More Selfish than Mean
I watched a young boy in the coffee shop today go nuts because he wanted a cookie. He was being quite obnoxious about it and this really bothered his older sisters. Then they were a bit mean to him in response. Watching this had a way of confirming something that I’ve been realizing lately.
Our biggest problem isn’t that we’re mean to each other. Our biggest problem is that we’re self-focused. Being mean is the fruit of selfishness.
The fruit of the boy’s selfish drive to get a cookie was to scream and disrupt everyone else. The fruit of the sisters’ selfish drive was to be mean to their brother for having to experience the inconvenience of disruption. Do brother and sister care about each other? I’m sure they do. But rarely at the expense of self.
Have you ever felt that people close to you don’t really care that much about you? It’s probably not so much that they don’t care about you, and more just that they are busy with themselves. I think this is usually the case. I know this to be the case for me. I don’t often treat others as I’d like to be treated because I’m focused on myself. So I’m in the process of learning to not judge others for doing the same thing. And hopefully treating people better as well.
Even if I treated everyone perfectly, it still wouldn’t be a good idea to judge or get offended when I was treated poorly or unfairly. I don’t want my well-being to be determined by other people and their actions. When this is what I need to be ok, I will try to control people to get them to behave in a way that is beneficial for me.
So how can we be ok in the midst of people not treating us well?
6 thoughts on “More Selfish than Mean”
I have been thinking about this for a couple days as I’m recalibrating my relationship to particular aspects of my community.
I think remembering that people aren’t mean, but instead selfish, makes it easier to step back from offense and recognize how often we’re guilty of the same thing toward other people. I think this helps us reject the temptation “to keep track of wrongs”, but it doesn’t take away the offense or diminish the discomfort very well.
I have often said that community does its best work when it isn’t working very well. I mean that the closer we get in intimacy and proximity with one another, the more likely we are to wound each other. I used to think this was a function of “the Fall”, or a condition that wasn’t “supposed” to be there, but selfishness and wounding each other comes from being human, and it’s present even in the most loving families and communities. I am starting to think this isn’t an accident: When we are wounded by the shortcomings of others, it spotlights our own shortcomings. Whether this is a propensity for inflicting the same wound on others, or our tendency to harbor resentment toward those who wound, it doesn’t matter. When people don’t treat us well, if we’re attentive, we get a chance to repent. We get to lean into the reality that we already have all the love we need in Jesus–a reality from which we’re easily distracted when things are going well. We’re accidentally satisfied with love from people when we feel that it’s working.
“In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength”. Is. 30:15.
Any opportunity we get to repent of our own selfishness and resentment is a golden one. Any time we get a reminder to put our trust in the only Love that doesn’t fail is a gift.
This doesn’t work for pain relief. Being treated poorly still smites. But when we let the pain remind us where we’re alive in Love, then at least it isn’t a waste.
Hey Jessica,
Great thoughts. I think perhaps the only point I would see differently is that I would say that selfishness is not an inherent human condition that was designed into us, but instead I see selfishness as living as though you lack something. And as you mentioned, we already have all that we need in Jesus. I think if we can live seeing this crystal clear, and see crystal clear that people are “mean” to us because of their own issues, we heal from our capability to be so easily offended and wounded by others. I think we can learn to cry for them, instead of cry for us. Does that jive with what you’re saying?
Kind of.
What’s interesting to me is the possibility of being “healed from our capacity to be so easily offended.” Do I think that’s possible? If I think it, do I _live_ like that’s possible?
I do believe it’s possible to grow in how we respond to things, but some offense may be a function of temperament: What stings for me today may always sting because I have a hardwired tenderness in that way–a tenderness that enables me to love powerfully and particularly, even if the accompanying sensitivity can be a liability.
Or, how much of how we inflict, receive, process, and move forward from “meanness” isn’t just temperament, but also related to the difference between men and women?
I didn’t mean to convey that the selfishness we display was designed into us, as individuals. I was more pointing out that the grace that uniquely comes from it was designed into the fabric of holy _community_ and relationships.
I’m also not yet saint enough to right-away, or even full-time cry for the “lack” that someone else may be feeling–the kind which fuels a selfishness that wounds. I guess I need something else to get me to the place of being able to do that.
For me, repenting of resentment and my own selfishness (as soon as I’m able to see the need to do so) gets me on my way. I may always get offended, but I’ll surely grow in how fast and how much I respond to the Grace in it.
Yeah, I think the line you highlighted in my response seems to be the point in question. The question of whether or not it’s possible to be “healed from our capacity to be easily offended” (or offended at all). My take on Jesus life is that he lived without being offended and wounded by the actions of others. What we would consider “woundful” actions were certainly rained upon him. But I don’t think he took them personally. His response to the worst “offenses” thinkable (slandering, spitting, falsely accusing, torturing, murdering) was “forgive them Father, they don’t know what they’re doing”. His heart went out to them. We might say, “yeah but that was Jesus”. What I’ve been learning is that we are here to re-present him to the world as his body. So I see any reasoning that sells us short of being Christ-like is selling us short of receiving the full outworking of the Good News.
It’s not that we should feel shame if we don’t live this perfectly “unoffendable” life. For me, it just shows where I still have room to grow. And it excites me to think that I have something so freeing I’m moving towards. It’s only been a short time since I’ve started thinking this way about offense, and already I’m seeing that I’m being freed from it. It is really fun to feel perfectly fine in a situation where I previously would have felt offended or wounded. I think that if I believed I was stuck in it forever, I would live as though that was true, and would remain stuck in it.
So to your last point, I would say that not only can you grow in how fast and how much you respond in repentance, but you can also grow in which areas you’ll find yourself needing to. There’ll always be plenty to grow in, and always be new areas we’re being challenged in, so we don’t need to stay offended to make sure we have something to repent of. I know you weren’t trying to say that, but it came to me that it could be a mindset that we develop without realizing it. I’m glad we’re having this dialogue! I think it’s an important one. And please feel free to challenge any of my assumptions!
” My take on Jesus life is that he lived without being offended and wounded by the actions of others. What we would consider “woundful” actions were certainly rained upon him. But I don’t think he took them personally. ”
This feels like a train of speculation where I just can’t get aboard. We do have a partial record of what Jesus said and did, but we don’t know how he _felt_. And my experience with spiritual formation that lays claim to knowing that is one that sets up a set of unattainable “shoulds.”
We don’t actually know what Jesus’ loving responses to all that offense cost him internally. We only know that he loved. When Jesus begged for his tormentors to be forgiven, particularly as he was suffering the most brutal death penalty in human history, it would not only be unreasonable to say that he didn’t feel any pain while he did it, but it would diminish the loving glory of what he did. (I don’t think when you’re considering the crucifixion you’re saying that he didn’t feel any pain.) Furthermore, based on the Psalm he quotes, we know that pain to be emotional, too.
Why are we assuming that the “lesser” offenses–rejections, dismissals, animosity from authority–didn’t register as painful or offensive to who he knew himself to be? That he didn’t take them personally? Why do we have to assume that? I think they hurt, AND he responded in perfect love. The one doesn’t cancel out the other.
I think it’s important that we make space for acknowledging hurt for what it is, and when it happens. It isn’t an end reality, but it is a middle one. And I don’t think getting offended or hurt when people either accidentally slight or intentionally wound us is a mark of a lower spiritual development.
I think very much that Jesus was offended and wounded by the actions of others, but he had the perfect ability to exercise his loving will over it, as we saw him do on the cross.
We have a choice in how we react, and we do have the capability of growing in our stillness of heart in all circumstances. But to promise that with spiritual growth comes thicker skin feels like an overreach. I would hate for people with hardwired sensitivity (which tends to be a side effect for the supernaturally merciful and compassionate) to believe that the reason they hurt is that they haven’t grown spiritually enough and that one day they might outgrow this thing that is actually a gift. Sensitivity to offense is not necessarily an indicator to spiritual or emotional weakness. By the same token, those who have been gifted with it are not “victims” of their sensitivities, but enabled, should they practice choosing, to love better and uniquely because of it.
I may be slightly departing from what you meant, but I think this is important as we conduct spiritual formation through attention to inner movement. I think we should be careful not to set up criteria for what growth looks like for all people here. I contend that growing spiritually opens up a new universe and a growing bandwidth for possible responses in love to offense, but it may not change how, when, and what hurts.
I’m aware that acknowledging sensitivity, emotional experience, and compassionate response is typically associated with the feminine experience. I don’t think you meant to exclude that here. But just as much as I don’t think we can speak for Jesus on how he actually felt and then create standards for ourselves based on that, I am loathe to speak for all women or all men on what will become of their sensitivities and experience of offense.
Am I missing something here?
You raise some great questions!
Ok, this is a very nuanced conversation with a lot of different things at play. Without being able to address everything, I’ll attempt to write out how I understand where you’re coming from and then try to clarify what I’m trying to say.
When you wrote: “we have a choice in how we react, and we do have the capability of growing in our stillness of heart in all circumstances”, I thought: “Ok, this sounds like what I am trying to say”. So I want to start from where we seem to be in agreement. I think some of our disagreement may be more like misunderstanding.
I’ll explore how I am considering words like “wound” and “offense”. In the physical, if someones slashes you with a knife, it will hurt and leave a wound. This is a real thing that just happened (I think this is the point you are making). Now that I have a gash in my body, there are a few different choices I can make. 1) Cover it and try to protect it from getting touched because it is hyper-sensitive. Become super protective of ever getting hurt like that again. 2) Pretend it doesn’t hurt and hope to grow thick skin around it. If I get hurt enough, maybe I’ll grow such thick skin that I’ll have no sensitivity left and won’t even feel it when I’m stabbed anymore. 3) See a doctor and have the wound healed. Instead of having a sensitive wound or thick skin, I’ll have sensitive skin.
I think this speaks to some of the points you are making. We can see that there is a healthy version of being sensitive, and an unhealthy version of being sensitive. If we’ve only seen the unhealthy version, we may mistake sensitivity for being bad or unhealthy, not understanding that sensitivity is a good thing in a healthy context. So sensitive people out there shouldn’t think they need to grow thick skin.
I forgot to mention offense…..in that metaphor, I guess I would see offense as a negative reaction to anyone/anything that gets too close to an open, unhealed wound. I’m not sure if that perfectly fits the definition, but will throw it out there.
I can’t figure out if the being stabbed metaphor holds up for things like emotional abuse though. I’m having a hard time imagining being stabbed physically and it not hurting and leaving a wound. But I can imagine being “stabbed” verbally/emotionally and it not hurting and leaving a wound. For instance, let’s say I had someone on my left side shouting “stabbing” words at me like “You’re a worthless nobody. You are disgusting and ugly and an idiot”. At the same time, I also had someone on my right side affirming me with words like “You’re an amazing masterpiece. There is no amount of money that could measure your worth. You are beautiful and smart and amazingly complex.” In this case, the degree to which I’m hurt and wounded depends on which voice is speaking loudest in my life. If I trust that the guy on the left is the truth-speaker, I’ll listen to him and that’s going to hurt and wound. If I trust that the guy on the right is the truth-speaker, I’ll listen to him and not take in what the guy on the left is saying. If what the guy on the right is saying is true, it would mean that what the guy on the left is saying is untrue. They’re mutually exclusive.
To the degree I trust and believe the guy on the right, I’ll live free of the wounds that the guy on the left is trying to inflict on me. If I do listen to the guy on the left and get wounded emotionally, my choices are pretty much the same as the choices I had for the physical wounding. As life goes on, I would hope to listen more and more to the guy on the right and avoid the wound altogether, but when a wound does occur, I’m also learning to go to the doctor who heals as quickly as possible.
The goal then, of being free from “wounded living” isn’t spiritual superiority, but a free and healthy life lived in the truth that produces good self esteem and love for yourself, God and others.
Does this jive?