self-centeredness

The Christian life doesn't begin until we see that the disease of self-centeredness (and its assumption of self-sufficiency) is fatal to our souls and so advanced that efforts at self-cure are useless. Self-centeredness is as morally wrong for an image-bearer as cancer is physically abnormal in the human body.
...
Is our self-awareness so limited that forgiveness seems more like an historical foundation than a currently needed reality?

~ Larry Crabb from Men & Women (pp53-4; italics his)

This is an example of Larry Crabb's consistent influence in my life thinking, and why I often say that "forgiveness wins the day" - because it is the only true antidote to self-centeredness: the practical and awful identity of sin.