Today’s guest post is by Jack from Redeeming Marriages – Hope For Your Marriage With God’s Redeeming Love. I’ve followed Jack and Janet for three of four years, and this week Lori and I will finally meet them. Their story offers hope for those who think their marriage is beyond saving. 

Have you ever found yourself in a crisis situation you didn’t see coming? You thought everything was okay until suddenly you found out how completely wrong you were. Maybe you should have seen it coming. You should have known something was wrong. But you didn’t. It’s like a blind spot in that area of life kept you from seeing what was coming until it was too late to avoid.

I know this has happened to me many times. It has happened in my job, my finances, my health, my children, and on several occasions in my marriage. If I could have seen what was coming I would have done all I could to avoid the crisis. But I didn’t see the threat of the crisis because throughout my adult life I’ve struggled with my ego blinding me.

The thing about ego is often we don’t see it is hurting us until it has allowed something to hit us on our blindside.

Now, I don’t think ego itself is the problem. I think it’s what our ego leads us into that becomes the problem. I’ll explain what I mean.

The bible says,

“Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” (Proverbs 16:18)

So, we know a person full of pride and arrogance is going to experience a fall and some sort of destruction. But how exactly does pride connect to destruction? And how exactly does a haughty spirit (arrogance) connect to a fall? The connection comes through our ego.

You may ask, “wait, isn’t ego, pride, and arrogance all the same thing?” Well, actually they’re not the same, there is a difference.

According to Dictionary.com Ego:

* The “I” or self of any person; a person as thinking, feeling, and willing, and distinguishing itself from the selves of others and from objects of its thought.

* Psychoanalysis. The part of the psychic apparatus that experiences and reacts to the outside world and thus mediates between the primitive drives of the id and the demands of the social and physical environment.

So our ego is an important part of us. It is that part of us that helps us choose what we like and what we don’t like. What we want and what we don’t want. It is what makes us aware of ourselves and how we feel and think and what makes us unique from everyone else.

If you suffer from low self-esteem you have a wounded ego. If you are arrogant and conceited your ego is over-inflated.

Our ego is our sense of self and we need that.

But how this leads to a vulnerable blind spot is when our self-awareness consumes us. When we are constantly thinking and motivated by our sense of self. Then our ego becomes egotism, egocentric, and egoism. Egotism:

* Excessive and objectionable reference to oneself in conversation or writing; conceit; boastfulness.

* selfishness; self-centeredness; Egocentric:

* Having or regarding the self or the individual as the center of all things:

* Having little or no regard for interests, beliefs, or attitudes other than one’s own; self-centered: Egoism:

* The habit of valuing everything only in reference to one’s personal interest; selfishness (opposed to altruism ).

So, there is where the problem is. That’s the way crisis blindsides us. We can all too often go from a healthy sense of self-awareness into an over indulgent self-centeredness without even knowing we have slid over that slippery slope. And when we do we become blind to needs, desires, and concerns of others around us.

At least that’s the way it has been in my life and in other men, I have watched it happen to. We don’t know how it happens. It just seems to happen without our choosing. Or, at least we don’t think we chose to be that way. But what if we made other choices that lead us down this road?

Could it be if we have low self-esteem from battle scars of the past, that in some way out of that our ego has tried to overcompensate?

What if our desire to be a good provider causes us to be self-absorbed with ambition and drive for success?

How about our desire for significance? Could that be a place where we focus on ourselves too much and how we are going to leave our mark on this world?

I know for me the answer to all these questions are yes, yes, and yes. I have had self-esteem issues, drive, and ambition, and significance all play a role in how I let my ego get out of hand.

So what do we do? How do we guard against our ego blinding us?

The answer is in the last definition I gave. The opposite of egoism is altruism. Altruism:

* The principle or practice of unselfish concern for or devotion to the welfare of others (opposed to egoism ).

Hmm, this sounds very familiar.

Jesus said, “Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.” Luke 17:33

Then Paul wrote, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” Philippians 2:3-4

So we have a choice. We can choose between our selfish ambitions and the welfare of others. We can choose to give up over-protecting our own lives so that we may experience the real life of loving others.

Practicing altruism makes life easier. It gives us a break from trying to prove to the world we are somebody. And when we do experience success in life, altruism makes that success even sweeter knowing our success is being shared with the most important people in our lives.

Altruism may not prevent every crisis in our lives, but it will prevent a lot of them. And when a crisis comes, at least our concern for someone else will make it more bearable for us.

Links may be monetised
Image Credit: © pathdoc | stock.adobe.com
Shop Amazon ♦ Shop to give links page
We’re donation supported Thanks for your help!
Where we’re going Contact us about speaking