C. S. Lewis and (Enlightened) Selfishness

Another excerpt from my book, The Time for Yes, on discernment...

"I would not know how to advise a man how to write. It is a matter of talent

and interest. I believe he must be strongly moved if he is to become a writer. Writing is like a ‘lust,’ or like ‘scratching when you itch.’ Writing comes as a result of a very strong impulse, and when it does come, I for one must get it out." C. S. Lewis in a 1963 interview

Doesn’t “finding your passion” and looking for "flow" (as I've written in recent posts) seem just a little too selfish and therefore illegitimate as a way of directing our lives? 

Not necessarily. I have learned from a distinction from the Christian writer and Oxford literary scholar, C.S. Lewis. He delineated an important distinction: being selfish and self-centered. Finding what we are called to do is, in a certain sense, selfish—we love doing it and therefore we find great joy—but entirely not self-centered—when we do what we love, we forget ourselves as we delight in the activity itself.

      
Lewis writes in comparing selfishness with self-centeredness.

"One of the happiest men and most pleasant companions I have ever known was intensely selfish. On the other hand I have known people capable of real sacrifice whose lives were nevertheless a misery to themselves and to others, because self-concern and self-pity filled all their thoughts. On the other hand I have known people capable of real sacrifice whose lives were nevertheless a misery to themselves and to others, because self-concern and self-pity filled all their thoughts. Either condition will destroy the soul in the end. But till the end, give me the man who takes the best of everything (even at my expense) and then talks of other things, rather than the man who serves me and talks of himself, and whose very kindnesses are a continual reproach, a continual demand for pity, gratitude, and admiration." C. S. Lewis

As Lewis says, either of the two will destroy the soul in the end. So I’m proposing a form of enlightened selfishness--or, as some friends of mine prefer, enlightened self-interest.  I’m asking us to be more directed toward what we like because there we have the power to become self-forgetful and even other-directed. We just do what we enjoy doing, where we find “flow”—we actually forget ourselves. And therefore we simply cannot be self-centered.

      
(If you’re philosophically minded you’re welcome to call this “the hedonistic paradox.” Search for happiness and you won’t find it. Do what you enjoy, and you’ll find happiness as a by-product. But then again, you may not be philosophically minded….)

      
The point is not, as we often fear, that when we do something we like it will make us less moral. “How good is that guy—he actually likes serving at the homeless center!” Actually, what we truly love helps us to turn our eyes off ourselves and toward the activity. In fact, that’s the beginning of right actions. In other words, don’t stay selfish as an end, but learn to follow what you truly enjoy and follow it toward something outside of yourself. (And all this leads to mission, which I’ll arrive shortly.)

      
I’ve been unfolding this idea of “enlightened selfishness,” and I now arrive at the weird part: we often don’t know what we really desire. How many times do you hear someone saying, “I’m not sure I really know what I want”? 

We don’t always have the answers, but I believe the God who created us can help us find what we truly desire. That will be the content of a future post, but in the meantime, feel free to post your ideas.

The Time for Yes (#1 in a series)

By an act of faith, Abraham said yes to God’s call to travel to an unknown place that would become his home. Hebrews 11:8, The Message

Recently, I've been looking at how we discern God's will for our lives, and this produced a bit of conversation in social media. All of which brought me back to A Time for Yes, the book I wrote in 2012. I figured it might be good to serialize a few entries as a way of keeping the conversation going. As a ramp-up, it seemed worth recounting why I wrote the book in the first place.

I had written Say Yes to No with a period of struggle in 2001 (and finished it around 2008) where I had said, and tried to live out, too many yeses. I’m happy to say that I’m no longer enmeshed in the stress outlined in the first chapter of Say Yes to No, but now the struggle is subtler and never fully leaves. Healthy practices that fight the gradual onset of what I earlier described as “schedule obesity” (an over-fed commitment to tasks) are habits that take time to cultivate. And then dogged insistence… I keep working on the right rhythm of yeses and nos and realize that this is an ongoing project. (You won’t believe how many times friends have quoted to me, “Greg, I think you need to learn to ‘say yes to no.’”)

      

The global economy also helped my cause a bit, or at least made the need for no even more apparent. The serious economic crisis of 2008 and its continuation over the past four years, the meltdown of the stock market, the crisis of confidence in our banks and Wall Street leaders, all led us to the recognition: we had declared too many yeses for too long—yeses to buying things we can’t afford. The United States government has spent too much without sufficient revenue. We’ve bought houses we couldn’t afford and too many HD TVs on lines of credit.

      

There is also one additional, subtler element:  With the public relations campaign for Say Yes to No, I began to focus more on the marketplace. I found myself engaging more business-related topics and commenting on CNBC.com’s blog, in interviews on Business News Network and businessweek.com, as well as the American Management Association’s publications like MWorld and Executive Matters. I began to ask why and realized that calling—or to use a bit more expensive term, vocation—is critical to what I’m doing with yes and no.

      

This experience led to one conclusion about calling and yes: it’s not just about work, it’s about how we respond to the whole Triangle of life—our personal life, work, and love.

      

Finally, yes is basic to faith. As the noted author Kathleen Norris has written in the introduction to Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, human infants “build a vocabulary, making sense of the chaos of sound that bombards the senses.” She continues, “Eventually the rudiments of words come; often ‘Mama,’ ‘Dada,’ ‘Me,’ and the all-powerful ‘No!’ An unqualified ‘Yes’ is a harder sell, to both children and adults.” Actually I had always thought that nos were harder, that setting out boundaries in a world of seemingly infinite possibilities posed the greatest challenge. But Norris ties saying yes to realities of faith.

To say “yes” is to make a leap of faith, to risk oneself in a new and often scary relationship. Not being quite sure of what we are doing, or where it will lead us, we try on assent, we commit ourselves to affirmation. With luck, we find that our efforts are rewarded. The vocabulary of faith begins. Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith 

Yes is also central to understanding Jesus Christ, at least according to the early Christian writer Paul who declared,

In him [that’s Christ] it is always “Yes.” For in him every one of God's promises is a “Yes” (1 Corinthians 1:19-20). 

By that, I believe Paul is leading us to see that God’s final word in Christ is an affirmation. Our nos, as it were, are to make way for yes. And yes is the main message of this book.

      

One final note: faith is also basic to saying yes. The shift in emphasis from no to yes has required that I become more explicit about God in this pursuit of finding the time for yes. I realize that we can say yes “to the Universe” and say yes “to the way we are made.” If you translate my references to God in that way, I won’t quibble. I have always wanted to communicate to those who are spiritually open, but not religiously identified. But I do write as a Christian. And, as Kathleen Norris pointed out, yes is a bit of a leap of faith, and it opens us up to their being a greater Yes behind this universe. Or perhaps put another way, saying yes to our calling implies that someone calls us. In my mind, this means God’s call, expressed definitively in Jesus.

Yes Friends (Revised)

I've been teaching on friendship recently, which has reminded me of the incredible importance of friendship. So I've adapted this chapter from The Time for Yes, and reposted it. Let me know what you think!

I have indeed received much joy and encouragement from your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, my brother.

Paul to his friend Philemon (Philemon 7)

Jesus put it so well: “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Can I add something similar? “Where our friends are, there will our hearts be also.”

This brings me to a question: What does Scripture lead us to understand makes good friendships? I’m teaching a class at Bidwell Presbyterian on Christian relationships. So I’ve been thinking about this topic quite a bit and particularly the people I like to call “yes friends.”

Three key elements of “yes friends” find their way into the biblical book of Proverbs. First of all, we need friends to give us support and advice: “Where there is no guidance, a nation falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety” (Proverbs 15:22). If it’s true for a nation, I'm pretty confident it works for individuals. In fact, a somewhat recent survey (from 2006) found that one in four Americans doesn't have anyone to confide in. That to me is the definition of a lonely life. And that's why we need “yes friends.”

These “yes friends” give us encouragement in their counsel: They affirm what we may not see in ourselves. They celebrate our victories. And they stand by and encourage even when we’re not perfect. They grant us freedom to fail. “Some friends play at friendship, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother” (Proverbs 18:24).

      Secondly—and on the other hand—these “yes friends” aren’t “yes men” (as the phrase goes)—those who will just tell us everything’s ok. Biblically, they are called  “flatterer” and don’t fare too well in Proverbs. Who wants to be told “all is well” right before the tornado arrives? Who wants compliments when a personality course correction is what’s needed? “Whoever rebukes a person will afterward find more favor than one who flatters with the tongue” (Proverbs 28:23).

      Though not a Christian—for one thing, he lived before the New Testament or Jesus existed—the philosopher Aristotle had some pretty good things to say about friendship. He philosophized that friendship isn’t just about people we like or have things to offer us, but that friends seek the Good together. Paul wrote rather rhapsodically, about four hundred years later, and yet in agreement with Aristotle: love “does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6). Still one more reason that flatterers make us feel giddy for a while, but also prove to be pathetic companions.

Finally and most importantly, our friendship—or intimate community—begins to define us, “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools suffers harm” (Proverbs 13:20). We become whom we hang out with.

When we get in the company of those who support our deepest yearnings and passions, we come to our truest selves. There we realize our dreams, the important dreams, our “yeses”—the ones God put in our hearts, the ones where passion meets mission. 

That’s why I want yes friends.