The role self-interest plays in ethical decisions has been a subject we have repeatedly visited here at Kruse Kronicle (especially regarding economic issues.) See here for an example. Self-interest is not selfishness. When we teach our children to look both ways before crossing the street or to eat their vegetables, we teach them to be self-interested. Self-interest is a good and wholesome thing without which we could not become mature stewards of the gifts and resources God has entrusted to us. For instance, self-interest in our own economic welfare keeps us functioning at a sustainable level, keeps us from becoming an unnecessary burden on others, and makes us available for service to others.
Jesus repeatedly appeals to our self-interest to motivate us to action. However, Jesus transforms our thinking from selfish self-interest into seeing that other-centered love is in our best self-interest. John Stackhouse fleshes this out in his recent book Making the Best of It: Following Christ in the Real World. Here is what he writes:
Frequently in Christian ethics, a doctrine of “unselfishness” has been commended. Often this rather negative virtue is connected with the positive virtue of agape as the highest best form of love and defined as utterly other-focused self-giving. A related theme, particularly in Lutheran and Calvinist circles, has been “the glory of God,” as if the pinnacle of piety is to seek God’s glory at the expense of one’s own utter loss.
The amazing paradox of Christian teaching here, however, is that losing one’s life is the way to save it (Mt. 16:24-27). Spending one’s goods on others is the way to pile up treasures of much greater value that will last forever (Mt. 19:21). Altruism is in one’s own interest – including God’s own interest. I need to say this carefully, so I will hew closely to the words of Scripture: Jesus suffered and sacrificed himself on the cross “for the joy set before him” (Heb. 12:2), not in a zero-sum game in which he simply had to lose so that we would gain. Yes, of course that is partly true also: “by his poverty you have become rich” (II Cor. 8:9). But it was a temporary sacrifice, a temporary poverty. It was expenditure that was truly costly – may I not be misunderstood as denigrating the grace of God in Christ – but it was spent so as to bring joy to God, as well as to bring salvation to us. It is never one or the other.
For that is the nature of love: God’s joy is bound up in our well-being. As Irenaeus put it, “The glory of God is a man fully alive!” and the Westminster Shorter Catechism responds, “Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Our joy, when we are properly oriented to the world, is bound up in the well-being of everything else. The shepherd exerts himself to find the lost sheep because he cares about the sheep, yes, and his worry about the sheep makes him anxious and sad. So both the sheep and the shepherd return to the fold with joy (MT. 18:12-14). It is ridiculous to try to pull apart what is, in the nature of the case, a seamless unit: my well-being depends upon the well-being of the beloved. Therefore it is bad ethics to urge people to care for others at their own expense in any ultimate sense. No, the Christian view of love is shalom: when you win, I win and God wins. When God wins, you win and I win. And so on, endlessly around the circle of love.
The Christian gospel, therefore, does not ask the impossible and the irresponsible: “Give up your own self-interest for others.” Our self-interest is precisely that to which the gospel properly appeals: Here is how to be saved! Here is how to have life, and have it abundantly! Here is how to prepare for the everlasting joy to come! We are all in this together. Thus we work hard, truly self-sacrificially and even to the death, for everyone’s benefit: God’s, the world’s, and mine. No zero-sum, but abundant live forever and for all. (204-205)
I appreciate this idea of the triple-win outcome. The issue is not that self-interest is evil. The issue is our failure to perceive what is truly in our self-interest and thus in the best interest of others and of God. The gospel is “the good news.” Is it not “good” because it has something that positively affects us? Otherwise, it would just be “the news.”
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