{"id":338,"date":"2010-08-17T15:47:42","date_gmt":"2010-08-17T15:47:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thinplaces\/2010\/08\/is-it-selfish-to-follow-god.html"},"modified":"2010-08-17T15:47:42","modified_gmt":"2010-08-17T15:47:42","slug":"is-it-selfish-to-follow-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/08\/is-it-selfish-to-follow-god.html","title":{"rendered":"Is it Selfish to Follow God?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"navel<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, is all the rage. In
\nfact, its been all the rage for years now. Millions of copies sold. A fragrance
\nline. A movie. All this, from a book that is spiritual journey, travelogue, and
\none woman’s quest to find true love. I’m not going to add my opinion to the
\nlist of reviews of both book and movie (although I recommend her.meneutics’
\nrecent book club discussion<\/a>, which prompted this post). But I would like to
\nweigh in on one question raised by EPL: Does the pursuit of spirituality
\ninevitably translate into  “navel-gazing” and self-centered exploration? Is it selfish to follow God?<\/p>\n

Well, at least at first, maybe it is.<\/p>\n

I know for me, as a high school student who had just been
\nhospitalized for an eating disorder, the reason I initially turned to God is
\nbecause I wanted God’s help. I needed<\/i>
\nGod’s help, in a way I never had before. And there are still times where my
\nrelationship with Jesus is really all about me, my needs, my wants. <\/p>\n

And yet I hope that along the way, a faith that began as
\nmostly about me has grown into something that extends outwards. I hope it has
\nbecome a faith that even, sometimes, translates into self-sacrifice, care for
\nothers in spite of what it will cost me, love for those I would once have found
\nunlovable, blessing others out of the blessings I have received.<\/p>\n

Years ago, I read a piece by Bernard of Clairvaux in Richard
\nFoster’s Devotional Classics<\/a> that talked about stages of love for God. The
\nfirst stage is love of God for my own sake. Love of God because of how it
\nbenefits me, for the good feelings it brings, for the answers to prayer and the
\npromises and the hope. The next stage (and actually there are two stages here
\nbut I don’t fully understand\/remember how they differ from one another) is love
\nof God for God’s sake, because of who God is, regardless of how that benefits
\nme. The final stage is love of self for God’s sake, a perfection of love that
\nClairvaux considered unlikely before the final resurrection. <\/p>\n

All that is to say, the movement from loving God for the
\nsake of what-God-will-do-for-me, to loving God because of who God is, is a
\nnecessary part of spiritual growth. We start with our eyes on ourselves and our
\nneeds. By God’s grace, we move towards the needs of the rest of the world,
\ntrusting in the goodness of God beyond our personal benefit.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n

So is it selfish to follow God? Only if we aren’t growing up, from self-love to self-giving love. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, is all the rage. In fact, its been all the rage for years now. Millions of copies sold. A fragrance line. A movie. All this, from a book that is spiritual journey, travelogue, and one woman’s quest to find true love. I’m not going to add my opinion to the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith"],"yoast_head":"\nIs it Selfish to Follow God? - Thin Places<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/08\/is-it-selfish-to-follow-god.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Is it Selfish to Follow God? - Thin Places\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, is all the rage. 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Two major life experiences have shaped her writing and her faith\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcaring for her mother-in-law as she battled cancer and welcoming her daughter Penny into the world after she was diagnosed at birth with Down syndrome. Both experiences expanded and enriched her understanding of what it means to be human and to receive each and every person as a gift.\u00c2\u00a0 A graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, she is the author of Penelope Ayers: A Memoir, and the forthcoming A Good and Perfect Gift (Bethany House). Her essays have appeared in First Things, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Century, ChristianityToday.com, and Bloom, among other online venues.","sameAs":["http:\/\/amyjuliabecker.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/author\/amyjuliabecker"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}