Jennifer Blacklock

I know selfishness is wrong, but something we often fail to realize is that it doesn’t pay. The lie it tells is that it will serve somehow, give something good.

But, though not necessarily seen immediately, “you reap what you sow”.

Selfishness with friends/relatives repays with… Gossip? Loss of opportunities? Lack of closeness?

Selfishness with kids repays with… Selfishness in them? Sibling rivalry? Resentment?

Selfishness with a spouse repays with… Distance? Loss of empathy? Loss of intimacy?

Selfishness in general repays with unhappiness. Because getting is never enough, can never satisfy. It just grows the void- the greedy void- of self. Getting more in selfishness leads to needing more in selfishness. 

Not the best example, maybe, but when I was pregnant for the first time years ago, I didn’t think twice about doing things I’d always done- lifting things for example. Since then I’ve been told a thousand times, in that pregnancy and subsequent ones, from wonderful intentions (which is why it’s maybe a bad example) to sit, take it easy, let the not-pregnant people take care of it. And now, even not pregnant, I feel a sense of entitlement, I guess, just not wanting to lift things. Wanting the kids to pick things up for me, waiting for my husband to take animal food bags from the car to the garage. Things I could do, used to do, but have now tasted the ease of someone else doing.

There’s nothing wrong with accepting help. In fact, I need to get better at accepting offers of help. But if “self” is allowed/encouraged to grow in the process, or in any circumstance, it will grow greedy.

And selfishness repays. In a hundred different ways, what is sown is reaped. 

When a seed is sown, it’s not just another seed that is reaped; it’s multiplied. One carrot seed, for instance, if planted and grown, will produce a stalk full of stems that each have a big, flat, white-flowered bundle of hundreds of seeds. One seed can produce hundreds more. In the same way, if a weed, like a goathead, is sown, it will produce a hundred more terrible stickers to be reaped (stepped on, poked through gardening gloves, stabbed through bicycle tires, etc.)

When I develop an attitude of selfishness, I see it around me, in the people around me. The kids demanding their “fair share” and making sure they don’t have to lift a finger more than their siblings. This is a product of my own selfishness! They’re still responsible for their actions, but oh, if only I could’ve not planted that weed in them! How much better for them and me and their siblings and their future spouses and their own children!

“In the same way, count yourselves dead to sinbut alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness,but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness.”

Romans 6:11-13

Offer every part of yourself. 

This offering won’t repay death; it wont be reaped as greed and meanness; it won’t return void. This offering is a sowing also, and will produce a crop- a healthful, beautiful crop. 

Lord, help me; help me to offer myself to You. I confess my selfishness, my clinging to these filthy rags. Help the selfishness of my flesh to wither away day by day as I starve it by not giving into it. And help the fruits that You desire to produce in me to grow, fertilized and bountiful, as I offer myself as an instrument of righteousness- fruits of love, joy, patience, humility, self-control, gentleness, and generosity. May Your good will be done in me, and through me affect those around me. Amen.

“Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.’”

Matthew 16:24