Self Realiance

2 Corinthians 1:8 - 11 (RSV) ⁸For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of the affliction we experienced in Asia; for we were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself.  ⁹Why, we felt that we had received the sentence of death; but that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead;  ¹⁰he delivered us from so deadly a peril, and he will deliver us; on him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.  ¹¹You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us in answer to many prayers.

One of my favorite movie genres is the Western. Rarely are they historically accurate, and the early one’s didn’t even try to be. Subtract the silly scenes – where they speed up the film to make it seem that the horses are faster then is humanly or equestrianly possible.  Subtract the simplistic and illogical plot lines and you are left with manly values. Westerns taught me what it means to be a man. Never start a fight but always finish one. Never cry or show fear or care too much about anything. The strongest value was never become “beholden to anyone.” Self-reliance is one of America’s strongest aims. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a small book by that title. I read it while I was still in high school and not because it was assigned reading – and certainly not because I was an avid reader. The first line of an introductory poem in Emerson’s essay is "Man is his own star.”

I have sense learned that the ethos found in Westerns and the philosophy found in Emerson is profoundly wrong. The better poem is John Donne’s “No man is an island, entire unto itself.” There is a truism I would like to challenge. It is the truism that we ought never to incur debt (at least unmanageable debt). While that is, no doubt, sound money management and good stewardship, it fails to acknowledge the simple fact that we are each indebted to so many.

Emerson tells us to become “self-reliant,” Paul tells us not to rely on ourselves but on God. Who do you think won the culture wars, the Word of God or the philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson? There is not a self-help book where you can find the Scriptural principle Paul commends to the Corinthians. All of them echo Emerson’s philosophy of self-reliance.

I still harbor the ethics of the Western films. Though I reject them, I hear their sounds ringing in my soul.   We can face anything in life and even death itself when we follow Paul’s wisdom, where he testifies, “on him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.”

Not only are we to rely on God, but, as dreadful as it sound, we are to rely on others. Paul turns for help to the Corinthians (the least likely of all Christians) when he writes, “¹¹You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us in answer to many prayers.”

Can you rely on God and others for help, for strength, and for love?