Declaration of Dependence

I know, I know I am not trying to be unpatriotic by sending this out near our great national celebration and I am also not trying to be, as we used to say in the 70s, “counter-cultural.”  It is just that after nearly 50 years of living in this world that I have personally decided to “surrender” to the One I am often fighting against. 

Why would you possibly want to read any further?  What kind of fool would write words or even admit to such aspirations as these?  Give up?  Admit dependence? Now?  Un-American! Cowardly, right?

Nevertheless I have decided to wave the white flag of surrender and declare not only my allegiance to Another but complete dependence.   You see all of this talk about declarations of independence originally meant to be made by one group of people from another group of people is not a bad thing at all.  But the idea of independence has crept into my mind and spirit, psyche if you will, in ways that I don’t think were originally intended.  I have found myself over the last 30 years or so actually thinking that I am personally independent.  I think we often use the word “responsible”.  Now don’t get me wrong, we are responsible, but we might tend to have a mindset which then develops into a lifestyle founded on the idea that we are totally responsible.  We start to drift to the thinking that the state of our affairs and those we “influence” and care for depend on us.  In our minds we become absolutely needed and indispensable. This is an illusion. 

How ridiculous!  Of course we want to be independent, personally responsible and self-sufficient!  The next thing you know you will hear I am moving back in with my parents!  Do I really want my own kids reading this? 

Well, yes.

Over the last 30 years of adulthood my thinking of self-sufficient, personally responsible, independence has gone too far.  How could this be?  After all I worked my way through college and years and years of graduate school.  I worked hard.  I did.  I got my dream job as a college professor. I am financially stable and independent. I am able to help my kids get through college, I am saving for a good retirement…can you hear the patriotic piccolo music playing in the background? Can you read the most often repeated word…”I” as in “Independence”?  Friends, I did very little of it.  Oh I worked hard and I was a necessary part of my own life, but in no way was I self-sufficient, independent or completely responsible.  No way.  I do happen to live in a country that rewards hard work and persistence. I am grateful for that! But we have a system that is set up in our society to create this illusion that if we have a certain amount of talent and a certain work ethic and certain family background that we can “make it on our own.”  This starts early in our life and continues in our studies of history and patriots and rugged pioneers and manifest destiny and stories of our heroes from Abe Lincoln to Knute Rockne to Louis Zamperini, people who had nothing and “made it on their own” or “pulled themselves up from their own bootstraps.”  We tend to take our wonderful heroes like the ones I mentioned and turn them into images of self-sufficiency that they themselves might not even recognize. 

Now, please don’t get me wrong.  God has given us a limited amount of responsibility.  We are stewards.  We need to work hard.  Wyatt, Abby, Sam, friends, former students, do you hear that?  Work hard.  Be responsible.  Be a good steward of your resources and the people God gives you some say over. God is training you to have a kingdom.  And you will be rewarded in Heaven for your stewardship on earth. But…

Being self-sufficient is all an illusion.  The problem is that with just a little success or extra talent or intelligence or resources we begin to take on the notion that we can do it. Then it becomes I can do anything, then I can do anything on my own…if I just believe…in myself. 

One of my favorite storytellers is Jesus.  He told this story of a man that was very rich and he told about how hard it is for the rich to get into what Jesus called the Kingdom of Heaven.  I think this is true because the man had come to think he was self-sufficient due to his tremendous resources.  Why should he have to declare dependence on God?  His own kingdom was sufficient.  And that is why it is harder for a rich person to get into the Kingdom of Heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.  The rich man has his own resources to depend on. Why would he need God or God’s resources?  To enter the Kingdom of Heaven is not just to go to paradise when you die; it involves that but much more. To enter the Kingdom of Heaven is to declare your dependence on God, to surrender your kingdom to God’s Kingship.  It is an abdication if you will of your own throne, declaring your self-insufficiency, giving up your own (illusion of) independence.

I don’t often come across super-rich folks in my line of work.  I do however come across very very innately intelligent students.  What an honor to work with someone I recognize is way smarter than I am, someone who learns way faster, has a better memory, can teach themselves deep truths without my aid.  I marvel when students effortlessly learn and explain chemistry. Then they start asking deeper questions I don’t even have the smarts to think of myself. But they are in a dangerous position.  They can develop the “bootstrap” illusion.  They soon can forget that they really are dependent.  For one thing it is physically impossible to lift yourself up by your own bootstraps.  There is something called gravity.  And we are all dependent on it.  I know this sounds ridiculously un-profound, but I really do see that the self-sufficient, super-intelligent can dismiss their dependence on gravity or the air they breathe as just  minor details.  Hence we have developed the “bootstrap” illusion that has persisted in our vernacular for decades. The type of phrase is called an adynaton.  It is ironic because an adynaton is a phrase that is an impossibility.  In other words to lift oneself up by their bootstraps is an impossibility by definition. Yet somehow we have made it an expectation.

My good friend Doug Huffman shared this story with me.  He told me of a contest between God and scientists to create life.  God went first.  He shaped clay into a person that was living and breathing.  Now it was the scientists’ turn.  They took clay and….God interrupted, “Wait a minute, Scientists, you must make your own clay!”

We are dependent on God for the most basic things and we don’t even realize it!

How insidious the idea that I have made it on my own!  I depended on my parents to help pay for college, my teachers to teach me.  I am not like those super smart students I have.  I depended on Lisa’s shoulder as I wept my way through the struggles of graduate school.  I have been dependent on mentors from early on in my life and there have been so many of these folks I will take the first 100 years of the next life in Heaven thanking them.  And there is you.  You have played a significant role in my life, encouraging me, equipping me, exhorting me.  And all the while God is orchestrating it all, whether I recognize His role or not.  The list of things I am dependent on God or on you or on others is almost infinite. 

Now I hear some of you saying.  “I know this is probably true but I want to be self-sufficient.  And there is joy in the struggle and maybe later the satisfaction that I did it on my own.”   

So it is fulfillment and satisfaction you are after?  Fulfillment is a teleological term. Teleological means having to do with purpose. Fulfillment would mean fulfillment of a purpose.  And the purpose of something is usually determined by someone other than the thing in question.  In other words we may determine the purpose of things we create, but we do not determine our own purpose.  I must admit that in our independent culture we have come to think we are self-determining.  Indeed Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his opinion on the case Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” But this too is an illusion like pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps.  We also cannot determine our own purpose.  We can try, but the effects are disastrous.  I wonder how much the young men that walked onto the campuses of Sandy Hook or Virginia Tech or UC Santa Barbra with automatic weapons of destruction were shaped by a culture that has drummed into them the notion that they determine their own  “concept of meaning” or own purpose. 

I declare my dependence today that Someone else defines my concept of existence, of meaning and the mystery of my life.  Will you at least consider that?

And that Someone else is a loving (He invented love), good, nurturing, providing, sustaining, creating, forgiving, compassionate, gracious God, Yahweh.  Contrary to what you may have heard there is not one bit of darkness or evil in Him.  And this God I speak of is the great satisfier too.  Being in friendship or “union” with this God is the most fulfilling and satisfying experience possible.  (Better than…!) Even more He gives His followers joy that runs very deep.  Don’t worry, my dear friends who want the “satisfaction of the struggle”, there are plenty of challenges ahead.  But we don’t need to meet those challenges alone.  What I find is that even my “self-sufficient”, resourceful, intelligent students and friends eventually come against a problem that is too big for them.  The problem comes in different shapes and forms, but it always happens. Those that are used to depending on their own self and own resources end up having the biggest struggle of all.  Those that have developed a dependency on God will go through the same problems with much more ease.  That is why the outcasts and “sinners” and “imbeciles” of the first century flocked to Jesus.  They knew they did not have what it takes to make it on their own.  It was the self-sufficient pharisees that missed out. Friends you don’t become less human when you declare your dependence on God.  You become more human!  You will accomplish more than you ever imagined and be more fulfilled and more satisfied. But it most assuredly won’t be what you expected. 

What a relief it is when I declare my dependence!  No longer exists the burden that I have to do it all on my own.  Now I don’t have to push, and manipulate, and judge, and verbally abuse people who don’t do things the way I want them done.  I don’t have to justify who I am or what I am doing when I am dependent on God. I don’t have to fret and worry about the outcome.  It does not depend on me.  And I don’t have to worry about the state of the world, even if it all falls apart. Oh I work hard with God in His purposes but, I don’t have to get my way!  How much freedom there is in that statement.  And this one too: I surrender.  It makes feel as light as a feather!  (Of course I will wake up tomorrow and have to recite this all over again!)

And it appears crazy too.  One day Jesus was in a boat with His friends and He fell asleep.  A huge storm came up.  The storm was life-threatening.  The boat could have sank.  What did Jesus do?  He slept.  He was not at all worried.  One of my favorite authors Dallas Willard said that the one word he would use to describe Jesus was “relaxed.”  Jesus did not worry. His Father is in control.  Even if the boat sank everything would be ok because Jesus was totally dependent on His Father.  He was relaxed during the storm.  I want that to describe me!  It can if I live out my declaration of dependence.  In actuality, the worst possible thing that could have happened did happen.  Jesus was killed!  And yet even that was not bad enough.  God redeemed the worst thing that could happen.  Nothing worse could happen to you or me that hasn’t already happened and been redeemed by God.  If God could redeem the death of Jesus, you and I have nothing to worry about.  Do you believe that?

Friends, some of you many years ago decided to some degree or other to “accept Christ”, and you go to church and maybe even serve some of the good institutions of church.  You do your best to live a good, ethical life in your business and teach your family good Biblical principles.  But are you dependent on God for it all?  Or do you live a life with a little bit of God and church here and there like a little pepper sprinkled to flavor your dinner salad, but you hold God at arms length?  Is it time to consider complete dependence?  Is it time to declare that self-sufficiency, self-fulfillment, and self-determination are myths?  Is it time to loudly declare the two words no American is ever supposed to utter, “I can’t!” 

Friends, I can’t.  I cannot do it myself.  I don’t have the resources or the talent or the strength.  But my friend God does, and He shares.  He shares His resources and talent and strength.  He shares Himself.  And in Him, Himself, is everything you or I have ever been searching for.  We were designed to search and find our satisfaction and fulfillment in Him.  In addition I joyfully declare that I have you, some of the best people that ever walked the earth.  I am so rich and blessed to declare that through my dependence on God He has supplied much of what I need through you, and that is a joy that I am grateful for. 

Happy Dependence Day!