The One Thing a Selfish Person Won't Take

Why Uncle Andrew could've used an Uncle Ben

Apr 08, 2026

What tips you off that you are around a selfish person? There may be numerous signs, but one is likely that they try to take something that belongs to someone else.

That may include them always wanting to take credit. But there’s one thing a selfish person will never take—the blame.

The tendency to accept (or reject) responsibility in difficult moments or for outright mistakes serves as an indication of self-centeredness in our hearts and the hearts of others.

Look at Uncle Andrew, the titular magician in The Magician’s Nephew. He wants credit for being a skilled magician, but he refuses to truly endanger himself. He wants glory without risks. He wants power with blame.

Andrew kills numerous guinea pigs before one finally disappears, he hopes, into a new world. To test his magical theory, he tricks Polly, a young girl he’s just met, and manipulates Digory, his nephew, into exploring this world.

To justify his deception (and cowardice), Andrew explains why that’s OK for him. Common people should follow moral standards, but those rules “can’t possibly be expected to apply to profound students and great thinkers and sages.” Instead, he asserts he has a “high and lonely destiny.”

Yet when Andrew is later drawn into this otherworldly exploration, he begins to complain. “It’s not fair,” he says. “I never meant to be a magician. It’s all a misunderstanding. It’s all my godmother’s fault.”

Uncle Andrew is the opposite of Uncle Ben from Spider-Man. He wants power without the responsibility. Andrew refuses to acknowledge the inherent connection between the two.

The moment he is faced with danger or even an inconvenience, Andrew whines, blames everyone but himself, and tries to use others to get himself out. This has been the nature of sin from the beginning. Sin refuses to accept personal responsibility.

Look at Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. When God confronts them with their sin, the first sin, what do they do? Blame someone else. Neither takes accountability for their actions.

One way to spot sin in our lives is a tendency to reject responsibility when consequences arise. We know we are being selfish when we want to take anything but the blame.

In his essay, “On Forgiveness,” reprinted in The Weight of Glory (And Other Addresses), C.S. Lewis makes this connection with our asking for forgiveness. “But the trouble is that what we call ‘asking God’s forgiveness’ very often really consists in asking God to accept our excuses.”

“Forgiveness says ‘Yes, you have done this thing, but I accept your apology; I will never hold it against you and everything between us two will be exactly as it was before.’ But excusing says, ‘I see that you couldn’t help it or didn’t mean it; you weren’t really to blame.’ If one was not really to blame then there is nothing to forgive. In that sense forgiveness and excusing are almost opposites.”

We can’t grasp for forgiveness while holding on to our excuses and attempts to avoid blame.

“Real forgiveness means looking steadily at the sin, the sin that is left over without any excuse, after all allowances have been made, and seeing it in all its horror, dirt, meanness, and malice, and nevertheless being wholly reconciled to the man who has done it. That, and only that, is forgiveness, and that we can always have from God if we ask for it.”

Once we have embraced what true forgiveness means with God, we can freely extend that to others. “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you,” Lewis writes.

As backwards as it may seem, we have access to forgiveness because we take the blame. We can’t have forgiveness while refusing blame. Accepting responsibility is the key that opens the door to forgiveness—with God and those around us.

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