Living life for God is just a personal choice right, it is good for some but for others they don't need God they are good on their own. They have learned to not hurt people, break laws, they are good (in their own mind), because we all go to heaven in the end, how we live does not matter.
I beg to differ. God is the only way and the way to God is through Christ, not through ourselves. I want to revisit selfishness ("pride" "doing life MY way"). Does it hurt anyone? Yes it does. To understand how we need to visit the definition of life without Christ, the selfish life!
The selfish life, life spent getting your own way looks like this:
Repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs at happiness; trinket gods; magic show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community... (Galations 5:19-21 The Message)
Sound familiar? anyone of the above statements hurt someone. You see everything we do, everything without exception, everything we do affects someone! Sometimes that person is our self many times it is a multitude of people. You see you can do things in love and affect people in the right way or you can be selfish and affect them in the above mentioned way. Loveless sex hurts the giver and the receiver, emotional garbage please we see that hurt people everyday dragging people to their depression depths to the point of suicide, joyless grabs at happiness leave anyone it its path empty and hurt. You want to be really selfish and really self gratifying? learn to Love! Love others and you will love yourself, Love God and you can love yourself, Love others and God and you love yourself. Get it? God is not stupid, God does not work how we want Him to, He does not always work how we understand. But He works to the best in everything, the best in us, the best in His creation, and the way He works is not hidden to us, He works in LOVE.
We are human beings (more accurately our actions) are infectious. As C.S. Lewis calls it we as Christians are a good infection. That would mean we as selfish beings are a bad infection. You can not really live and not infect others one way or another. So if you are living selfish thinking it is not going to bother or disrupt anyone else, think again! We can not help being infectious we were created to co-mingle, co-exist, co-in habitat, there is not way around it. With that in mind live for Christ and your infection will be good and helpful, don't live for self it is ugly and sickening.
In the words of the musical artist Trip-Lee: "what do you pursue is it Christ or is it you"
Selfishness seems like a victimless crime, which is probably why it comes so easy to so many people. Good reminder that this is not the case. I like the list "selfish life" vices. "Trinket gods" = great description.
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