March 13,1997
Dear Br. Evans:
I want to write to your about selfishness. Not your selfishness, for I scarcely know anything about you, therefore, I assume only good things concerning you, but I want to write about the selfishness of others, because it is such a common human problem, one that we all need to see and understand, and in our own way, attempt to combat with love and tender regard for the feelings and concerns of others.
We live next to a lovely, nice older woman, whom I will call Naomi.
She is sweet tempered, has a sunny disposition, a cheerful countenance,
although she is loosing her sight and has every right, according
to the world, to be morose and surely, nevertheless, she retains
her good humor.
We live quite close to her, closer then I would desire, but then
one can’t always help where one lives or how close ones neighbors
may be. We often hear her playing on her organ the beautiful hymns
of Christ, but, otherwise, she is quiet, everything one could
desire from a neighbor if one has to live so close to them.
She enjoys it when we visit, which we don’t do as often as
we should. She loves to talk of her girlhood among the hills of
the Appalachian mountains, describing what we would term hardships
but what she views as just normal everyday events.
Despite our close proximity and her frequent trips to visit her
sister who lives on the other side of our house, which takes her
with in ten feet of our front door, she positively will not visit
us. While she welcomes our visits and desires us to stay as long
as possible, she has no time to visit us. We have often invited
her to visit and share a cup of herbal tea with Sevilla but she
always begs off due to so much work or some other urgent preoccupation,
however, when we visit, these preoccupations or work seem of little
consequence to her at the moment.
I can only describe this dear soul as positively selfish in her
attitude. While she desires, even craves, our visits, she has
no time to reciprocate, no time to bring joy and happiness to
others while desiring it for herself.
God placed us here on this earth to bless others. This is our
only reason for living and being. There is none other. This world,
at best, is an extremely lonely and hard place but it is frequently
made unnecessarily more lonely and harder when we fail to exert
every effort to make others happy.
Christ urgently desires all of us to so live for Him that our
greatest joy is to foster the happiness of others, but poor, abused,
self often gets in the way and we fail miserably of our God ordained
purpose and responsibility toward our fellow men. (I am using
men in its generic sense. Far too often, we have a greater care
for women then we ought.)
Especially does Christ require those who claim to be Christians
to reflect His character of benevolence and tender regard for
the feelings, reputation, and needs of others. Is it too much
to ask that we give to others as much as Christ gives to us? The
purpose for the gifts of God are that we may have something to
share with or give someone else that they may realize the love
and kindness of God.
Because Christ is not living on earth today, the only opportunity
anyone has of seeing Him and understanding and appreciating the
beauty of His character is by seeing Him in the person of His
children, you and me. As we live His life, reflect His character
to others, they discern something of the holiness and love of
God through our actions and words. This is the purpose for our
being and lives.
Selfishness is a cruel weed in the garden of our character and must be uprooted least it choke out all the good plants. Our garden needs constant cultivation, watering, care, and tender regard for the beautiful flowers and precious plants or they will wither. When this happens, nothing Christ can do will save our garden and it must ultimately be consigned to the brush fire where we throw weeds that threaten to infest our gardens.
Selfishness, the love and tender regard for self, is destructive
to our happiness. The care and feeding of self, is really the
worst possible food we could feed our plants. Self is a noxious
weed. No one ever appreciates the beauty of a selfish person’s
character. No one ever extols a selfish man or woman. (No, this
last statement isn’t quite true, selfish people are extolled
everyday and often for the very trait that makes them obnoxious
weeds.) No one ever seeks, at least consciously, to imitate a
selfish person. We don’t have to learn selfishness, go to
school to acquire its virtues, or read how-to books to learn its
practical applications, it grows in each of us if our garden is
left untended.
Only Christ can effectively and permanently eradicate the selfish
weed from our character garden. He does this, not with harsh and
deadly chemical fertilizers, but by lovingly tending the good
plants, providing them with nourishing food, cultivating the ground
around their roots, so they may receive the life-sustaining nourishment
from the soil and keeping the sunshine from scorching their leaves
during the hot part of the day.
If we gave as much care to our characters as we do to our gardens,
the divine Gardener would grow lovely and beautiful plants in
our garden. Let us each seek to have a well tended character garden
that Christ may be glorified through us and that the weed of selfishness
may be destroyed, for if the weed persists, in our garden, when
the Gardener comes to inspect the garden, He may destroy us along
with the weeds.
Christ loves you, dear brother and desires you to have a beautiful,
well balanced character that others may be inspired by its beauty
and symmetry and seek to imitate your example.
May the Lord bless you, your brother in Christ.
Allen A. Benson