The Selfishness Test

The directional staff of Elevation Church has been reading The Life You've Always Wanted by John Ortberg. In a section dealing with our tendency to dwell too much on ourselves he makes a few statements that when compiled make a pretty good selfishness test. So here you go! Each time you answer 'yes' to a question, you're selfish. Each time you answer 'no' you probably misunderstood the question, you should review it and reconsider your answer...

1) When someone gives you a compliment do you accept it because it really is true or because you believe it's true?

2) Do you allow what others might be thinking of you to play a role in how you act?

3) When you worry about what others are thinking about you do you really believe that what you think they're thinking really is what their thinking?

4) While taking this little quiz, have you been arguing with the questions trying to figure out whether they really are measuring selfishness because you have answered 'yes' to at least one of them and you don't want to be considered selfish?

Bonus: (taken from Paul Reiser's Couplehood - from the chapter "The Selfish Monster")

5) When driving in heavy traffic are you prone to blame the person immediately in front of you for all of the congestion even if there is bumper to bumper traffic from you to Washington D.C.?

Every time you answered 'yes' to one of these questions you scored a (-1). If you answered a 'no' you scored a (-1)...there is a 2 point deduction for lying...

Here's the problem with something like selfishness when we finally do something that is unselfish everything in us screams for someone to recognize that we did it, unselfishly...There really doesn't seem to be any way out of the cycle. So what do we do?

Well, the good news is I know what you can do, but if I told you then the playing field would be level again. I can't win without a competitive advantage, so you're on your own, Bucky!

By the way, I scored a (-5), how did you do?