Why Living Only for Yourself Is Miserable: Pastor, Writer Duo Offers 7 Reasons Including the 'Displeased Beauty'
Living solely for yourself can bring absolute misery according to two Christian writers who used Scripture to prove their point in a blog posted on The Gospel Coalition website Thursday.
"One of the barriers that holds many people back from knowing, being filled with, and being controlled by the love of Christ is the idea that true happiness can only be found if I am free to live for myself," writes Colin Smith, senior pastor of The Orchard Evangelical Free Church in the northwest suburbs of Chicago and a council member with The Gospel Coalition, and Kristen Wetherell, writer, speaker and the content manager of Unlocking the Bible.
Smith and Wetherell make that argument that living for yourself is the "default option for every person" and "unless something happens to bring about a change, we end up living for ourselves." They point out that the Bible says this quite clearly: "All seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ" (Phil. 2:21).
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They write that they want readers "to see the absolute misery" of taking the position of living for yourself and give six examples of types of people that are unhappy doing so. The six are the displeased beauty, the disappointed retiree, the frantic executive, the concerned parent, the hardworking Christian, and the unrewarded servant and an uncrowned King.
Below are the first two examples given in The Inevitable Misery of Living for Yourself blog post.
Unhappy Boss
If you live for yourself, you make yourself both the boss and the servant. You put yourself on both sides of the ledger. You are the one who is served, and you are the one who does the serving. The demands you set are the demands you must meet. The experience of the person who lives for self is like "robbing Peter to pay Paul," and you are always in conflict.
If you live for yourself, you will be in the strange position of beating yourself up because you are unhappy. See if any of these profiles sound familiar.
The Displeased Beauty
You look in the mirror and "self the boss" is not happy because she wants to have a more pleasing image. Though she has been woven together wonderfully by God, all she sees are the imperfections of face and body. Fashion magazines are her bible, where she goes for blueprints of how a young woman is supposed to look in the eyes of a critical and materialistic world. "Self the boss" is perpetually displeased, no matter how many hours she spends at the gym, or putting on makeup, or dressing to please the world's tastes.
So she beats up on "self the servant" for not being pretty enough. Instead of soaking in God's truth that she is fearfully and wonderfully made, she punishes herself with lies that say no one will ever love her. She brings to mind the fear associated with rejection from ugliness. "Self the servant" had better step up and cultivate beauty, or else she will be lost forever to a world that tramples over uninteresting people.
The five other examples of displeased character types can be read at The Gospel Coalition website.
