It was brought up at my workplace today: is everything a person does out of selfishness or can they be altruistic? I would love to hear thoughts on this. It seems that everything is out of selfishness even when we don't realize it. When I drive 2 hours to help someone start their car so that they can get to work at 5am... you think I am doing that out of care for this person. Yes, I probably do care for them. But underlying don't we do it so that we are liked by this person, so that we feel good about what we did, and so that hopefully this person will tell others how awesome we are? There is always that hidden selfishness. Someone in my workplace mentioned the fact that when we act on instinct before we can think about it, then is that selfish? For example, jumping into a river to save a drowning child. When we stop to think about doing a good act, we consider how it will benefit ourselves. If we do not see a self benefit we throw it to the side.
This may relate to our relationship with God and our role as His servants. Do we sometimes fail to go the direction He is guiding us because we do not see ourselves benefiting?
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