"You are not your own."

During D-Groups on Tuesday night, the group that I meet with was studying 1 Corinthians 6. Near the end, Paul is talking about glorifying God through our bodies because it is a "temple of the Holy Spirit within you." In the middle of this point he makes, Paul writes a simple sentence: "You are not your own." This caught my attention, and got me thinking about it, mainly (I think) because of what we have been reading lately in this class.

The first thing this statement from Paul reminds me of is that all of us exist for so much more than just pleasing ourselves. The world doesn't revolve around me, although I often think and act like it does. As Christians, we know that true fulfillment, happiness, comes from giving ourselves to others and to God, not shutting out the world around us and focusing on ourselves. Easy to say, hard to do.

We've read so much in this class that has to do with this, and I will mention just a few of the bigger examples. Lewis, in "The Problem of Pain", sees Hell as total pre-occupation with the self; being totally oblivious to others' wants and needs. In "The Four Loves", Charity is the final aspect of love that helps the other 3 forms of love grow and flourish, such as in Lewis's garden analogy regarding Charity. I view the word "charity" itself as something unselfish; if I do something out of charity, it's for someone or something other than myself, with no regard to my own benefit. In "Till We Have Faces", it becomes clear that Orual's selfishness, particularly her selfish love for Psyche, makes her life rather miserable and also affects the people around her. Not until late in the story is she made aware of self-obsession and its terrible consequences.

From what we've read from "Descent Into Hell", the main example I see of this selfish focus on the self is Lawrence Wentworth, the historian guy. From the little amount I understand about this book, I do see that Wentworth has created his own little world where everyone else but Adela is below him. And from reading the chapters about Wentworth, it's a miserable life he is living. The anger, jealousy, superiority towards others, and even the delusional thoughts he has do not suggest to the reader that he's living a happy, fulfilling life. On the other hand, there is the beautiful scene between Pauline and Stanhope, where Stanhope willingly volunteers to carry the burdens of Pauline. I know there is much more symbolic meaning behind this action, but on the surface, this action by Stanhope seems to be the complete opposite of Wentworth's self-obsession.

Lately, this class and what we have read in it has made me much more aware of the terrible affects of excessive self-love, obsession with oneself: narcissism. I feel our culture, which emphasizes independence and self-betterment through individual effort and work, tends to make this self-focus even worse.