, you have the ability to love the unlovable. Love is the overflow
of joy in God, which gladly meets the needs of others. If you want to measure
someone's closeness to God, look at how much grace they give out on a daily
basis to an ungracious world. Believing that God loves you with an everlasting
love will unarm you and liberate you to be free to love others.
Focus all your self- love on God and you will be satisfied. Not a canceling
of your self-love but a fulfillment. Be willing to be robbed and passed
over for the sake of the gospel.
A certain man went down hill. It is a downward mobility. There is the
usual interpretation. Life is sometimes interrupted, with the needs of
other people, and it means giving of my time, my oil, and my money, going
out of my way to meet the needs of other people.
Another possible interpretation here is to identify with the robber,
Jesus is the one that is identified with the one that is laying down his
life. Be willing to die because you have already found life. For to love
and therefore to give ourselves is simply to affirm in practice that we
do not belong to ourselves. Romans 2:8 "For those
who are selfish there will be wrath and anger". Romans 14:7 "For none of
us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone".
Sometimes in families we are too pre-occupied with our own problems,
irritated with each other. William Booth gave himself to vermin eating
saints with moldy breath.
Following Jesus is the greatest disruption you will ever experience.
Forced to let go of alternate gods, to let go even of ourselves. No longer
to live for yourself, but to live so that others may have life.
Luke 9:23 "If anyone would come after me, he must
deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants
to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save
it". My life is at the disposal of others, because I have already
gained what I cannot loose, so I might as well give away what I cannot
keep.
Conclusion: Whose happiness do you seek with the financial resources
God has given you? Who am I living for? If I take a close look at how I
spend my time, what are my priorities? Am I spending time on myself or
on others? Take a close look at your check book, is all your money going
into your own immediate family, or are you making investments in the lives
of other people. Take a look at your life, are you living for yourself.
Or, are you so filled with God's goodness that you can't help meet the
needs of others.
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