How To Die To Selfishness

When I originally read this booklet it was titled: How To Die to Self. The contents appear the same. May the Father of Lights, with whom there is no variance, nor shadow of turning, spark a fire of desire and delight for being conformed and molded into His likeness.

*~*~*~*~* Intro *~*~*~*~*

How to Die to Selfishness is a beacon in the current evangelical landscape. The world, and much of the visible church with it, has turned its back on submission to the will of God in daily life. Instead it is in an all out quest for personal affluence and happiness, in a word: selfishness. There is an assumption that “as long as we do not directly violate one of God’s overt commands in the Bible, we are ‘free’ to enjoy life and do what we want.” But the Scriptures speak plainly:

“Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Mark 8:34). This booklet’s focus is on mortifying selfishness in our lives.

1. How to Die to Selfishness

“For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.”—Romans 8:13 Before we can begin to explore the Biblical principles for self-denial, there are some false notions which must be exposed and removed from our thinking.

False Notions of Dying to Self

One false notion is the conceiving of a wrong hatred to ourselves. The more we are divinely illuminated the more minutely and astonishingly do we apprehend the almost infinite blindness, foolishness and meanness of our past lives. Unless we are kept very mellow and subdued, this sight of our meanness may tempt us to form a bitter, revengeful feeling toward ourselves, and under such an impression, we may feel like punishing ourselves in some unnatural way, or by the making of unscriptural and rash vows. This is the source of cruel and unnatural penances.

Another false notion is the choosing of some line of mortification for ourselves, or the selection of some special cross. This will defeat the very end we want to attain, which is the loss of our will in all things. But the very act of choosing a cross for ourselves keeps alive our own preferences and furnishes a secret nourishment to self-will, and furnishes a little place for self to live under the very pretext of dying to self.

Another erroneous view is that we can sink to a deeper death by over work, by engaging ourselves to a heavier task than we can reasonably accomplish. Even if the extra work be of the most religious kind, still it supplies a field for self-activity. It is in this respect that St. Paul speaks of persons under a false zeal, going to every extreme of self-imposed poverty, and even burning at the stake, yet all under the principle of selfcenteredness, and not true self-denial.

Another false notion is that we are to indolently leave ourselves to the mere law of development, and if we can only be kept from well-defined sins, we are not to tax ourselves with anything deeply spiritual but leave ourselves to grow without a diligent attention to growth. This is the opposite error from some of the foregoing. It is to be feared that this last error is the one that most persons drift into.

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