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. It is added to daily.
"In this country we have the freedom of conscience and the freedom not to practice it
." (thought off of a thought by Mark Twain)
In Paul's letter to the Galatians he spells it out "...serve one another in love
." He certainly does not advise us to serve each other with selfishness
. Selfishness shows up at heaven's gate with a written request, "I read where Jesus said, '...in my Father's house are many mansions...' and I just want to be sure I get the biggest and the best
." Almost twenty years ago, 1988 to be exact, there were two kinds of video recording systems fighting for the market
.
One was a Beta system which Sony invented, and kept only to itself
.
The other was the VHS system that everyone today uses
.
The difference was that JVC, the Japanese company that invented the VHS format shared its plans with a raft of other firms
.
As a result, the market was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the VHS recording machines being produced
. Sony didn't share and the first year, Sony lost 40% of the market and ten years later it had lost 90% of the market
. Selfishness, even in the guise of good business sense, does sometimes get its just rewards
.
What Sonydid first was good business sense...but then the human psyche is quite something else
I used this recently and I use it again. "We have seen the enemy and it is us" Look at all the messes in your life and ask yourself how many of them may have been caused by selifshness and how much of that selfishness was your own.
I had my first vegetable garden during World War II, well, actually mother and daddy did.
I was in charge of weed control
.
At any rate, if I didn't keep the weeds at bay we wouldn't have had much of a garden
. Selfishness is a weed, and that is as kindly a definition as it is going to get
. And if you allow it to take over your garden of life you will have a mess
.
Selfishness can be an open hand that is seldom ready to give, but always ready to take
. Or it is a fist, a weapon of deceit, an obscenity that blots out beauty at every opportunity
. Selfishness takes relationships and squeezes life's blood out of them
. It is an emotional death sentence ready to kill off any remorse, any attempt at reconciliation or regeneration of spirit
.
There was a blacksmith who one day was commanded by his king to make a chain, and he did as he was commanded
. Then he was told to double its strength and its length
. He did so, and was then commanded to do the same thing a third time
. When finally he was finished, the King ordered him to wear these chains for the rest of his life
.
We make chains - chains of selfishness, not at the order of our heavenly King but because He gave us the freedom to do so if we so choose
.
But just because we know how to, does not mean we should not also be aware that eventually we are making them for ourselves
.
The worst kind of selfishness can be called sanctified narcissism because it wraps its ideas in piety and turns the Golden Rule into dross
. It is the worst kind of legalism that turns the
Mount Everest of ethics into a thousand little mole hills of complaints
.
"Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you
. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
. (Luke 6
:27-31)
The selfish individual says, "Can't do all that, just can't. I find it works better, at least for me, if I continue to do unto "myself" as I would have me do unto myself. And do unto them what makes me happy.
Once upon a time, there was a farmer who heard of a highly recommended new seed corn. He bought some and produced a crop that was beyond his wildest dreams.
When his farmer neighbors found out about it, and since he had bought more than he really needed, they asked if they could buy some from him. He not only would not sell it to them, he would not tell them where he had purchased the seed.
The next year he planted his crop and, with his obvious advantage, waited for it to bring him bigger profits again. Except, this year it didn't work that way.
The second year his crop was not as good. By the third year the yield was even worse.
It then dawned on him what was happening. His prize corn was being cross pollinated with the inferior grade of corn in his neighbors' fields.
Yes, selfishness does have its own rewards. (rewritten, Wellsprings of Wisdom, by C.R. Gibson)
In 1982, on the ABC Evening News program there was reported a very unusual piece of modern art.
It was a chair to which was attached a shotgun. The viewer was required to sit in the chair while looking directly into the gun barrel.
The gun was fully loaded and a timer was set so that it would go off sometime between the setting up of the exhibit and one year in the future.
No one who sat there could be sure it would not go off at the very minute they took their seat.
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