Selfishness undermines rich and satisfying relationships and drives people away. (See the article on “Understanding selfishness“.) How can we overcome selfishness and problems it produces?
Humility instead of selfishness.
Combating the sin of selfishness requires humility. Selfishness is elevating myself above others. Humility, by contrast, is gaining a true perspective of my worth, based on my relationship to God.
Romans 12:3 Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us.
A proper assessment of ourselves before God helps us to properly assess our value with respect to other people. This assessment includes two realizations.
Reasons for humility.
First, we are all creatures. We are completely dependent on God for our very existence and our ongoing life. Any abilities or successes we have are gifts of God, not a result of our own merit.
Second, we are all sinners saved only by God’s grace. None of us is morally superior compared to anyone else. If it wasn’t for God’s mercy on us, we would all be lost eternally. God did not choose us because of any merit in us, but simply as an act of his generous love.
Philippians 2:3 Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves.
Others are just as worthy of value as we are, because our worth is defined by God’s kindness toward us.
The ultimate example of humility is Jesus. Philippians 2:5-8 describe how he humbled himself by becoming a human being and taking a servant’s role to die for our sins on the cross. As eternal God, Jesus is not a created being. Neither is he a sinner in need of salvation. Thus if he can embrace humility, we certainly have every reason to do so.
Humility enhances relationships
As we learn to relate to others in humility, relationships flourish. Those obnoxious, self-seeking behaviors that people find unattractive begin to diminish. It’s good for relationships when we listen more than we talk. It helps relationships when we praise others rather than seeking their praise for ourselves, or when we jump in to help rather than doing our own thing. Relationships do better when we are slow to take offense or get annoyed.
This topic calls for self-reflection, because it’s easy to be unaware of our selfish patterns. It’s good to stop and think, “Why did I just say that? Why do I draw attention to myself in that way? Are there ways I manipulate others to get my own way? How do I feel when I don’t get my way, or when someone else gets the honor instead of me?”
Discussion Questions:
- Watch the video together or invite someone to summarize the topic.
- What is your initial reaction to this video? Do you disagree with any of it? What jumped out at you?
- How does selfishness undermine relationships?
- Without naming names, how have you seen selfishness hurt a relationship?
- What are some ways that humility expresses itself in relationships?
- Write a personal action step based on this conversation.
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