An artist's depiction of an Extended Unit Death
But is that initial conversion to Christianity free of self-interest? Here's the reasons I think of for converting over to Christianity (maybe you can help brainstorm more!):
1) Your family or peers are Christian and brought you into it
2) You fear the repercussions of not being a Christian
3) You have a life-changing experience that convinces you that Christianity is the one true religion (e.g., surviving a crash that should have certainly killed you and having God talk to you while you're in the coma)
4) Unprovoked, you picked up a copy of the Bible and gave it a read, after which you come to the conclusion of purely your own influence that it is accurate and indeed the word of God
The first reason is an act of self-interest because you want to belong; you want to be accepted. You don't want to disappoint your parents, to be an outcast among your peers. In this scenario, if you grew up in an Islamic culture, with Muslim parents and Muslim peers, you would most certainly be a Muslim yourself.
The second reason is obviously an act of self-interest because you don't want eternal suffering to be inflicted on yourself. Alternatively, you want an eternal reward for your faithfulness. Again, if you were instilled with this fear from another prominent religion first, you'd very likely worship some other deity for self preservation.
The third reason would not necessarily be out of self-interest unless influenced by the other two reasons. If, for example, in your coma God told you that Judaism is the only true religion, would you fully accept that, despite you, your family, and your peers being of Christian persuasion? Or would you pass it off as "I nearly died and was having weird dreams" and continue to hold your current faith, praising the Christian God (who technically is the same God, but you get my point) for sparing your life? And even if you do turn to Judaism, would it not be likely that you only do so because you fear eternal damnation for ignoring the voice of God?
The fourth scenario never happens, the reason being that religion is basically never introduced without an agenda. When you introduce someone to Christianity that has never heard of it before, you sell them the information as fact (much like you would if you were promoting diet and exercise, for example), rather than allowing them to reach their own conclusion. It
is possible that you can stumble upon the Bible without ever having heard of Christianity, but by the time you're at an age where you can comprehend the ideas and messages inside it, you'd have already been knowledgeable of your parents' beliefs, and perhaps your peers' beliefs as well. Now, even if this scenario were to occur, the same scenario would be able to occur for any other religious book, and if you were able to be influenced so assuredly on your own from reading the book, it would just be a game of which holy book you read first. Apparently the writings of L. Ron Hubbard, for example, are very influential.
Clearly in these scenarios, there's not much room for you not acting out of self-interest. Though to be honest,
anything can be broken down into a self-interest, and it's somewhat of an unfair argument or a moot point to make in that regard. If acting only out of self interest isn't enough, then it's likely that most people you know aren't going to make the cut. And if you've ever done something and thought, "Oh, that wasn't very Christian of me," or you've ever held spite for someone and reminded yourself "love thy neighbor" to stop hating them, you're acting out of self-interest. Going back to your last post:
[Y]ou should be loving God and your neighbours because you want to, not because of how it will benefit you.
I think with that you'll find yourself wanting to want to (i.e., you want to because it's
right to want to), which is just a holier-than-thou philosophy.
