The
Right Things for the Wrong Reasons
October
7, 2021
“But it is not so
among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant,
and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.” Mark 10:43-44.
These words are what Mark has Jesus say to the disciples after James and John,
the sons of Zebedee, ask Jesus to seat them to his left and to his right in his
“glory.” Mark 10:37. Those of us who have been to seminary, and certainly
others as well, can’t read these lines without having the phrase “servant
leadership” spring immediately to mind. We, or at least many of us, have had
drilled into our heads that the role of a church leader is to serve not to
dictate. We’ve been taught that we aren’t called to a church to stroke our
egos. We’re called to “equip the saints for the work of ministry.” Ephesians
4:12. I heard once of a person who said she wanted to go into church ministry
so she could stand up in front of a congregation and be the center of attention
with all eyes on her and all ears eager to hear what she had to say. I also
heard once that for a particular pastor it was her way or the highway for her
church. When we hear stories like these most of us pastors want to cry, “For
God’s sake no!” Of course a pastor must find personal satisfaction in his work.
If he doesn’t he will burn out and be of no use to himself or to anyone else. But
ego gratification and a desire for power are absolutely wrong reasons for
entering into parish ministry or any other kind of ministry for that matter. Jesus’
words that I quoted above from Mark 10:43-44 can be a foundational text for
developing appropriate forms of ministry. The call of one to be a leader is a
call not to control but to service, not to self-aggrandizement but to the work of
care for others. Doesn’t it sound to you to you like that’s what Jesus is
calling us to do here? Well, at least to me it does. Be a slave. Be a servant.
Good advice, right?
Well, yes but.
There is a significant “but” here that I want to explore. It seems apparent to
me that the way Mark puts Jesus’ advice here creates a distinct moral danger. To
start to get at what that danger is let me tell you about a woman I once knew.
She was very generous with her friends. If someone asked her for something she
would give it if there was any way she could. You need money? She’d give you as
much as she could. You need a ride to a medical appointment? She’d take you if
there was any way she could. You need something from the store? She’d be sure
to get it for you the next time she went to the store. She might even make a
special trip to the store to get it for you. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Here is a
woman, no longer young, always willing to do things for others if she could.
She helped a lot of people.
And I hear you asking,
“What does that story have to do with what you said a ‘but’ in Jesus’ words
about service in Mark?” Here’s what it has to do with it. This woman was doing
many right things, but she was doing them for the wrong reason. In her mind
what she was doing was building up points with people so that when she needed
to she could call on them for help and they would be obliged to provide it
because she had previously helped them. Yes, she did good things for people,
but ultimately she wasn’t providing for them so much as she was looking out for
herself. The moral issue in what she was doing is that in her right acts for
others she was really acting for herself. She did good things from a selfish
motive, and selfishness is never moral.
That’s the danger
that lurks in the words Mark has Jesus say to the disciples at Mark 10:43-44. I
hear Jesus saying in those words go ahead and serve others from a selfish
motive. You want to be great? Be a servant, and you will be great. You want to
be first? Be a slave of all, and you will be first. It sounds to me like Jesus
is saying it’s OK to satisfy your ego as long as you do it in the right way. As
long as you do it in service to others it’s OK to have a hidden agenda behind your
acts. It’s OK to have a secret motive of ego gratification.
Now, it is legitimate
to ask here what difference the motivation for good deeds makes as long as the
good deeds get done. Aren’t the good deeds the same when done for the self as
they are when done truly for others? Isn’t it what gets done that matters not
why it gets done? On one level it doesn’t make any difference at all why good
things get done. Something good is done, and that’s all very fine and well. I’ve
even heard it argued that the morality of an act is the same regardless of the
person’s motivation for the act because it isn’t possible to do anything except
from a motive of self-satisfaction. The woman in my story here does good things
selfishly. It seems to us that Mother Teresa did good things entirely
unselfishly, but did she really? Wasn’t she doing her good works because she
knew that doing them gratified some need or desire in herself? At the very
least she was answering a call from God in her acts of service. We must assume
that she responded to that call the way she did because responding to it in
that way gave her something that not responding to that call that way would not
have given her. Isn’t that a motive as selfish as Jess Bezos’ when he amasses billions
of dollars and uses them to gratify his ego desire to build a private spaceship?
The answer to
that question is not simple. To get at the answer we must start by considering
just what it is to be human. A most basic fact about being human is that we are
created as centered selves. We unavoidably exist as a self that perceives the
world through sensory reactions such as sight and sound. We experience those
sensations and assume that they come from an externally objective world. We
relate to that perceived objective world as perceiving subjects. We have no
other way of being. It necessarily follows that everything we do is the action
of a centered self. What we do unavoidably comes from our centered self and is
done by our centered self. We are always self-centered in this sense. We cannot
be otherwise.
That does not
mean, however, that we cannot be other than selfish. There is such a thing as
living as a centered self out of the self for the benefit of others. The
science of human psychology knows that there are different levels of
psychospiritual development. A person in some of those stages works and lives
only for herself. In some of those stages the development of a strong ego is
appropriate and even necessary for further development. The highest level of
psychospiritual development however is the level of living as a self out of the
self for the benefit not of the self but for the benefit of others. In that
highest stage of psychospiritual development we still live and operate as centered
selves, but the work of creating and identifying one’s self is done. At this
level of development we know who we are. We have reached the fullness of who we
are or at least have come as close to that fullness as a human being can ever
get. We need no longer be concerned with creating a self and protecting it from
the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or from anything else. We are
emotionally secure. We need nothing more to satisfy our self. We truly can live
as a self out of the self. Relatively few people ever reach that highest level
of psychospiritual development; but some do, and reaching it is always a human
possibility greatly to be desired.
So is there no
moral difference between good works done at that level of development and good
works done primarily to benefit oneself? Surely there is a decided moral
difference between good works done at different levels of development for
different psychospiritual reasons. What after all is morality? It is precisely
caring for the other as much as or more than one cares for oneself. It is
living by the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
Matthew 7:12. It is embodying and living Christ’s Great Commandment: “You shall
love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with
all your mind, and with all your strength,” and “you shall love your neighbor
as yourself.” Mark 12:30-31a. When we are developing our ego and creating a
self we care more for ourselves than we care for others. It is not
inappropriate that we do. We must go through that developmental stage if we are
reach a higher one, for as they say you can’t give of yourself if you don’t
have a self to give. Yet just as that level of development is not the highest psychospiritual
level, so is it not the highest level of morality. If morality means anything—and
it does—it means that it is more moral to give of the self without concern for
the self than it is to give as a self for the benefit of the self. Yes, even at
the highest level of psychospiritual development we exist and act as centered
selves. That is unavoidable. It is how we are created. Yet at that highest
level of development we do not live primarily for the self. That’s what makes it
the highest level of moral as well as psychospiritual development. If morality
means anything—and it does—it is more moral to live as a self for others than
it is to live as a self for the self.
Now I trust we
can see the moral danger in what Mark has Jesus say at Mark 10:43-44. I find it
hard not to read the words there as meaning be a servant so that you will be
great. Be a slave to all so that you will be first. I seriously
doubt that Jesus ever told anyone to do anything so that they would be great,
at least not great by the standards of the world; but the way Mark reports his
words here it sure sounds like that’s what he’s doing. So let us be aware of
the moral traps that may lurk behind fine-sounding words. Let us not be like
the woman I knew who did good things for others so they would do things for
her. Let us act like I’m sure Jesus wants us to act, namely, to the extent we
are able to live as a self out of the self for the benefit of others and of the
whole world. If we can do that not for personal gain but only because it is the
right way to live we will know that we live as God created us to live and wants
us to live. May it be so.
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