“Then said Jesus unto His disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.”
I don’t want to be misunderstood, I believe in individualism and the rights of the individual, but individualism, like everything else, can be taken to extremes. If we aren’t careful in our free society it can become narcissism. A narcissist only thinks of himself or herself. That runs counter to what Jesus taught in the New Testament. For example in Luke 6:21 Jesus said: “And as you would that men should to do you, do you also to them likewise.” (We call that the “Golden Rule.”) As Christians we need to realize that we can’t always do what just satisfies “me.” Let’s look at how we can avoid the all-important “I.” We can realize that when we became Christians, we became servants of God. Jesus told His disciples that even He “did not come to be served but to serve.” In a beautiful picture of servanthood, Jesus washed His disciple’s feet. Jesus demonstrated a selfless act for them, and demanded that they have the same view of servanthood when he told them that as He, their Lord, had washed their feet, they should also wash each other’s feet. You know, it takes a lot of inner security and faith to do something as selfless as washing someone’s feet. If we consider ourselves servants of Jesus, we should follow His example. He will help us realize that when we stoop to serve we don’t lose one iota of our individualism. In fact, we become better individuals. We can realize that the world is watching us and determining what kind of Christians we are by how we are willing to forget self and serve. I think that this all-important “I” is seen all too often in churches when we gather into cliques and demand our way. I have known people in churches who had the idea that “it is my way or the highway.” I call that carrying individualism to extremes. In fact, I have to admit that I have to be careful not to have this attitude, and if you are honest you probably have to watch the same thing. But this all-important “I” is seen as well by how we live our lives outside of the church. If we are selfish, it will show and it will be a poor witness to a world that is in dire need of good Christian humility. We can realize that what we want is not always the most important thing in the world. Jesus gave a parable of a farmer who had a bumper crop. As he looked at his good fortune, he thought only of himself. He said: “Here’s what I’ll do, I’ll build bigger barns to store all of these excess goods. I will say to myself, ‘eat drink and be merry.’”(Beauchamp translation) It did not occur to this greedy man that he could share his good fortune with others. He was tragically unaware that there might be people who could use some of these goods that he stored up for himself. This man’s attitude betrays a lack of trust in God and lack of love for people. These are two important things in the Christian life. We are saved by trusting in Jesus Christ as our Savior and we are saved to love people. Jesus Himself said that people “will know that we are Christians by our love.” Selfishness and love do not mix well – kind of like oil and water. We need to take a good long look at our own lives. We need to check and see if our instinct is to always look out for ourselves. This doesn’t mean that we should never look out for ourselves, but that this should not be our predominate lifestyle. The world is literally crying out for us to act like Christians and not always give way to the all-important “I.” This is a challenge for me. I'm certain that it is a challenge for you. Bro. Joe
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AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
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September 2021
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