Truth Magazine

By Irvin Himmell

To the Philippians this exhortation was written by Paul: “Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others” (Phil. 2:4). Here is a text which needs to be preached.

Selfishness is excessive or exclusive concern with oneself. It is seeking or concentrating on one’s own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others. A selfish person is like a ball of twine – all wrapped up in self! Tertullian (A.D. 160-220) said, “He who lives only to benefit himself confers on the world a benefit when he dies.”

A faithful child of God fixes his attention, not on self alone, but on others. Look around and consider your brothers and sisters in the Lord. They deserve to be esteemed in spite of their shortcomings. When I seriously contemplate my fellow Christians, each has some quality that surpasses mine. Perhaps one is more patient than I am; another thinks more quickly; another has a better personality; another excels me in knowing what to say when at the bedside of a sick person; another has more courage; another has a wider range of experience; another is a better teacher; etc. How uncharitable and egotistical it would be of me to fail to esteem others. Our interest must extend beyond self.

Signs of Selfishness

Let us give some thought to ways in which selfishness may be demonstrated. Any of these signs should trigger alarm on our part.

(1) One’s interests circle around himself. His foremost concern is his own comfort, convenience, and enjoyment. The shadow of self is cast over everything else. His language abounds in I, my, mine, me, us, ours, and we. Nabal was this kind of man (1 Sam. 25:1-11). When David sent some of his young men to Nabal to try to find favor with him, this obstinate fellow answered in a distinctly selfish tone: “Shall I then take my bread and my water, and my flesh that I have killed for my shearers, and give it unto men, whom I know not whence they be?”

(2) The guiding rule is, “What is in it for me?” This sign of selfishness shrinks people into a mold that restricts usefulness. It is an attitude too often exemplified. The fellow who follows this rule thinks the church owes him something. He thinks of classes and worship in terms of receiving, not giving. It never occurs to him that there might be something which he could contribute. “What is in it for me?” Well, the opportunity to serve is what is there “for me.” Remember the parable of the Samaritan in Luke 10:30-35. The priest and the Levite passed by on the other side, leaving the wounded man without assistance. They saw nothing that would benefit themselves. The Samaritan lost sight of self, turning attention to the needs of the victim. He had compassion, bound up the man’s wounds, took him to an inn, paid the bill, arranged for future care, and promised to reimburse the innkeeper later. When we were infants we were takers, but by now we should have developed into givers. Selfishness curtails devotion to duty.

(3) Lack of genuine concern for others. God teaches us to love, and love “seeketh not her own” (1 Cor. 13:5). Failure to show real concern for others discloses lack of love. There are some who do not care what happens to others. The strong are taught to bear the infirmities of the weak (Rom. 15:1). We are to rejoice with others who rejoice, and weep with others who weep (Rom. 12:15). The spiritual are to restore the brother overtaken in a fault (Gal. 6:1). We dare not shut up our heart of compassion against a brother who has need (1 Jn. 3:17). The rich man in Luke 16 lifted up his eyes in torments. He had shown no interest in the plight of Lazarus, a poor, diseased beggar.

(4) Shutting faithful Christians out socially. Here is another sure sign of selfishness. Some in the church limit their social contacts to a special circle. They never invite anyone into their home unless he is of their own “set,” their own family, or their special group of friends. Others limit their invitations to such as will return the favor. This does not square with what Jesus taught in Luke 14:12-14. Some do themselves a great disservice by shutting out the aged, the poor, the lonely, and those with whom they have only slight acquaintance.

(5) Personal concerns outweigh service to God. It was selfishness that prompted the Jews to put off building the Lord’s house but not their own houses (Hag. 1:2-4). Too many Christians “seek their own.” Paul brought a rather strong indictment against certain ones in Philippians 2:21, “For all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ’s.” Jesus died for all, “that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them and rose again” (2 Cor. 5:15). Service to God demands that our personal interests not take priority.

Fruits of Selfishness

Having noticed some of the signs of selfishness, we now turn our attention to some of its fruits.

(1) Selfishness makes one unreliable. A selfish person cannot be depended on to give as prospered. Cheerful giving (2 Cor. 9:7) flows from a generous heart. Jesus Christ was rich, yet for our sakes became poor. His example (2 Cor. 8:9) teaches us to give unselfishly. A selfish person is unwilling to deny himself as Jesus commanded (Matt. 16:24,25). A selfish person does not devote much time and attention to the Lord’s work. Paul knew that he could depend on Timothy because of Timothy’s care for others (Phil. 2:19,20).

(2) Selfishness produces ruin and disgrace. Lot made a selfish choice that bore bitter fruit when he pitched his tent toward Sodom. He was a righteous man but was influenced by the beauty and fertility of the plain of Jordan (Gen. 13:9-13). The prodigal son squandered his living on himself and came to poverty and shame (Lk. 15:11-19).

(3) Selfishness robs God. The Jews in Malachi’s day acted selfishly by offering blind, sickly, lame animals in sacrifice to Jehovah. They withheld the tithes and offerings which belonged to the Lord (Mal. 1:8; 3:8). Just as they robbed God, many today rob him of worship, time, the use of their energies, and their resources.

(4) Selfishness deprives one of joy. In the parable about the two sons, the elder brother was selfish. Unlike the younger brother, he did not waste his substance in riotous living, but he was sullen, sulky, unforgiving, and angry due to a selfcentered attitude (Lk. 15:25-32). He shut himself out from a joyous celebration. Joy is a part of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22). Some never know the joy that comes through Christ “living in us” (Gal. 2:20). They are trapped in a state of self-inflicted misery.

(5) Selfishness leads to other sins. Ananias and Sapphira lied in an attempt to cover their selfish greed (Acts 5:1-11). Judas Iscariot betrayed the Lord because he was thinking only of himself. Diotrephes used malicious words and became a church dictator due to selfishness (3 Jn. 9,10). Broken homes result from selfishness. People often abuse others, verbally and physically, due to their own selfishness.

Knowing the signs of selfishness, let us endeavor to overcome it. Knowing the fruits of selfishness, let us guard against it. No one is Christ-like unless he is unselfish. The Son of man “came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:28). Our Master gave himself in service and in sacrifice for us. May his love conquer so that we can sing from the heart,

Higher than the highest heavens,

Deeper than the deepest sea,

Lord, thy love at last has conquered,

None of self, and all of thee.

Guardian of Truth XXXV: 11, pp. 334-335
June 6, 1991

By Larry Ray Hafley

While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage” (2 Pet. 2:19). “His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins” (Prov. 5:22). “In the transgression of an evil man there is a snare” (Prov. 29:6).

The wicked, the wayward, the worldly extend the torch of freedom to the unwary. “They speak great swelling words of vanity” (2 Pet. 2:18). “By good words and fair speeches (they) deceive the hearts of the simple” (Rom. 16:18). The siren summons of Satan says that you need not be bound by the chafing constraints of commandments, of “do’s and don’ts.” Rather, you can be free to express yourself, to indulge, to explore new vistas and horizons of pleasure. “Guilt” feelings are an invention of preachers and moralists who would keep you in bondage to their systems of salvation. Ignore them. Cast off the chains of restraint and enjoy the freedom of self-expression. Sex, drugs and alcohol are your bill of rights; so, declare your independence and be free!

It all sounds so good, but what do we find? The freedom to experiment with drugs leads to addiction. Lying becomes a way of life. Crime becomes an occupation to support a lifestyle. The conscience is gradually extinguished by the hydrant of alcohol. Pornography consumes the passions with burning lusts that cannot be satisfied or gratified. The one who wanted to be a “party animal” is now only an animal at a party. He is led by cravings and desires that have no fulfillment and that leave the bitter aftertaste of doubt, fear and shame. And this is freedom?

Sin promises liberty and escape, but the young lady is no longer free to control her body. She cannot deny her body; she cannot say, “no,” for that would be to revert to the “bondage” of religion. Her body is not hers. It belongs to the animals at the party. The young man cannot refuse beer with his friends, followed by a marijuana reverie. He is obligated to go along. He dare not say, “no,” to the gang and revert to being a “nerd.” No, he must get drunk. He is bound to do so. It matters not that he has an important test tomorrow. His actions are now determined for him “the call of the wild.” And this is freedom?

The freedom the world promises means that your body and mind are no longer yours. Your mouth will curse and swear. It will utter profanity. You become “hooked” on filthy language until you use it automatically, naturally. Drugs and alcohol are not the only things that are addictive. Evil thoughts of lust become instinctive, almost second nature. Soon, you will act “as natural brute beasts,” governed by your fleshly appetites. Your god will be your belly, your physical, sensual desires. With a hardened heart (it being past feeling, past persuasion and reason), you will surrender yourself to all kinds of lewdness and impurity with eagerness. You will have “eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin” because you have exercised your heart with covetous passions and practices (Eph. 4:17-19; Phil. 3:19; 2 Pet. 2:12,14).

As our topical text says, you were promised liberty, but you were made a servant of corruption. That is a terrible irony. Worse, it is a spiritual tragedy with eternal repercussions.

But, alas, this story can have a happy ending. There is true freedom and liberty in Christ (Jn. 8:32; Gal. 5:1). It is a freedom from the law (the rule, the power) of sin and death. The Lord provides “deliverance to the captives” of sin and “liberty” to them that are under sentence of death (Lk. 4:18). There is a “perfect law of liberty” to which you must subscribe (Jas. 1:25). It is the law of the Holy Spirit, the gospel, which will make you free from the law of sin and death (Rom. 1:16; 6:23; 8:2). And, yes, there is a yoke to be borne, but it is not cumbersome or wearisome “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:29,30).

“Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?” (Rom. 6:16) The selection is yours. You will either obey sin and become its slave or you will obey God and become a servant of righteousness. Carefully consider the consequences of each choice. As you weigh the alternatives, do not be deceived – read the first paragraph of this article again.

Guardian of Truth XXXV: 11, p. 325
June 6, 1991

By Steve Wolfgang

Footnote: Peggy Noonan, What I Saw At the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era (New York: Random House/Ballantine Books, 1990, 1991), pp. 28-30.

Peggy Noonan is a former newswriter for Dan Rather on CBS Radio news who in 1984 became a speech-writer for Ronald Reagan and, later, George Bush. She wrote some of the more memorable speeches delivered by Presidents Reagan and Bush, including the Reagan speech at Pointe du Hoc in Normandy in 1984, the January 1986 speech following the space shuttle “Challenger” disaster, as well as George Bush’s nomination acceptance and Inaugural addresses.

Although not a “religious” book, it contains some enlightening passages about issues where politics and religion frequently intersect, and provides some insight into the often anti-religious bias of our public news media. I offer several of these passages for your consideration, and hope you will profit from them as I did.

A few months later I walked in Rather’s office and found him pacing the floor. It was the morning after John Hinckley had been found not guilty by reason of insanity. Rather was astonished and angry. We did a piece on it that became somewhat controversial. A radio editor wanted to pull it because it was more like an editorial than a commentary, which was true. But sometimes you have to do an editorial and not a commentary.

“There was a dreamlike quality to what happened in the courtroom yesterday. It was a dark dream full of movement: the jury walks in and hands up the verdict, the judge mouths the words on the paper, the assassin nods his head forward and backward and closes his eyes. The parents cry in happiness, and the government lawyers are struck dumb. The spectators look at each other in astonishment and turn to each other with words, and the judge snaps, ‘There will be order here!’

“The dream jumps. In a suburban home sits a witty and competent man whose life was quite ruined by the young man who nods and closes his eyes and hears that he is not guilty of committing ruin. The dream ends with a question: Who tells James Brady?”

Break for a commercial then:

“The jury has spoken, their judgment is final, and that is as it should be. But something is wrong here. Years ago Clarence Darrow made a speech to the inmates of a Chicago prison, and he told them, ‘You are here because you do not have money.’ Oh they wanted to hang him for telling the truth. But money talks, and in the Hinckley case money yelled and banged on the table and won the day. The cleverest lawyers were hired, the most expensive psychiatrists. The Hinckley’s committed a considerable part of their considerable wealth to the case, and when it was over, the victorious defense attorney smiled and said, ‘Another day, another dollar.’ There’s a legal maxim for you.

“Something is wrong here. America’s prisons are full of poor blacks and whites and Hispanics, and their crimes are the usual assortment of human transgressions. What does the Hinckley verdict say to them? It says, ‘Your big problem, boy, is that you are not a millionaire’s son, and you went after a grocery clerk. Next time go after a president. This will help you with your insanity plea, because this is what the plea can mean: If you commit a big crime then you are crazy, and the more heinous the crime the crazier you must be. Therefore you are not responsible, and nothing is your fault.’

“The insane are among us, it is true. But so are the calculating. And what they learn from this verdict is that you can do anything; you can wait like a jackal and shoot a man in the head and leave him for dead and buy your way out with clever lawyers and expensive psychiatrists.

“Something is wrong here. If John Hinckley has the will (and he has shown he is willful) and the way (and his family is rich), he will probably down the road ask to be released from St. Elizabeth’s on the grounds that he is no longer dangerous. And sooner or later a panel of experts may nod and say yes, yes, because of the logic of his request. An expert will testify, ‘Hinckley only shot people to become famous and now he is famous so he no longer has a reason to shoot people so he’s no longer dangerous so we can let him go.’

“Something is wrong here. Wrong about this age of millionaire assassins and high-powered lawyers and cool talk about the secrets of the mind – and no talk about old abstractions like responsibility and punishment and sin.”

Well, all right. It was the day after the verdict and we were hot under the collar. But we were engulfed by telephone calls from people saying thank you for caring about this and voicing how we feel. They were appreciative for unalloyed, unexpected passion on a subject that was not, for once, a matter of left and right.

Guardian of Truth XXXV: 11, p. 332
June 6, 1991

By Lewis Willis

Until now, I have been a private environmentalist. Not anymore! In the past I have been totally “turned off” by the public displays of environmentalist groups. All of us have heard of Earth Day, which is an effort to get us to realize what we are doing to this place where we live. The protest movements at various sites of environmental damage have inspired as much disgust as they have sympathy for the cause. It was frightening to learn of the threat to residential health at Love Canal. It was disgusting to learn of a movement to shut down a sawmill town of 30,000 in Washington, putting people out of work, to save 10 owls. Animals of various kinds and sizes have become extinct throughout history. While it is bad that modern children cannot see them, our civilization has survived the loss. There are still a lot of animals and birds around. Thus, I will not join any marches to promote the cause.

However, even though we are not out protesting, isn’t it a cause of concern what we are doing to the earth? We see scenes of smog pollution in Los Angeles, with the accompanying protest by people who have flown in from all over the country. The smog is caused mostly by car, truck and airplane exhaust. Do these environmentalist think the planes they flew in on burn water for fuel, and emit no harmful smog-causing exhaust emissions? They are not very consistent. But though they are not consistent, we have to agree that we are messing up this place!

Last Saturday, a week ago, was a beautiful day. The sun was shining and there was a spring-like feel in the air. I swept out the mud and salt the cars had brought into the garage through the Winter. I swept up the leaves that had blown inside the patio fence. I even washed a couple of windows. I decided to pick up the papers that had blown onto the lawn since last fall. It was appalling to see the garbage that was there. Empty cigarette packages, gum wrappers, straws, shipping tape, hamburger boxes and wrapping, beer cans – I could go on. Things which thoughtless, uncaring people just decided to throw down on the ground because they were too stinking lazy to take them to a trash can. I wonder about the mentality of people sometimes. I have never tasted beer in my lifetime, but I could not tell you how many beer cans and bottles I have picked up off my lawn, deposited there by ignorant people who think they have a right to throw their trash any where they want to. The church parking lot joins my backyard. I found numerous huge globs of chewed gum that had been thrown onto the lawn. You know, that gum disappears into the snow when snow is on the ground, but it is always there for someone to have to pick up or step in when the snow melts. How do you feel when you step in the gum of somebody who believed they had a right to throw it on the sidewalk? About the same as when you stepped in it on the lawn? Have we reached a point where we do not even care about the way we are trashing up this place where we live? Were we raised to do things like this?

The Bible says that God created the earth (Gen. 1:1). Solomon said that the Lord used his wisdom in making the earth (Prov. 3:19). David said the earth is full of God’s riches (Psa. 104:24). His glory and handiwork are shown by his creation (Psa. 19:1). The earth is the Lord’s (Psa. 24:1; 1 Chron. 29:11). When God had completed his creative work, he declared it “good.” God then made man and delivered to him his beautiful creation (Gen. 1:27-31). He did not put man in the Garden of Eden to trash it. He put man in Eden to dress it and to keep it (Gen. 2:15). The very first problem encountered by the earth was produced by man’s sin. “Thorns and thistles” appeared on the earth as punishment for the sin of Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:18). The fortunes of the earth have been going downhill ever since.

I do not suppose we should be terribly surprised at this. The church manifests the wisdom of God who brought it into existence (Eph. 3:10-11). It is his handiwork (Eph. 2:10). But, look what men have done with the church of God. In like manner, the earth manifests the wisdom of God who brought it into existence. It is his handiwork. But, look what man has done with the earth.

It seems that it is past time for God-fearing people to realize the blessing we have in the earth that God provided for us and start taking care of it. The plastic bags we bring our groceries home in, and which we use in disposing of our garbage, will be around in landfills for no one knows how long. I don’t know what to do about that, but, it is not necessary for me to drive down the highway, or in front of your house, and throw my trash out the window of my car. Somebody has to pick it up, unless I decide not to throw it down. Thousands of dollars in taxes are spent yearly picking up trash on the nation’s highways, which could be used for something productive if we would just stop and think what we are doing. Somebody even had to pick up the trash left by those who gathered to celebrate Earth Day. These great environmentalists just threw their trash on the ground like everybody else! A federal program is not needed to solve the problem of neighborhood trash. We just need to think about what we are doing to God’s creation.

Guardian of Truth XXXV: 11, p. 328
June 6, 1991