The first person was my own Father. Dad was an active Christian all his life who raised me in our local United Church of Canada and sang in the choir of every congregation to which he belonged. After I had grown and left the family home his involvement attained the chairmanship of our church’s Board of Session while Mum chaired the Board of Stewards. Anyhow when I was a very small boy, I used to hear Dad comment on selfish behaviour by others, “Why don't they hear Jesus’ words, ‘Deny thyself.’?”
Later, when I learned the Easter story in Sunday School, I took note of the part following Jesus’ arrest when Peter denied Jesus. In my private pondering of what I had learned, I put two and two together, this lesson together with Dad’s earlier comment and determined that I should endeavour to avoid denying Jesus, but rather deny my own self. Whether successfully or not so successfully, I do try to reduce and limit the realm of my own self-interest.
Throughout my life since then, I have experienced times when I have had a real sense of God close with me and other times when God seemed distant or even non-existent. What seems really strange is that it is precisely on those few times when I most successfully deny myself that God seems most remote.
The second person was an older medical doctor who befriended me as a young adult, a stalwart in his community and the United Church I attended at the time. When I knew him, he was of an age to have active memories of the period of active temperance organizations here in Canada and alcohol prohibition in the United States.
On one occasion, as we visited, he got into considering the familiar saying, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” The commonly accepted understanding has it that this saying refers to good intentions not carried out. My doctor friend stopped and suggested that this means more. Rather, he suggested that it could be in the carrying out of “good” intentions, free from any self-interest, that the road to some form of hell gets paved.
He gave the example of the temperance movement and alcohol prohibition. He recalled the active movers and shakers within the temperance movement as involved Christians who, out of love for neighbour and strong “good” intentions, sought to extend blessings they enjoyed and save their neighbours from the ravages of alcoholism. Being non-drinkers, they had nothing to gain for themselves from prohibition and approached the issue with true Christian nothing-in-it-for-themselves unselfishness. They succeeded in their “good” intentions and, for a time, brought complete alcohol prohibition to the United States and wrought the hell of a sharp rise in organized criminality and gangsterism within that country from which it has never fully recovered.
Similarly and until quite recently, the loving and widely carried out "good" intentions of our settler forbearers to extend the benefits their Christian European culture to the "more primitive" aboriginal residents of North America opened the way to those who would exploit and, thus, paved the road to the hell of First Nations residential schools, from which many First Nations communities continue to suffer to this day.
Intelligent and well educated as he was, my doctor friend could not resolve this contradiction.
The third person, an active non-believer to whom "Altruism is an utterly evil concept," would “Never trust any person for whom that person’s own self-interest in a matter was not readily obvious," and, despising self-sacrifice, would "be offended if you sacrificed what is in your own rational self-interest in order to do something for me, but be welcoming of anything you do with me out of your own self-interest.”
She contended, “Your St. Paul got it all wrong when he wrote, ‘Love is never selfish.’ In fact, love is always and entirely the selfish inclusion of the interests of the one loved within the self-interest of the one loving. Rational self-interest is good, not the evil you Christians project it as being.” She argued, “You Christians regard love as existing when the well-being of the one loved is viewed as more important than the wellbeing of the one giving love, the thinking of the slave and the altruistic victimized,” and went on to claim, “Love exists when the well-being of the one loved is recognized as necessary to the well-being of the one giving love, the rational and wholly selfish thinking of a truly free person within a community.”
The odd fact is, this non-believer is actually among the kindest and most generous people with whom I have crossed paths. When questioned about her kindness and generosity, she always came back with a highly rational explanation as to how her kindness and generous action fit entirely within the substantially large realm of her own self-interest.
I must admit that I have never felt confident in answering this challenge.
glad to see you're writing.
ReplyDeleteThank you Denny. I'm glad to finally have comment other than my own.
ReplyDeleteInteresting apparent contradictions, though I’m not sure the prohibition piece really fits, as I believe that is an example not of selflessness but rather an example of self-righteousness imposing beliefs on others - which is, to my mind, a very selfish act that lacks in real empathy and kindness.
ReplyDeleteNow to the apparent contradiction between our Christian “unselfish” Dad and your kind but ”selfish” non-believing friend.
I think that your friend perhaps has a very broad definition of “selfishness“ borne perhaps of a broad and open understanding that when one does ”good” or acts "kindly” in the world, that ultimately is in one’s self-interest in that it makes the world a better place in which to live for all - including oneself - i.e. is in one’s own best interest and is, then, a “selfish” act, especially if one is aware of such acts as such. This is the classic “there is no such thing as altruism” position.
Dad, I would speculate, might not quibble with this point of view, but rather than focus on the broader outcome of good being good-for everyone, including oneself, would give his focus to the act of kindness or “unselfishness” itself. He would maintain that we should not think of our own very narrow and immediate self-interest, but should rather discern, to the best of our abilities (as learned from experience and teachings) what is the “good” or “right” thing in any given circumstance. He would sa we should do that good or right thing simply because it is the good or right thing even if doing so might appear to be not in one’s immediate or narrow self- interest. He would not disagree with your friend that that approach does in fact make the world a better place to be in. After all a Christian teaching to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, while eschewing narrow and immediate selfishness, does in fact put the self at it’s centre. In other words, “if you are kind in the world, if you do right in the world, and others too are kind and do right in the world, their interactions with you will be kind and right, and that, my friend, is demonstrably in your own best broad self-interest.”
So the apparent contradiction is resolved as a matter of focus and emphasis: Dad’s being on the acts themselves as being “right” in a broad sense, and your friend’s being on the ultimate outcomes for oneself of doing those “right” acts. Both would also, I suspect, agree that one should be careful to not mistake narrow or immediate self-interest (or “selfishness”) for what a broader understanding of how we need to better act in the world to would say is in our own real “self-interest”.
Dad would say a good act is a good act, period, and that a happy byproduct of that is its ultimate positive effect on oneself. Your friend might say that she does good acts because she understand that in doing so she will make the world better, ultimately, for herself. Both will do the ”good” act!
Good comment, Norman. Perhaps the doctocr's consternation would be more readily resolved if the saying were, "The road to hell is paved with imposed good intentions." I hope others weigh in as well.
DeleteI absolutely agree with everything Norman commented, and he put it so much more eloquently than I could have. I always felt that that phrase, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions “ referred only to good intentions NOT followed through on. Prohibition had noting to do with good intentions but as Morman stated the self-righteous trying to impose their will on everyone else with no regard for others or the disastrous consequences on society.
ReplyDeleteThanks, John.
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