Stubborn selfishness is actually rebellion against God, Elder Neal A. Maxwell said Saturday morning.

"Selfishness is much more than an ordinary problem because it activates all the cardinal sins!" he declared. "It is the detonator in the breaking of the Ten Commandments."Elder Maxwell of the Council of the Twelve explained that, just as in the days of Noah, the last days will be "corrupt before God" and "filled with violence." (Gen. 6:11-12.)

"Both of these awful conditions crest because of surging individual selfishness," he explained.

There are various forms of selfishness, he said, such as accepting or claiming undeserved credit, puffing deserved credit, being glad when others go wrong, resenting the successes of others, preferring public vindication to private reconciliation, and taking "advantage of one because of his words." (2 Ne. 28:8.)

Elder Maxwell explained that selfishness is often expressed in a stubbornness of mind, which often afflicts the brightest who could also be the best.

"One thing the brightest often lack - meekness!" he explained. "Jesus, who was and is `more intelligent than they all' is also more meek than they all." (Abr. 3:19.)

"Myopic selfishness," said Elder Maxwell, "magnifies a mess of pottage and makes 30 pieces of silver look like a treasure trove."

Such, he continued, is the scope of putting off the burdensome natural man, who is naturally selfish. "So much of our fatigue . . . comes from carrying that needless load. This heaviness of the natural man prevents us from doing our Christian calisthenics, so we end up too swollen with selfishness to pass through the narrow needle's eye."

Elder Maxwell explained that selfishness blocks divine qualities such as, love, mercy, patience, goodness, and gentleness. He added, though, that by keeping gospel covenants, selfishness is sheared off.

Through the atonement, he said, members of the Church can have hope and faith to put off the natural man.

"Because the centerpiece of the atonement is already in place, we know that everything else in God's plan will likewise finally succeed," he said.

How differently, though, people behave without these spiritual perspectives, Elder Maxwell noted.

"Thus in all its various expressions, selfishness is really self-destruction in slow motion," he continued.

Elder Maxwell warned that the "natural man" would not come off without difficulty. " . . . The Lord has urged us to so live that we could `come off conqueror,' " (D&C 10:5.) he explained. "But we cannot `come off conqueror' except we first `put off' the selfish, natural man!"