Jesus and the Philosophy of Selflessness

Part 3 in a series . . .

These are believers in God and Christians, and at the same time socialists. They are the ones we are most afraid of; they are terrible people! A socialist Christian is more dangerous than a socialist atheist.—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamozov.

In “The Moral Issue of Our Time,” I defined the central moral conflict of Western Civilization as reducible to one fundamental alternative: the ethic of selfishness versus the ethic of selflessness. Most philosophers and theologians throughout history have viewed selfishness as the problem to be solved or overcome, and selflessness in one form or another as the solution.

The few advocates of selfishness (and by a few, I mean a handful) hold that the pursuit of happiness is man’s primary moral obligation, while the proponents of selflessness hold that pursuing the happiness of others is man’s primary moral obligation. In general terms, what we might call the “pro-self” approach regards virtue as those actions taken in pursuit of values that seek to improve one’s own life, while the “anti-self” approach regards virtue as those actions that deny and sacrifice a man’s selfish values for the sake of others.

Throughout the history of Western Civilization, the idea of “selfishness” was long considered by most philosophers and theologians to represent the source of all immorality. (Related concepts such as “self-interest” or “interest” were likewise morally suspect, but not as vilified as “selfishness.”) Selfishness has always been treated as morally tainted, or, worse, as the lowest human impulse—an impulse, desire, or passion (as opposed to reason) that leads to predatory grasping often at the expense of others—to self-love, to self-satisfaction, to self-seeking, to greed, to avarice, to love of gain, to money-making, to cupidity, to luxury, to corruption, and then on to lying, cheating, stealing, and worse for one’s own gain.

By contrast, virtually the entire tradition of Western (if not world) moral thought defined ethical action as synonymous with selflessness and self-sacrifice. The essence of moral action from the ancient to the modern world has been identified with subordinating or sacrificing one’s own interests for the sake or needs of others. Indeed, Western Civilization has not, for the most part, developed a moral alternative to the code of self-less-ness. In its modern form, the common word used to define to the ethic of selflessness and self-sacrifice is altruism (a word invented by the nineteenth-century French philosopher, Auguste Comte), which runs in one form or another to and through the marrow of Western culture.

In “The Thrasymachian Challenge,” I examined how the two greatest classical Greek philosophers—Plato and Aristotle—addressed the problem of selfishness. In this essay, I shall briefly examine how the Biblical and the early Christian traditions understood, evaluated, and judged the problem of selfishness and the moral alternative they proposed in its place.

The Biblical Understanding of Selfishness and Selflessness

The selfishness or Thrasymachian problem also lies at the heart of Christian ethics. The Holy Bible and the entire Christian tradition from Paul of Tarsus to Pope Francis has considered selfish thoughts and actions to be the epitome of moral vice and self-sacrifice to be the epitome of moral virtue. Indeed, selfishness for Christians is man’s greatest earthly, original sin. (Eve’s rejection of God’s commandment to not eat the forbidden fruit was born of her selfish desire for knowledge of good and evil.)

How does The Bible deal with the problem of selfishness?

The Old and New Testaments condemn those who pursue “selfish gain” (Psalms 119:36), manipulate the economy to serve their interests over against others (e.g., Proverbs 2:27-28; 11:26 and James 5:1-6) and those who exploit the poor for personal profit (Leviticus 19:13, Amos 5:11-12, and 8:4-6). (It is important to note that in a purely laissez-faire economy fraud would be criminalized.) The Bible, particularly the New Testament, saves its greatest condemnation for those who are consumed by selfishness, greed, and avarice.

Consider several scriptural examples from the New Testament that condemn greed and selfishness. In Philippians (2:3-4), the Apostle Paul says: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” And James (3:16), the brother of Jesus, declared, “where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.” In Colossians (3:5), Paul tells Christians to kill their earthly desires: “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” And in 1 Timothy (6:8-9), Paul tells Christians that they should be content in life with little more than food and clothing. By contrast, he admonishes those who fall into temptation by selfishly seeking wealth, for “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils.” In 2 Timothy (3:2), Saint Paul continued to show great disfavor to people who “will be lovers of self” and “lovers of money.” Lastly, in the First Epistle of John (2:15-16), the Apostle writes: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.” At the heart of the Christian ethics is a turning away from the self and from this world.

Following in the Platonic tradition, the moral teaching of The Holy Bible and the subsequent Christian doctrine assumes man’s nature and existence are materialistic, low, crass, vulgar, and selfish—that man is mired in his own desires, appetites, passions, impulses, emotions, and interests, which, by definition, are filthy and disgusting. Core Christian doctrine tells the followers of Jesus to deny themselves or even to murder part of who and what they are. Achieving a state of self-less-ness on the road to obedience and servitude to others and God is a Christian’s highest moral duty.

If selfishness and the pursuit of one’s self-interest are immoral for Christians, what then constitutes moral good and virtue?

The Bible’s answer is clearly stated in I Corinthians (10:24): “Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor.” In other words, self-less-ness and self-sacrifice are the primary Christian virtues necessary to counter the primary Christian vice. Luke (12:33) tells Christians to “Sell your possessions, and give to the needy.” In the Book of Matthew (19:21), Jesus meets with a rich young man who asks Christ what he must do to achieve eternal life. Jesus’s answer provides the moral ideal for all Christians: “‘If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.’” Sacrifice—the sacrifice to and for others—sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice—is the highest form of Christian love.

Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (6:2,10,3) tells the faithful to “bear one another’s burdens,” to “do good to everyone” and “so fulfill the law of Christ.” Paul is insistent that a man deceives himself if “he thinks he is something, when he is nothing.” Paul then concretizes this message in his second letter to the Corinthians, when he gives the example of the Macedonians, who had recently experienced a “severe test of affliction,” but had nevertheless shown “their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part.” Indeed, they gave “beyond their means, of their own accord (8:2-3).”

In I John (3:11,15-18), the Apostle commands his flock to “love one another” indiscriminately because “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer.”

What could this possibly mean?

First, by “brother,” John speaks metaphorically: he does not simply mean one’s biological brother but instead one’s neighbor if not all humanity. And what does it mean to speak of another man as a “murderer” for hating his fellow man? What if one has legitimate reasons for hating someone? Is the goal to eliminate not just hate but moral judgment as well? If particular or exclusive hate can never be justified, then how can particular or exclusive love be justified? Christ’s followers get around this problem by forbidding judgment against individuals and by universalizing love, which likewise requires no judgment.

Still, John tells us clearly how men should act on this principle: those who follow Christ must be willing to “lay down” their “lives” for the sake of their “brothers.” This commandment applies most particularly to those who are better off than others. The commandment implores all men—not simply the rich, but it does apply mostly to them—to share: “But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him.” In sum, not only are you judged and condemned as a “murderer” if you judge and hate others, but you are commanded to die for others as well. This is the very definition of selflessness and the standard for what it means to be moral.

Finally, we come to Luke’s Book of Acts in which Christ’s apostles gather after the ascension to chart the course of their community going forward: “And all who believed were together and had all things in common; and they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need (2:44-45).” The primitive communism of the Apostle’s Acts provided the moral ideal for all future Christians and socialists, including Marx’s scientific socialists:

Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. . . . There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need (Acts 4:32, 34-35).

Christian love calls on men to merge their selfish selves with one collective “heart and soul,” to disclaim the proposition that there can or should be private property, and to share equally between all men. Need not greed was the Apostle’s creed.

Jesus’s moral mandate to his apostles was to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, and to merge the wants of their selfish selves with the needs of the collective soul. The Apostle’s creed bears a striking resemblance to Karl Marx’s central moral directive: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”

The Early Christian Fathers’ View of Selfishness and Selflessness

Over the centuries, how have faithful Christians interpreted these Biblical injunctions against selfishness and for self-sacrifice?

Early Christian Church Fathers believed, based on their reading of Scripture, that private property and the human motivation to pursue, acquire, and keep it led men inexorably to selfishness and worse. Indeed, despite the Decalogue’s commandment to not steal (which implies private property), the overwhelming evidence provided in the New Testament and interpreted by the early Church Fathers strongly suggests that the idea of private property was anathema to, or at least problematic for, post-Torah, Christian ethics.

No man by this teaching has a moral right to say this or that is mine. In fact, by Christian standards, all men everywhere have a moral claim to what you think is yours, which means that you owe—by default—an unchosen payment of debt to others by virtue of their existence and yours! Morally speaking, what you think you own is actually owned by someone else.

The Christian ethic teaches the principle of radical sharing. Consider these five examples from early Christian saints:

• St. Basil (330-378 AD): “The bread in your hoard belongs to the hungry; the cloak in your wardrobe belongs to the naked; the shoes you let rot belong to the barefoot; the money in your vaults belongs to the destitute.”

• St. Jerome (c. 345-420 AD): “And he very rightly said, ‘money of injustice,’ for all riches come from injustice. Unless one person has lost, another cannot find. Therefore I believe that the popular proverb is very true. ‘The rich person is either an unjust person or the heir of one.’”

• St. Ambrose (347-397 AD): “You are not making a gift of your possessions to the poor person. You are handing over to him what is his.”

• St. Augustine (354-430 AD): “It is a far nobler resolution that leads Christians to regard their riches as belonging to all, according to the principle described in the Act of Apostles; by which everything is shared out according to individual need, no one claims anything as his private property, and everything belongs to the common stock.”

• St. Gregory the Great (540-604 AD): “When we furnish the destitute with any necessity we render them what is theirs, not bestow on them what is ours; we pay the debt of justice rather than perform the works of mercy.”

The most powerful example of this line of thought can be found in Saint John Chrysostom’s (347-407 AD) homilies on the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man published in his On Wealth and Poverty (circa 388 AD). Chrysostom’s sermons offer a radical critique of selfishness and a passionate exhortation to overcome selfishness for the sake of the poor. Chrysostom claimed that it was theft not only to steal property from another man, but he also thought that not giving to the poor was a form of theft as well. His words are clear: “I shall bring you testimony from the divine Scriptures, saying that not only the theft of others’ goods but also the failure to share one’s own goods with others is theft and swindle and defraudation.” (Keep in mind that theft and fraud are and should be legally punishable crimes in any just and free society.)

Chrysostom provides two examples of scriptural evidence to support his charge. The first is taken from the Old Testament’s Book of Malachi (3:8-10).

Accusing the Jews by the prophet, God says, “The earth has brought forth her increase, and you have not brought forth your tithes; but the theft of the poor is in your houses” [Mal. 3:8-10].

Chrysostom then interprets God’s words to the Jews as follows: “Since you have not given the accustomed offering, He says, you have stolen the goods of the poor. He says this to show the rich that they hold the goods of the poor even if they have inherited them from their fathers or no matter how they have gathered their wealth.”

The second scriptural reference Chrysostom uses comes in the form of a commandment and is from the Book of Ecclesiasticus or the Book of Sirach (also known as the Wisdom of Jesus the son of Sirach), one of the Bible’s so-called apocryphal books.

And elsewhere the Scripture says, ‘Deprive not the poor of his living’ [Sir. 4:1].

To this moral commandment, Chrysostom draws the following lesson:

To deprive is to take what belongs to another; for it is called deprivation when we take and keep what belongs to others. By this we are taught that when we do not show mercy, we will be punished just like those who steal. For our money is the Lord’s, however we may have gathered it. If we provide for those in need, we shall obtain great plenty. This is why God has allowed you to have more; not for you to waste on prostitutes, drink, food, expensive clothes, and all the other kinds of indulgence, but for you to distribute to those in need. . . . If you are affluent, but spend more than you need, you will give an account of the funds which were entrusted to you. . . . For you have obtained more than others have, and you have received it, not to spend it for yourself, but to become a good steward for others as well [On Wealth and Poverty, Homily Two].

Consider the full meaning of Jesus’ moral teaching. It suggests that all men are born with an unknowable, undefinable, limitless debt to others. Conversely, it means that one’s mere existence (i.e., from the perspective of the needy) represents a demand or a mortgage on another man’s life. In either case, it means that all men have a duty to serve all other men.

But, of course, not all needs and not all duties are equal. The world is thus divided into those who have an unequal right to receive and those who have an unequal duty to give. At the core of man’s existential corruption is the problem of selfishness and property, both of which must be either eliminated or at least controlled psychologically and morally. Ultimately, the principal interpreters of Jesus’ moral teaching say that private property as a right qua right is theft and that the poor have a right to the wealth of not just the wealthy but of someone who simply has more than they do.

For better or worse, this view of morality has been at the heart of Western Civilization in one form or another for over two millennia.

Augustine and the Destruction of the Self

What, then, at the deepest psycho-moral level, does the Christian ethic ask of Jesus’s followers? How deep and broad is the level and range of sacrifice? How is this self-abnegation to be achieved? And what of those who refuse to sacrifice?

The deepest Christian answer to these related questions is to be found in Saint Augustine’s (354-430 AD) City of God (426), in which the philosopher-theologian explains in no uncertain terms that “to abandon God and to exist in oneself, that is to please oneself, is not immediately to lose all being; but it is to come nearer to nothingness.” In fact, the “love of self” (whatever that is!), i.e., the man who “regards himself as his own light” represents “the original evil” and defines the City of Man, whereas the “love of God” defines His city.

Augustine’s moral teaching can be summed up in a single renunciation—renunciation of one’s interests and ultimately of one’s self. Man must relinquish his prideful quest for self-realization and the pursuit of this-worldly happiness in favor of humility and obedience, which means the recognition of man’s innate unworthiness. Thus, the eradication of the self is the highest fulfillment of Christ’s self-abasing philosophy. In the end, though, Augustine’s moral teaching is inherently self-contradictory or at least problematic. It asks man to forget his fake self to discover his true self. In other words, Christianity tells man to be selfless to achieve his highest selfish interest, namely, eternal salvation.

A Few Early Modern Followers of Jesus

Almost a thousand years after Augustine’s renunciation of the self, the German mystic Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) told his followers that a properly obedient Christian—and obedience to God is the First Commandment that stands above all other virtues—is one from whom “you will hear only of utter denial of self.” The good Christian must begin “first with self” and then you must immediately “forget yourself” or escape it because your native self is nothing or worse than nothing.

Eckhart goes on to ask how one is to achieve the highest state of self-forgetting:

Let everyone begin by denying self and in so doing he will have denied all else. Indeed, if a man gave up a kingdom, or even the whole world and still was selfish, he would have given up nothing. If, however, he denies himself, then whatever he keeps, be it wealth, honor, or anything else, he is free from it all.

The elimination of the self is the sum total of the Christian ethic. But how does one eliminate the self and one’s selfish interests?

Early modern theologians began their search for the answer to this question by rediscovering the biblical and early Christian teaching that private property is a form of theft, that need is a claim to a right over the property of others, and that not sharing is likewise a form of theft.

Take, for instance, the view of the early modern English theologian, William Tyndale (1494-1536), who claimed in The Parable of the Wicked Mammon (1527), “If thy brother or neighbor therefore need, and thou have to help him, and yet shewest not mercy, but withdrawest thy hands from him, then robbest thou him of his own, and art a thief.” Consider the moral meaning of what is being said here. One must not ask what the source of a man’s wealth or poverty is, but instead one should simply obey the commandment to give and give more.

Not surprisingly, then, Christians dating back to the Apostles have promoted some kind of Christian socialism. The Dutch Christian humanist, Catholic theologian, and philosopher, Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) saw the connection between Plato’s ideal republic (as well Pythagoras’s) and the moral implications of Jesus’s teachings:

Plato is trying to show that the happiest condition of a society consists in the community of all possessions: . . . Plato also says that a state would be happy and blessed in which these words “mine” and “not mine” were never to be heard. But it is extraordinary how Christians dislike this common ownership of Plato’s, how in fact they cast stones at it, although nothing was ever said by a pagan philosopher which comes closer to the mind of Christ. . . . [Pythagoras] instituted a kind of sharing of life and property in this way, the very thing Christ wants to happen among Christians. For all those who were admitted by Pythagoras into that well-known band who followed his instruction would give to the common fund whatever money and family property they possessed. This is called in Latin, in a word which expresses fact, coenobium, clearly from community of life and fortunes.

Erasmus is clearly attempting to claim a relationship between Plato’s (alleged) primitive communism and Jesus’s moral teaching. Christian theologians must ask whether Jesus’s moral teaching is compatible with a political teaching that does not permit the use of the words “mine” and “not mine.” They must also ask if the Acts of the Apostles mirror the political teaching of Pythagoras, which is the sharing of all things, which would include, presumably (as it did for Plato), a community of wives and children.

So, too, with Thomas More (1478-1535) in his Utopia (1516). More—an English jurist, theologian, Renaissance humanist, Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor, and martyr—wrote a fictional account of an island commonwealth known as Utopia (meaning “nowhere” or “noplace”), which instituted elements of Plato’s ideal city in the Republic and Plutarch’s account of Lycurgus’s Spartan republic in Parallel Lives.

More’s utopian society is premised on the assumption that men (particularly the strong, clever, selfish, ambitious, and prideful) will lie, cheat, and steal (if left to their own devices) to get what they want. Again, we see the challenge posed by the Thrasymachian problem. Thus there arises in most societies the predatory wealthy few and the groveling poor many.

More’s solution to the Thrasymachian problem is the creation of a society that abolishes private property, money, and, ultimately, greed, and where “everything is shared equally,” where “everyone lives in plenty,” and where all men “talk all the time about the commonwealth.” In this form of primitive communism, “there is nothing private anywhere” and families are expected to change homes every ten years. What could be better (with a faint echo to Marx’s description of the ideal communist society in The German Ideology) than to live in a society without “fear” of poverty and where one can be “free from all anxieties, and without worries about making a living?” In such a community, men will be free to explore their greater or higher selves. Interestingly, it’s only after More’s ideal community is formed that its residents are introduced to the teachings of Jesus, which they eagerly adopt precisely because to them it seemed that “Christ approved of his followers’ communal way of life,” as discussed in Acts 2:44-5 and 4:32-5.

Conclusion

Let me conclude, then, with some uncomfortable truths.

Morally, the difference between Christianity and various nineteenth and twentieth-century socialisms would seem to be one of degree and not of kind. While it is true that there is nothing in The Bible to suggest that Christ or his followers supported using the coercive power of the State to redistribute wealth, they did seem to lay the psychological and moral groundwork for socialism. The Christian giving up of the self and of one’s freedom for a new self and a new freedom is the precondition or preparation for the rise of the socialist impulse. This is why many twentieth- and twenty-first-century Marxian socialists have claimed Jesus Christ as their moral standard-bearer.

Consider some evidence:

• In 1914, American socialist Eugene V. Debs declared, “Pure communism was the economic and social gospel preached by Jesus Christ, and every act and utterance which may properly be ascribed to him conclusively affirms it.”

• In 1984, Ernesto Cardenal, a Nicaraguan priest and liberation theologian, told The New Times (May 27, 1984), where he said: “For me, the four Gospels are Marxist. I came to Marx through Christ.”

• In 1987, Fidel Castro told Frei Betto, a Franciscan monk and liberation theologist, “I am not a Christian, but I have a deep respect for the moral teachings of Jesus Christ. If you analyze it, Christ was a revolutionary, a man who opposed the oppressors of his time, who defended the poor, and who was persecuted for it.”

• In 1992, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev proclaimed, “Jesus was the first socialist, the first to seek a better life for mankind.”

• In 2000, Slavoj Žižek, an internationally acclaimed Slovenian Marxist, declared in his book The Fragile Absolute: Or, Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For? that “there is a direct lineage from Christianity to Marxism; yes, Christianity and Marxism should fight on the same side of the barricade. . . .”

• In 2007, Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela, announced that Jesus Christ was “the greatest socialist in history.”

• In a 2014 interview, Nicolás Maduro, Chavez’s successor, declared, “The teachings of Christ are teachings of love, of justice, of equality, of solidarity. That’s why I say that Christ was the first socialist.”

Historically, the moral power of Jesus’s teaching on selfishness and self-sacrifice came in the dual form of weaponized empathy and its necessary counterpart, weaponized guilt, which then cast a spell over the Western imagination from which it has been difficult for Christians to break. This guilt was born of hypocrisy because no man could totally or consistently live by the moral teachings of Jesus, which then doubles down on the guilt and reinforces the commitment to sacrifice.

In a 2007 speech, Hugo Chavez raised the stakes by telling the Venezuelan people that capitalism led to hell and socialism to an earthly heaven: “Those who want to go directly to hell, they can follow capitalism . . . And those of us who want to build heaven here on earth, we will follow socialism.” What is an uneducated Venezuelan peasant to say in response?

Of course, just the opposite has happened wherever socialism has been tried. Most people who have ever lived under socialism have discovered what hell on earth looks like.

For Christians to practice what they preach (i.e., universal empathy) would require a super human effort to achieve, which is why they were and are in a state of constant guilt driven by an ideal that they can never achieve in practice—a guilt which, if the desired end cannot be achieved voluntarily via charity, is easily susceptible to the claim that it should receive a helping hand (and then, inevitably, a lot of help) from the State.

Thus, Christianity’s ethical teaching prepared the way—it prepared the soul—for socialism via a kind of weepy empathy and enervating guilt that serves as an autoimmune function of the soul seeking and destroying its healthy, life-serving parts. By the nineteenth century, scientific socialists dropped Jesus’s first commandment to love God above all else and replaced it with love for the State, but they kept the second commandment to love and serve thy neighbor above all else.

Christian empathy and guilt are also wrapped in a curious paradox: if alleviating poverty and suffering are the goals of Christian ethics and if capitalism (the system based on self-interest) is the economic system that makes that possible, what then is left of the Christian ethic if the ethic of self-interest and capitalism eliminates poverty and much suffering? There would then be no need for the Jesus’s moral teaching. It would seem then that Jesus’s moral teaching is thus stuck between a moral rock and a political hard place. Capitalism reduces poverty and thus reduces the need for the Christian ethic, while socialism increases poverty and thus incentivizes and fulfills the Christian teaching.

A Personal Postscript

And now we come to the difficult part of this essay. For all my Christian friends, colleagues, and students (i.e., 90%+ of the people that I see and experience every day), I think I have raised some important questions and challenges for all of you to think about. These are not my questions and challenges to solve for you. You must confront them directly and honestly.

I hope you will.

I know many of you will say that I’m leaving out of my account a well-known Biblical counter narrative that paints a different portrait of the Christian teaching relative to, let’s say, what we today call capitalism.

Yes, I am guilty as charged on that count.

I know there are many fine books by thoughtful conservative and libertarian authors attempting to demonstrate that Christianity provides the moral foundation for capitalism. I’ve read and know the arguments of these books and many of them are fine. But, in the balance, I’m not persuaded. The problem is that the counter narrative is not as psychologically or as morally powerful as the central narrative taught directly by Jesus and his followers. I’ve never heard a convincing argument from conservative and libertarian Christians against the kind of narrative that I’ve constructed in this essay.

What, then does all this mean for conservative, libertarian, and classical-liberal Christians who are pro-capitalist and anti-socialist? This is your issue and challenge to confront head on.

At the very least, it means that you must fight the ways in which communist, socialist, and Progressive liberal Christians have used Christ’s teachings to promote collectivism, redistributionism, and statism.

That’s your fight, not mine.

Ultimately, though, you must confront two questions: first, is Christ’s moral teaching true, and second, does it lead psychologically and morally to a form of nihilism (i.e., the destruction of the self) and one form or another of socialism (i.e., the destruction of the self)?

These are the questions you must answer.

Be well, my friends.

To be continued . . .

**A reminder to readers: please know that I do not use footnotes or citations in my Substack essays. I do, however, attempt to identify the author of all quotations. All of the quotations and general references that I use are fully documented in my personal drafts, which will be made public on demand or when I publish these essays in book form.

Because of the importance of this essay, I am making the audio version of “Jesus and the Philosophy of Selflessness” free for all subscribers in the hopes that some of you will consider becoming paid subscribers.