I would love to say that I'm a pretty altrusitic person, that I do things for others because it is the right thing to do and not for my own personal gain. But that would be a lie.

At the beginning of this semester, I had a conversation with one of my best friends about selfishness. We concluded that everything we do is for our own good, and that even our attempts to "Be like Jesus" are because we want the potential benifits of having the Son of God in our corner. I kind of forgot about this conversation... until recently.

Let me start off by saying that I am, at best, a lukewarm Christian. I'm not proud of it, and I feel like I'm constantly struggling to call myself a Christian at all. A while ago I went through a period where I was just depressed. Everything seemed like it was going wrong, I was sick, people were fighting, and I just wanted to lay in bed all day. I had heard people talk about how God had "Broken" them, but this was the first time I had every truly experienced it. I couldn't stop the chaos going on in my life, I couldn't heal my sickness, so I just opened my Bible, in hopes that God would provide me with some of the answers that I needed to pull myself back together.

I guess you could say I've learned a lot the past couple of weeks. I've asked God to show me the places in my life that I could improve and the relationships that I need to fix. One thing in particular that I have been confronted with is my own selfishness.

In high school, I was voted "Most Helpful" by my senior class. To most, this would indicate that I did things for others, but in all auctuality, most of the things I did, and still do for others, benifit my self esteem more than anything. I feel so much better about myself and my circumstances when I do things for others, which isn't entirely bad until they fail to reciprocate my generocity.

I've been in a lot of relationships where I've felt like I have dedicated my time and energy to someone who just would never do the same for me. I felt justified in my bitterness until yesterday, when I read Romans 5:6-8:

When we were unable to help ourselves, at the moment of our need, Christ died for us although we were living against God. Very few people will die to save the life of someone else. Although perhaps for a good person someone might possibly die. But God shows his great love for us in this way: Christ died for us while we were still sinners.

That really made me think... I'm supposed to follow Christ... to BE LIKE Christ. Christ didn't die for me because it made him feel better about himself. He didn't die for me because I do so much for him. He died for me because, even though I I mess up, and intentionally sin... He loves me.

There is nothing that we can do to earn any more of this love, and nothing that we can do to lose it. This is how we should base our interactions with others.

Altrusim is a charactaristic that is so hard to have without unconditional love, and while Jesus is the only one who has perfected this kind of selflessness, I'm going to make it my goal to love others the best that I can, reguardless of how much they can love me.