Self-interest as a curse and a blessing

It is well-documented in the social sciences and elsewhere how individual self-interest often quickly turns into selfishness and greed; and while its activity may generate wealth and prosperity via the free-market, self-interest also underpins much human suffering and exploitation when money and profit is pursued without regard for humanity and much else. As it says in 1 Timothy 6:10: "For the love of money is a root of all evil. However, in a more subtle and hidden form, self-interest is also I believe a kind of blessing, or an expression of God's mercy toward us. So, imagine a world where there is no individual self-interest; where there are no boundaries between persons at all; where, for example, we experience the pain and wrongs done to others (all others) as our own suffering and our own injustice, and whether this pain and wrong has occurred in the past, present or future. If we are honest with ourselves, this world of no boundaries would be intolerable for us; it is hard even to imagine for ourselves. God, then, while he has allowed us (even encouraged us) to sympathise with others and feel compassion for their pain and the wrongs committed against them, he has not allowed us to feel this burden, all the way down - simply because we were not made to take it on! But once we see self-interest as a gift to us all, we can see the even greater gift of the cross more clearly - that God made a person in Jesus Christ has borne this burden all the way down, to the depths of the earth, and even to hell itself. This stupendous and bizarre claim, of a suffering God who has taken on the pain of the world in its entirety and without any boundaries, indeed, is the very orthodox Christian message, without any frills - that he took the burden of human history upon himself and, in the words of Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:21, has become this sin for us.

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