Even among Christians—or I should say, even though I am a Christian—there is a streak of “I’ve got mine.” There is a tendency to be OK with the world as long as “I’ve got mine”:  I have a decent job, I have a respectable family, I have passable intelligence, I have passable looks, I have enough friends, I have a relationship with Jesus. I’ve got mine. It’s the feeling of finding a seat when the music stops in “musical chairs.”

I think there is a medical school syndrome similar to this. One notes a curious heart transformation, or amnesia, that transforms a first year student, who was made miserable by mean upperclassmen, into a second year student who is content to slip into the attitude of the class that once showed her no pity. “I made it, why can’t they?” Or, “I’ve got mine.”

The Christian version is, of course, not malicious like that. It’s more of a benign or passive resting in the relief that “I’ve got mine”—the relief that one is out of danger, out of the woods, into safety, on the right track, tracking with everybody, looking good. And surely we are right to be relieved about these things, and to take our rest in Christ.

I like the Apostle Paul. He said some amazing things that tipped me off that he is not the run-of-the-mill “I’ve got mine” kind of Christian: “For I wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers” (Romans 9:3). (See also 2 Corinthians 13:7.) Imagine, feeling torn between being with Christ, who is better than life, and being bereft of Christ if by that choice you could save someone else. Come to think of it, it’s actually what Jesus himself did.

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