Self-Serve World

Have you noticed that everything has gone self-serve.  Check- out lines.  ATM/Banks. Restaurants.  Education.


This alarming shift to self-serve has infected us all.

Self-Serve.  Self-Absorption. Selfishness.  
It has become an epidemic of huge proportion.  In order to fight it...we have to understand it!

Self-Absorption:  Preoccupation with one's own emotions, interests or situations.  Excessively self-involved.

Selfishness:  Devoted to or caring only for oneself; concerned primarily with one's own interests, benefits, welfare, etc., regardless of others.

Last night I spoke with my youth group about this topic and found their responses pretty insightful.  

"Hope to be a good husband or wife; mom or dad?"  I asked.  

 Some said yes but some "Nooooo waayyed" me.  

 I asked what moms or dads could do in order to have a better relationship with each other, their children or about being a... sister, brother, friend, teacher or student.  

The answers given:

"If they would stop drinking."  

"If they would stop going to the bar."

"If they would get off facebook, computer, the phone or the tv."

"If they listened to each other."

"If they talked to each other."

"If he/she would cook."

"If they would not worry about how they look."

"If they cared about what I thought instead of just telling me what to think."

"If they would ask me about my day and not just talk about their day."

As a group we talked about conflict and fighting comes from selfishness and thought about some ways we can overcome.

Philippians says, "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves..." 

1. Don't make decisions based on own self-interest.
2. Put other people first before our own self-interest.
3. Treat others as better than ourselves. (Not that they are better-but treat them better.)

________________________

“God creates us free, free to be selfish, but He adds a mechanism that will penetrate our selfishness and wake us up to the presence of others in this world, and that mechanism is called suffering.”
― William Nicholson, Shadowlands

“Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. 

When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. 

But when we focus on others, our world expands. 

Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection - or compassionate action.”
― Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships

  
Love is always ready to deny itself, to give, sacrifice, just in the measure of its sincerity and intensity. 
 Perfect love is perfect self-forgetfulness. 

Hence where there is love in a home, unselfishness is the law. 

Each forgets self and lives for others. But where there is selfishness it mars joy. 
One selfish soul will destroy the sweetness of life in any home. 

It is like an ugly bush in the midst of a garden of flowers. 

It was selfishness that destroyed the first home and blighted all the loveliness of Paradise; 
and it has been blighting lovely things in earth's home ever since. 

We need to guard against this spirit.”
― J.R. Miller