ALTRUISM!

The other day the venerable news-disseminating print instrument in our fair city, the Dallas Morning News, reported on two women who met on a website that posts personal ads for those in need of organ transplants. From this, potential donors look for a connection to the recipient that begins with blood type, personal story, photo, etc. To cut a long story short, these two women in the DFW Metroplex were total strangers to each other, but Annette donated a kidney to Sapna. “I just think that if more people would try to help each other—even with small things—the world would be a better place,” said Annette.

However, late last year, two major transplant centers in Dallas, Baylor and UT Southwestern Medical Center, turned the two away. So in January, Annette and Sapna, who live only 30 miles from each other, traveled over a thousand miles to accomplish their goal at the University of Toledo Medical Center. You see, hospitals in Dallas will not accept organ donations from those who are strangers to each other. Rightly, they fear that this might be a sale with undisclosed monies changing hands; it is, after all, a federal offense to trade in body parts.

One of the surgeons here in Dallas commented: “The preservation of body from injury is probably the strongest basic instinct we have as man. To violate that, you really have to ask yourself, ‘Is this something people do because they want to do a good deed?’ And I think you have to ask the question, ‘How reasonable is that?’”

How reasonable is altruism?

I have to agree with my medical colleague: it is unreasonable, indeed. The world does not recognize altruism—entirely unselfish concern for another. The world views it with suspicion. Altruism? How strange! Unnatural. Inconceivable. Out-of-this-world.

Literally!

Greater love has no one than this,
that one lay down his life
for his friends.
John 15:13

The most powerful expression of selflessness was modeled for the world by an out-of-this-world Person. He laid down his life for the ones He loved.

But God demonstrates
His own love toward us, in that
while we were yet sinners,
Christ died for us.
Romans 5:8

Paying the price for our sins, that we might have eternal life with Him.

For God so loved the world,
that He gave
His only begotten Son,
that whoever believes in Him
shall not perish,
but have eternal life.
John 3:16

And now we are forever cocooned His love, from which nothing—nothing!—can separate us.

For I am convinced that
neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor principalities,
nor things present, nor things to come,
nor powers, nor height, nor depth,
nor any other created thing,
will be able to separate us
from the love of God,
which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:38

But we who abide in His love now have a responsibility:

This is My commandment,
that you love one another,
just as I have loved you.
John 15:12

And what are we to do to demonstrate that kind of love?

We know love by this,
that He laid down His life for us;
and we ought to lay down
our lives for the brethren.
1 John 3:16

Altruism indeed. That’s more than a kidney. Our lives!

By this all men will know
that you are My disciples,
if you have love for one another.
John 13:35

May God help us to show the world that “altruism” is not unreasonable. May we believers be the demonstrable proof that there are those who truly love one another.