THE SCARS OF SELFISHNESS

Selfishness is not on the list of the Seven Deadly Sins, but I certainly believe that if the list were expanded to eight it would easily make it. For selfishness is mental, emotional and spiritual suicide. It builds a castle, and then places itself on the throne. Selfishness is a jackass who wants his or her own private stable from which to issue decrees. It is like a caterpillar who sells its privilege of becoming a butterfly for an extra mouthful of leaves. Yes, selfishness is truly the doorkeeper to the gates of hell.

At the opposite end of human behavior is a lady whose story I’m pleased to tell. It is a tale of those who attend the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg because of the generosity of this woman who is still simply referred to as Miss Ola. This loving, unselfish African-American took in laundry for 75 years. She never had a golden parachute to ease her financial journey through life. She never made an income anywhere near five figures. For a great deal of her life, an income of four figures was well beyond her reach. But Miss Ola daily read her tattered Bible held together with scotch tape so that her favorite chapter, the 13th chapter of First Corinthians, wouldn’t come falling out. She read it and she believed it and she practiced it - this message of love.

And oh, how this unselfish woman loved; not in a philosophical way, sit on the front porch talk about it way, but in a down-to-earth give-it-life kind of way. And so it was that in 1995, she was able to express her love for her fellow human beings in an unbelievable expression of concern. She gave $150,000 to the University of Southern Mississippi, an historical black college.

When asked how she could save so much when she had earned so little, her answer was simple and to the point, “It wasn’t hard. I just didn’t buy things I didn’t need. And I did it so others could gain the education I never had the chance to get.” One year and a half later after giving this unselfish gift, she died at the age of 91.

“Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interest of others.” (Philippians 2:4) Just a reminder of how the morning’s scripture read.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many as altruistic as Miss Ola. You are probably aware of “miracle medicines” that can cure, or hold in remission some terrible diseases but which have been taken off the market because they just don’t make enough money. The people who make the decisions for the pharmaceutical companies have made that unselfish compassion behavior never gets in the way of business decisions.

Over 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. 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.

I had my first vegetable garden during World War II, well, actually mother and daddy did and 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 not long have a garden that grows but rather weeds that take over.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The amazing thing is that hundreds of people waited in line for their chance to play this kind of Russian roulette. They just hoped it wouldn’t go off while they were sitting there.

Well, my friends, selfishness is a shotgun and when you sit in front of it, it does go off, not just once but many times. This is not a gambling maybe, this is a guarantee definitely!!! And it does wound you and if you are a selfish person eventually it does kill your conscience until one day you are so selfishly dead you don’t know it. You are indeed gambling with your life if you are always thinking only of yourself.

Picture in your mind what selfishness looks like and I doubt if you picture it with a smile – perhaps a sneer, but not a joyous grin.