The Poison Preventing Community

God is a community. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit seek to please the other. So, they thrive. As an image bearer, you are also meant to live in community. But your natural tendency is to seek your own pleasure before others. However, putting your comfort and convenience above others prevents community. James 4:1-3 reads:

What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you? You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.

Thomas Howard, in his book Splendor in the Ordinary, says the one principal of Hell is “I am my own.” To that end, you can base your life on “my life for me,” or your focus can be “my life for yours (or others).” In his sermon A Counter-culture of Grace, Tim Keller added

When you forgive, volunteer your precious time, when you’re on a team and don’t insist on your way, these are little deaths. But deaths that lead to a resurrection. Death of your individual needs leads to a resurrection of community…In Heaven, everyone gives up their independence and becomes happier and happier. But in Hell, everyone says ‘I don’t ask for anything, don’t ask anything of me.’ That’s the loneliest part of the universe.

The other night, I was mentally exhausted from work. After I made the kids dinner and they ate, all I wanted was to finish watching a certain movie as I ate to recharge. But moments after sitting down, my daughter interrupted me. “Daddy, can I see your hand? I want to show you something.” “Not right now,” I retorted. She walked away. But, maybe 5 minutes later, she came back. “Daddy! Daddy!” My response was quick “What? What?!” Deflated, she answered “Mommy is trying to ask you something.” I looked over to see disappointment marred on Aleasha’s face. My posture of “my life for me” in that moment made her and my daughter unhappy.

Pride takes away from community

The breakdown of community is wanting to please yourself because of your pride. The solution to restore community is humility. Pride focuses on self, while humility focuses on others. That is not to say it is wrong to ever focus on yourself. But it is to say you should focus on others more than yourself. As Keller noted, humility doesn’t focus on self because here you are “supremely confident in your own worth and value to God, and that God has taken care of the circumstances of your life.”

Jonathan Edwards expounds on the differences between pride and humility in his book Thoughts on the New England Revival. One difference is proud people are filled with self-pity because they are so sure they know how life ought to go. They are sure they deserve a good life, so they are often unhappy. Humble people, on the other hand, say “I deserve to be cast off, but only by God’s grace am I living. And I don’t know what’s best for me.” Humble people are very seldom unhappy and have no self-pity at all.

I struggle with pride. In my eyes, I deserved to become a college professor because I not only went from almost dropping out of high school to earning a doctorate degree. But I also wanted to become a respected scholar so I might be a light in the dark world of academia for God’s glory. Still, my desire became an idol, as evidenced by how much it rocked me when I was not given an opportunity. Because of my pride, I was unhappy for years.

Several other differences between pride and humility are as follows:

1. Pride makes you more aware of the faults of others than your own. But humility causes you to be far more aware of your own faults compared to others.

2. Pride leads you to speak about the faults of others with contempt or disdain. But humility leads you to speak of others faults with grief or mercy.

3. Pride leads you to quickly separate from those you’ve criticized or who have criticized you. That is, you are cold, or you avoid them. But humility leads you to stick with people during these difficult times. You don’t give up on them.

4. Proud people always confront because they like winning, or never confront because they don’t like criticism or controversy. But a humble person confronts only when necessary.

Gaining humility to restore community

One way to gain humility is through understanding the depth of God’s love for you. James 4:4-5 reads:

You adulterers! Don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again: If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God. Do you think the Scriptures have no meaning? They say that God is passionate that the spirit he has placed within us should be faithful to him.

In this context, adulterers translate to “adulteresses” in Greek. It refers to God’s love for you being like a husband’s love for his wife. In other words, God longs for your love the way a husband longs for his wife’s love. St. Paul writes

For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love. When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. (Romans 5:5-8)

Another way to gain humility is to lay down your life for God. If you choose to hold onto your life, then you will lose it. But if you give it God, then you get it back. Jesus said “Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self” (Matthew 16:25 MSG). Keller added “when you hold onto your life, saying ‘my life for me,’ you will become more and more like Satan and your life on this earth will become more and more like Hell. Afterwards, it will be in Hell.”

What would life entail if no one was willing to serve others—if everyone’s mindset was “my life for me”? Basically, life couldn’t happen. You need others to deliver your babies, plant and harvest your food, build and fix your cars. But sin says “I am my own.” It is self-serving and power-hungry. It doesn’t want to serve others or God. According to Keller, this is where all the wars, racism, injustice, and family breakdowns come from.

Erik and Virginia are one of the couples featured on this season’s Married at First Sight. There’s an 8-year age gap between the two (he’s 34 and she’s 26), and he’s also been married before. In one exchange, they display an unwillingness to serve the other, as they try to force the other into their pre-married lives:

Erik to the television audience: Virginia likes to drink more than I do. This is not me. This is not what I normally do. I got married at first sight to find the person I want to be with for the rest of my life, and I’m just very worried how she’s going to be—very scared of it.

Erik to Virginia: We’ve been doing so well. But when it comes to the partying, there are going to be very big things that are deal-breakers for me.

Virginia to Erik: We’re going to have to try and mesh lifestyles. I mean, I love my friend group. I absolutely love them to death. And we’re drinking every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. That’s just, like, how we are. And I would love for you to do that with me.

Erik: You have to understand that I can’t do that. With my career and everything that’s going [on], I can’t lose that. That’s my life. I love what I do. I love my life. I want you to be included in that.

Virginia: And I want to be included in that. But, like I said, that is the life me and my friends normally live. I love my friends. I want to hang out with my friends.

Erik: I’m not going to take you away from that. You have to understand, I’m not going to be going and doing that kind of stuff.

Virginia: You have to be ok with me going and doing it then. Or it will be a problem.

Erik: As long as we have mutual respect. You have to understand the things that go along with that. There’s a respect there. I have no idea how your friends are and how they act. You can go do whatever you want.

Virginia: Oh, I will come home to you, I promise.

Erik: I know, and I believe you.

Virginia to the television audience: I definitely get it. But I think he’s going to have to do a little give and take on it. I am a very stubborn person, and I am used to doing things the way I want to do them. I mean, I’m always going to be a drinker. I’m always going to be willing to have a good time. Like, if he wants to come in and try to change me, that is not ok with me. That’s not how I operate, and I’m not going to respond well to it.

If these two do not learn to switch their posture from “my life for me” to “my life for yours,” their marriage will not survive.

Conclusion

It should go without saying that consistently choosing “my life for yours” over “my life for me” is difficult. But it is possible. James 4:6 gives the answer to how it’s done: “And he gives grace generously. As the Scriptures say, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Lean on the Lord for grace each moment of each day to choose selflessness. In Jesus Christ, we see the ultimate example of “my life for yours.” Keller concludes:

How much does the Father love the Son? What honor and glory does the Son deserve for the cosmic loneliness he took on? That is what you get when you believe in Jesus. That is how God looks at you. Let that pound into your heart and head until the confidence of your worth before God—the confidence that he is working everything out in life for your good—starts to grow inside you. Then you’ll have the real spiritual humility, that lack of self-consciousness—not having to focus on yourself. Then you can serve one another.