Are you a Christian?

I tend to think self interest, when tempered by compassion, love, and service, is a useful tool to keep us alive. Every organism needs to have some sense of its biological needs (and for us that includes social needs) to maintain life.

I tend to think selfishness is what happens when self interest gets out of control, out of balance with other-interest. The ideal, in my opinion, is when self is considered as one stakeholder among many. This (to me) is loving neighbor as oneself, and is what makes that state of being different from simply looking out for other people. It is the equality of importance of self and other that is unique.
 
All people have an ego which is entirely concerned with self.
It is what keeps us as individuals alive and well.
Self-preservation is entirely self-ish, becoming a bad self-ish-ness when one will preserve one's self at the expense of another or through harming another. (definitely a bad thing to do for the most part, unless you are being assailed by some death wielding nut who for no good reason is intending to harm or destroy your-self, then it would be considered justifiable to be very self-ish about preserving your-self at the expense of the assailant's self. But this is a whole entirely different can of worms.)

Seems to me that the best religions are those which teach people how to identify and understand this aspect of themselves (ego structure and methodology ) so that they are not acting in ignorance of this.
The choices people make are still their own, whether they are aware of why or not.

I do see that it is important to enlarge one's vision of self to encompass all of humanity as we are all one (IMO), then higher ideals can be realized and the world would become a better place to live in.
 
path_of_one said:
I tend to think self interest, when tempered by compassion, love, and service, is a useful tool to keep us alive. Every organism needs to have some sense of its biological needs (and for us that includes social needs) to maintain life.

I tend to think selfishness is what happens when self interest gets out of control, out of balance with other-interest. The ideal, in my opinion, is when self is considered as one stakeholder among many. This (to me) is loving neighbor as oneself, and is what makes that state of being different from simply looking out for other people. It is the equality of importance of self and other that is unique.
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Exactly what I meant and much better put. Good goin. :)

I don't mind soundin Buddhist. Anyone else? *looks around*

LOL:D
 
Thanks, immortalitylost. *shrugs* I often am told I sound Buddhist. I haven't observed a great deal of difference between a "good" Buddhist, Christian, Jew, or Hindu to be honest. It seems like most religions, at their heart, have The Point of how to relate self to others. They just seem to have different ideas about why and how.

And Shawn, I think I understand what you mean about methodology. Much of mainline Christianity has not, in my experience, had enough methodology to tell me how to go about "not worrying beyond today" and "loving neighbor as myself" and so on. I think this is not a flaw in Christianity as a whole, but rather that like much else in life, American culture tends to strip tradition and complexity from things until (for some at least) what is left is not sufficient for putting into practice the ideals one holds. I am finding that there is a great deal of richness in the Christian tradition and much similarity between the contemplative traditions and Buddhism, but I had to go in search of it. It was not something immediately offered at churches everywhere.

I can say that Buddhism has a great many books, at least, that are reasonably accessible to an ordinary practitioner that go into detail on methodology. I found these very useful as a means to put into practice my Christian ideals, if that makes any sense.
 
shawn said:
I do see that it is important to enlarge one's vision of self to encompass all of humanity as we are all one (IMO), then higher ideals can be realized and the world would become a better place to live in.
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I wholeheartedly agree shawn. And the more one can enlarge one's compassion towards sentient beings beyond just humans, the better IMO.

s.
 
path_of_one said:
I can say that Buddhism has a great many books, at least, that are reasonably accessible to an ordinary practitioner that go into detail on methodology. I found these very useful as a means to put into practice my Christian ideals, if that makes any sense.
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As I see Buddhism (more and more) as essentially the practice (of living) supported by theory, then one should indeed expect the emphasis to be on the methodology (of living.)

:)

s.

PS it wasn't me what derailed this thread!
 
I think, along these lines, the 'best religions' are those which relate the nature of the self with regard to the nature of being, and open up into ideas of being-as-such.

Once an order of higher being enters the equation, then a whole different light is cast upon the discussion, especially when one discusses communication between the two.

Surely if one judges Christianity on purely humanist grounds, then really you're choosing to dismiss what is definably Christian. It's a reductionist process, the rationalising of what one doesn't understand, or chooses not to believe.

Thomas
 
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