Self-made?

July 24

I’m my own man. I’m a self-made man. These are rather impressive-sounding assertions. Anyone who states these emphatic claims is either a complete fool who is unaware of the realities of life, or a liar.

No one is entirely his own. Each life is like the pie chart we used in elementary school to learn our fractions. Our lives are divided into several separate areas, each under the influence of people or circumstances within the various categories. Ones professional life, for example, is impacted by co-workers or customers or supervisors or all the above.

None of us is self-made. Those who have reached a high pinnacle on the ladder of success have had help along the way. Nobody attains a significant degree of success without some kind of ‘break’—an inheritance, a worthy recommendation from an admiring teacher, a novel idea expressed at the precise right moment in time…So we are all indebted to someone or something. This is true even in the spiritual realm.

We must serve someone to whom we are ‘beholding.’ In Romans 8:21 Paul says it this way, “Now that you have been set free from sin, you have become slaves to God and the benefits lead to holiness and the result is eternal life.” While we were once slaves to sin and subjected to its dictates, we are now free to submit our will to the will of Jesus, who will exchange our surrender of the temporary for the joy of the eternal.