I am still studying the life of King Saul, the first monarch of Israel. As I read 1 Samuel chapters 8-15, I am impressed by King Saul’s love affair with his “self.” By “SELF” I do not mean the awareness of one’s own individuality, by self I mean to say that fleshly, carnal life of nature, that part of our personality that seeks what is good in our own sight, what is good for our appetites and good for our pride.  The Bible calls this the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life and these three are component parts of what is known as the “SELF-LIFE.”  The opposite state from the “self-life” is the life with the attitude “not I but Christ.”

The life of the self is natural to us.  I remember watching a documentary on the Hallmark Channel about a study in Great Britain of several children from birth until adulthood. It is an on-going study.  At the time that I watched it, the study had so far progressed from the birth of the children until their pre-school years.

The one thing I remember from the show was this part when the children were about to turn two years old.  The kids were taken one by one to a big mirror on a wall (the kind that can be found in a dance studio).  Their parents sat them in front of the mirror and while the kids were looking at the mirror, the mothers were instructed to put a ribbon on their child’s head.  They were also instructed to dab a bit of lipstick on the children’s forehead.  Some children just went on watching the mirror, as though watching television. Some played a game unmindful of their reflection.  Some children grabbed the ribbon on their head and tried to wipe the lipstick from off their forehead.

The narrator, a renowned child psychologist, explained that the children who tried to grab the ribbon from off their heads and tried to wipe the lipstick smudge on their forehead were already showing signs of being “SELF-AWARE.” That is, that they are aware of their body as their own and separate from other objects; and that they see the child in the mirror as a mere reflection of themselves. For this reason, when they felt that the ribbon and the lipstick were placed on a part of their body, they saw their reflection in the mirror and did not try to grab the ribbon from off the reflection; they grabbed the ribbon from off their own  heads instead.

We remember the story from Aesop’s fable about the dog who had a bone in between this teeth, he saw a reflection of himself on the stream and thought that there was another dog and he started to be afraid that the other dog (actually his own reflection in the water) would try to steal his bone. He barked at his reflection only to lose the bone he had been holding with his teeth. Compared to those babies I had just  mentioned, the dog was not “self-aware.”

The study of the babies show that self-awareness is natural to humans.  Unfortunately, the awareness of self grows into SELF-CENTEREDNESS and SELF-WILLEDNESS.  We see this among toddlers.  A toddler surrounded by toys will play happily with one toy after another and gradually find one favorite.  He will play with that one favorite and ignore all the others until another toddler is put in the same room with him.  The first toddler will be upset if the second toddler tries to play with any of the toys, even those toys he had ignored before.

Some toddlers would take the toys away from the second toddler and put them all in a heap and guard that heap ferociously, using force against the second toddler if he dares to touch the toys in that heap.  Others would wait for the second toddler to touch a toy and grab that toy away from the second toddler.  That toddler will do that systematically until he has grabbed away from the second toddler all the toys in the room.

It’s more interesting if the toddlers can already speak for inevitably, we would hear the first toddler say “Mine!” as he grabs each and every toy, putting it away from the reach of the second toddler.  We all have this tendency to be SELFISH, that is, we think of things as belonging to us, that those things exist for our pleasure and enjoyment and ours alone.

To be self-centered is to be concerned solely with one’s own desires, needs or interests. We see this “self-centeredness” in Adam and Eve.  In the garden, they enjoyed communion with God.  God had only one law and that was, Adam and Eve may freely eat of the fruit of all the trees of the garden but of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden, the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they cannot eat for in the day they eat of it, Adam and Eve will surely die.

Sounds simple, right?  They were deprived of only one fruit and had a whole garden of fruits to choose from.  But the one thing they were forbidden to eat, that was what they desired, that was what they thought about constantly, that was what they looked at and wondered about. They had already been lusting after it for some time when the serpent so craftily suggested that the reason why God deprived them of it was because the fruit would make them wise, even as wise as God.

Adam and Eve’s self-centered lives just could not tolerate that anything could be out-of-bounds to them.  They took of the fruit and ate it.  SELF-WILL is the stubborn or willful adherence to one’s own desires, it is to be governed entirely by one’s own will. Adam and Eve became SELF-INDULGENT, they gratified their own appetites, desires and whims without restraint.

The result was that their eyes were opened.  They realized, to their chagrin, that they were naked.  They became SELF-CONSCIOUS, that is they were painfully aware that they could be observed by others, by God in particular.  They hid themselves from the sight of God who loved them and to whom they were accountable.  They felt compelled to cover themselves up.

When confronted with their wrongdoing, instead of  SELF-EXAMINATION, instead of reflecting on their actions and the motives and beliefs that spurred their actions, they became SELF-ASSERTIVE, they insisted on their rights, claims and opinions and started blaming others for their own misdeed. Adam and Even engaged in SELF-FLATTERY, that is, they glossed over their own weaknesses and mistakes in order to exaggerate their good qualities, and achievement.

By the time that God dealt with Adam and Eve, they have become every bit SELF- ABANDONED, totally given up to their own impulses.  They have become SELF-ABSORBED, eaten up in their own thought, interests, desires and activities.  God’s place in their lives had been replaced by the SELF.

This is the tendency we inherited from Adam and Eve.  The tendency to choose SELF over God.  The tendency to choose what pleases the SELF and not what pleases God.  This is what the Bible means when it says that death (the penalty of sin) reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression (Romans 5:14).  Even though we did not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ourselves, we are still sinners just like Adam and Eve because in us, the tendency to SELF is present.

This is also what the Bible means when it says in Romans 5:12 “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.”  This is the sinful nature of all humans born after Adam and born of Adam, in all of us is present the tendency to choose SELF above God.  All humans have this nature, all except one:  JESUS CHRIST.

In Jesus Christ, we see no evidence of the SELF life.  He was himself and he was aware of himself, but he never gave in to the SELF.  In his temptation, he did not succumb to the temptation to put his appetites, his desires above the will of God.  Jesus Christ always obeyed the will of his Father.  He never sought to do his own will.

This is also the reason why Jesus Christ said, If any one will come after me, let him deny himSELF, take up his cross daily and follow me.  To follow Christ is to deny self.  To follow self is to deny Christ.