Skip to main content

The Life of Man

Self-centredness is the curse of the human race since men fell. What most of us need above everything else is to get away from ourselves, to forget ourselves. But we revolve around ourselves. We are the centre of our universe.  We are always looking at ourselves. We judge and evaluate everything in terms of us. What it means to me and what it does to me. All our rivalries, bitterness and jealousies come out of that. It is true of individuals and nations alike. 

In addition to this is our selfishness. The wanting  everything for the self. The self-centred man or woman is always selfish. Feeding this self, pandering to it, wanting it to obtain things, and wanting others not to have it. We do everything to build up and to satisfy this horrid, terrible self, which governs us and which controls us. 

All that leads, of course, to being sensitive. We see insults where they are not meant, and where indeed they very often do not exist. We are hyper  sensitive. Always afraid somebody is going to  take from us. We are always feeling hurt and feeling wounded. 

And that in turn leads to self-protectiveness. We spend a lot of our time protecting ourselves, even trying to avoid the possibility of something that might harm us. It becomes quite a great business, always protecting this delicate hypersensitive self at the centre. 

On top of all this, and this is the most mysterious thing of all about mankind, in spite of all I have just been saying, man as he is by nature is, in the main, self-reliant and self-confident. In other words, he believes that he has it in him to make a success. 'I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul’. He does not like religion because it tells him that he cannot save himself. He objects to it. He believes that he can. He has the power, it is in him. 'Believe in thyself’ says the whole psychology of the world, and he is ready to do so. Trust yourself. Be yourself. 

So the life of man is governed in this way, by this entirely wrong and false view of himself. He lives through himself. He is the beginning and the end. He is his own god, he is autonomous. Self-centred, autonomous, modern independent man, who does not believe in a God because he does not need him, because he himself is someone. And yet you see that the whole time here he is, nervous, apprehensive, afraid, sensitive, hyper-sensitive.

MARTYN LLOYD-JONES
(paraphrased in parts from The Cross)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

I am what I am by Gloria Gaynor

Beverly Knight closed the opening ceremony of the Paralympics with what has been dubbed the signature tune of the Paralympics. I had no idea Ms Knight is still in the singing business. And clearly going by the raving reviews she will continue to be around. One media source says her performance was so electric that "there wasn’t a dry eye to be seen as she sang the lyrics to the song and people even watching at home felt the passion in her words" . The song was Gloria Gaynor's I am what I am . Clearly not written by Gloria Gaynor but certainly musically owned and popularized by her. It opens triumphantly: I am what I am / I am my own special creation / So come take a look / Give me the hook or the ovation / It's my world that I want to have a little pride in / My world and it's not a place I have to hide in / Life's not worth a damn till you can say I am what I am The words “I am what I am” echo over ten times in the song. A bold declaration that she

The Shame of Worldly Joy

Only a Christian can be joyful and wise at the same time, because all other people either rejoice about things that they should be ashamed of (Philippians 3:19) or things that will disappear. A Christian is not ashamed of his joy, because he is not joyful about something shameful. That is why the Apostle Paul in [2 Corinthians 1:12] defends his joy. He says, I don’t care if everyone knows what makes me happy, because it is the ‘testimony of my conscience.’ He means, let other people can be happy about base pleasures that they are afraid to admit; let other people rejoice in riches, fame, or popularity; they can be happy about whatever they want, but my joy is different. ‘I rejoice because of my conscience.’ A Christian has a happiness that he can stand by and prove. No one else can do that. They will feel embarrassed and guilty if their happiness is found in something that is outside of themselves. They cannot say, ‘this is what makes me happy’. But a Christian has the approval of his

Preaching to the Conscience

Preaching to the conscience means something concrete. It means explaining the listeners’  obligations to God, their failure to meet those obligations, their impotence to make up for that failure, the eternal consequences of that failure, and God’s astounding grace offered to all who will humble themselves, repent, and believe the good news.  In other words, preaching to the conscience is provocative. It seeks to disturb the comfortable and to comfort the disturbed…. The great obstacle to this kind of preaching is when  the conscience is awakened, people react. The humble repent, rejoice, and enter God’s kingdom. The proud become angry: “Who are you to tell me I am a sinner?” or “This is not the God I learned about in Sunday school.”  Men dominated by the fear of man will not preach to the conscience. If you’re seeking a reward from men as you preach the gospel, you may get it, but that’s all—you won’t get anything from God.  The world needs pastors who fear God, love sinners, and under