The Cost of Selfishness and the Rewards of Love

Yesterday, I sat in my chair as dusk settled outside, my words carefully aimed to help someone across from me locked in a spiritual and emotional battle. This moment was a turning point for them, the threshold of a new season.

My days begin early, answering phone calls and letters from around the world, moving into meetings that flow one after another—leadership counseling, church administration, conversations with elders. Lunch becomes another chance to tackle issues. I pour myself into curriculum development: writing, editing, providing resources to young ministries and churches. It’s an exhausting blessing, this calling from God. By the end of the day, I feel emptied out, knowing I gave what I had to those who needed it most.

A Perfectly Timed Burst of Joy

So there I sat, wrapping up my final meeting of the day. The hour was late; I could feel the bottom of the bucket inside me. Just as I thought I’d reached the finish line, the door creaked open, but no one entered. I knew the game. My three year old, Ella, was hiding behind the door, imagining I hadn’t noticed her approach. With a playful growl, she leaped out like the cutest little bear any dad has ever seen, charging full-speed toward my chair and throwing herself into my arms with all the trust in the world. If I hadn’t caught her just right, she’d have hurt herself. She buried her head in my chest and squeezed me tightly, asking about my recent plane flight home. I wrapped my arms around her, feeling my weariness dissolve as she absorbed every ounce of it, leaving me lighter.

As her mother entered, I heard myself say, “Oh, I’m so, so glad we have you”—softening her mother’s concern over the interruption. She echoed my gratitude with a warm smile.

Children as Arrows

My children aren’t clichés to me—they’re the brightest lights, the dearest treasures of my life. Every experience becomes richer seen through their wide, innocent eyes and boundless wonder.

When I visited Israel in 2016, something was said to me that has stuck with me ever since. I was told of a rabbi who spoke from the passage where the psalmist says, “Children are a heritage from the Lord,” and “like arrows in the hands of a righteous man. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them” (Ps. 127:3-5). This rabbi said, “God envisions children as the projection of an ideal or a truth or a culture into the future as arrows shot from the hands of a righteous man.”

As parents, we are launching the church’s future, the future of Christian culture, as we train our children. We will one day answer for these arrows we release to posterity—revealing whether our child training hit the mark or fell miserably short of the “high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:14).

Yet, they’re also a great blessing—and I say that with three teenagers in the house. Sometimes the youngest ones will interrupt with their clueless grace and affection, divinely timed. Other times, like earlier this afternoon, I find myself staring out the office window, my mind grinding through a problem. I’d just hung up the phone when I spotted my wife taking our youngest son to choir practice. I looked out another window and caught sight of my 13 year old, working steadily and alone along the perimeter aisles of our garden, pulling weeds with determined focus. For a moment, nothing else mattered. I felt compelled to step outside, to tell him how proud I was—that I, too, know the grind of endless tasks. In his steady perseverance, I didn’t just see a good boy: I saw the beginnings of a good man.

I spent less than five minutes with him, telling him about my own time double-digging garden beds for our family, sharing my pride in his work. He mentioned that he planned to head to the blacksmith shop once he’d finished this stretch. (He’s captivated by the knife-making class at the forge.) Leaning on his shovel, wiping damp blond locks from his forehead, he added, “I’m planning to get up early tomorrow to do this other section behind me, as a surprise for Mom. She won’t expect it.”

Again, I felt that surge of emotion—not just a father’s affection for his son but a deep-seated hope for the maturity and integrity growing in him. “Your mother’s a mighty good gardener,” I told him. “She’ll be proud of you, but I already am.”

Back in my study, those few minutes with him had lifted a weight from my shoulders, clearing my mind. Suddenly, the day’s problems—complex as they were—seemed surmountable, even small, against the backdrop of a good life with a good family.

A Culture of Selfishness

Perhaps I’m more aware of this because, in the back of my mind, I’m mulling over an article I read in The New York Times: “The Unspoken Grief of Never Becoming a Grandparent.”

The article explored the quiet grief of seniors facing the reality that they will never have grandchildren. Showing careful deference to postmodern values, The Times presented grandparent-aged people mourning this loss like the passing of a loved one. But in their case, it was the ache of an empty future, deprived of life’s natural reward. It made me sad.

I understand not everyone is called to be a grandparent. Tragedy, circumstance, or God’s will may prevent it, and in such cases, these elders will surely find other children into whom they pour their love, demonstrating the beauty and resilience of this role in God’s economy. But The Times was discussing a norm, a regular social reality, that’s vanishing.

One grieving parent shared her fear that discussing this longing with her grown daughter could sever the one family connection she had left. Couples today choose not to have children—some don’t want the burden, others fear climate change, still others disdain their own upbringing and consider it an atrocity to repeat.

“I thought we raised them right,” one senior said. Yet as I listened to both grandparents and parents, I noticed a common thread: a worldview confined to the self—pleasures, convenience, personal gain. And I thought, selfishness has an encoded extinction. These people were raised by parents who saw themselves as the center of their world, and in turn, they raised children to do the same. And these lives shrink further, isolated in silos of private preference.

It struck me as ironic and tragic: the selfish end up hurting the most. It’s like a reverse of the monkey-trap metaphor—those trapped by their grip on self-centeredness. Life, in a kind of justice, mocks the selfish in their most vulnerable years, as “the silver cord is loosed … and the golden bowl is broken” (Ecc. 12:6).

“A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children, but the sinner’s wealth is laid up for the righteous” (Prov. 13:22).

God’s Vision for Family

Family is God’s beautiful order, triumphing amidst a world breaking under sin’s chaos. The Lord said He developed a relationship with Abraham so that he could instruct his children in righteousness (Gen. 18:19). God loves us not only for our private benefit but so others may receive hope. God multiplied conception as a partial antidote to the curse of death tearing through the world (Gen. 3:16). God loves us not just for our personal good but so that others may find hope. Those who build families only for themselves miss the deeper purpose.

The Lord gave families purpose at the inauguration of the Old Covenant:

“These words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deut. 6:6–7).

We raise our children not for immediate pleasure but for a continuity of faith, a generational fire that will burn until the Lord returns. We give up our time, our pride, our selfish wants, all for the King’s glory. And at life’s end, those who chose this path will find themselves surrounded by blessings, hope, cheerfulness, and growth. The selfish, however, spin inward, trapped in a narrowing, solitary orbit.

It’s not about whether you had children or grandchildren. The key question is whether you lived for yourself. That deceptive allure will leave you empty. But if you live your life in Christ—orbiting in His eternal purpose of love and service—whether married or single, your life becomes part of the divine continuity from Abraham until the Lord returns.

God’s Purpose in Golden Years

This world has cheated people, selling them a bill of goods—promising a golden pot of selfishness at the end of a rainbow mirage, only to deliver an empty pit of loneliness, devoid of purpose, especially in their sunset years.

Today, I shared this with an older minister: “If you view this phase of life through the lens of the previous one, you might feel like a failure because so much of what you once did is now beyond reach. But if you embrace what this season is truly meant to be, you’ll see that these are your golden years. Every step of your career has led you here—freer—more free than ever from money pressures, able at last to leverage a lifetime of wisdom, relationships, and experience in the most vital work yet: pouring into others—grandchildren, sons and daughters (spiritual or natural), and new congregations across the world.”

“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves” (Phil. 2:3–4).

I know men and women in their seventies who never married, yet are surrounded by “nephews,” “nieces,” and “grandchildren” in a broader community of self-giving love. They have “interwoven themselves in our hearts” through service and kindness, and they “reap what they sow”— rewards just as rich as those with a dozen grandchildren.

Passing It On

I am deeply grateful for my children, my parents, and the family I was raised in. I challenge each of us to live for God’s glory and His eternal purpose. “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth” (Ecc. 12:1); make the sacrifices while you’re young, pay it forward into the future, and one day, with the apostle John, you’ll be able to say, “I have no greater joy than to know my children are walking in the truth” (3 John 1:4).

Those who live for themselves end up empty, alone, robbed of love and meaning at the end. “One who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully” (2 Cor. 9:6). But he who gives has all the more. Those who live “emptying themselves,” delaying gratification, choosing the “way of the cross”— all for God’s glory—end up filled, surrounded, supported, enriched, and enriching others to the very end.

“God, help us to trust You.”