© Hannah Wells
30 November 2003
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
This could be a rather philosophical sermon, but I’m going to try to keep it down to earth. “Self-Reliance vs. Free Will” suggests I am pitting one against the other, and it’s true, I would like to convince you today why ‘self-reliance’ has its limitations compared to ‘free will.’ But they are both fine concepts that our religious tradition as well as our national culture have been founded on. They are the essence of what we offer: the freedom to make up your own mind about what you believe – that you don’t require the authority of any figure or dogma to help you define what you think and know to be true about life. You can rely on yourself to draw these conclusions.
Both self reliance and free will are so imbued in our liberal faith and culture that we take them for granted – at least, we rarely stop to think how they affect the decisions we make.
It’s possible that our beloved ideal of self-reliance could use a system of checks and balances. Ralph Waldo Emerson is an easy target to pick on here, as he did so much to advance self-reliance in his essay writing and the example of his life. However, I refer to him more as a springboard into this discussion. Emerson is an admirable figure in many ways – he was originally a Unitarian minister in the early 19th century who delivered such a radical commencement sermon to a room full of Harvard big wigs that his ordination was taken away from him. His controversial argument was that people can find God in nature and in the sensual, everyday experiences of life – not just in the piety of scripture and church. Again, this was urging us toward a more self-contained experience of religion.
Emerson went on to do a lot of writing, which is what he is most well known for. He wrote a lot about what the ideal American character should look like – he thought that an independent nation should have independent citizens, people who are innovative, creative, and industrious – people who could take care of themselves. He worked very hard at everything he did and was constantly striving toward excellence. If the Puritans set a precedent in this country for sexual piety, Emerson set the standard in this country for standards of personal excellence.
Emerson contributed heavily to our heritage and that’s great.
But I get to pick on him today because he is so closely associated with the ideal of self-reliance.
So you are probably wondering, what is wrong with self-reliance? Isn’t it a good thing to be self-sufficient and independent? Yes, it is! But I worry that it has taken us too far apart from each other. At this point, I want to try to adjust the aperture of this lens and focus on the very personal.
It’s after a big family holiday such as Thanksgiving that we are sometimes painfully reminded of what our family members’ or our own ‘growing edges’ are. ‘Growing edge’ is a kind of euphemism for ‘personal problem.’ We all have degrees of personal challenges in our lives because nobody is perfect. Yet we live in a society that is constantly urging us toward perfection. You all know this – the idea that we are so heavily defined by how successful we are, whether that is on the scale of career, family life, what we look like, or how many friends we have. Most of us strive on a very deep level to be respected and loved, which is heavily dependent on how people perceive us.
We all play roles in life – that is the nature of this society. But it is the nature of reality that no one can play a role perfectly, that we all fail from time to time. Often our failings have to do with the growing edges that are specific to us, that usually become a repetitive theme that lasts throughout our lives. We tend to fail more when we do not address the problems our growing edges create. Let me provide some examples. Chronic low self-esteem is a big one. In a perfectionist society, it can be very hard for people to feel good about themselves most of the time. Being fearful and lacking courage is another – the fear of failure can be a big deterrent for people who need to take risks and move on to more positive phases in their lives. Health issues rank quite high too – a stressful society produces many addictions and obsessions, whether that is to food, drugs, alcohol, sex, spending money. Many ‘growing edges’ are in the form of our various vices.
I bring up Thanksgiving and family because sometimes, such gatherings can be a showcase of such personal issues. It’s the sister or brother we have who needs more courage and self-esteem to take a crack at what they really want to do in life instead of being paralyzed by the fear of failure. It’s our mother or father who needs to exercise more or eat better so their health isn’t so at risk. It’s the lonely, divorced uncle or aunt who need to stop feeling sorry for themselves and see what other fish there are in the sea. It’s the cousin who needs to stop drinking too much. It’s the husband or wife who need to admit they’re depressed and get help. It’s the mother in law who is too controlling and judgmental. It’s ourselves and whatever we perceive our own failings and growing edges to be.
I hope you had a relatively peaceful and joyful holiday, but for many folks, holidays are opportunities for the worst of us to emerge in a family setting. The point is that all of us tend to be quite aware of what the growing edges are of the people we care about the most. I’ve always thought it fascinating that we can often see what another person’s problems are much more clearly than our own. That might sound judgmental, but I think you know what I’m getting at. We judge our loved ones critically because we want them to be happy, we want them to overcome their difficulties – so we do think a lot about their problems, because we love them.
So at this point, I hope I have established that we all have our issues – we all have personal growing edges – whether they create big problems or small problems in our lives. I know what mine are and I bet you all have ideas about what yours are. Now, the question is, how do we deal with them? How do we work towards their solution? This is where the effects of our high ideals of self-reliance can come into play.
My concern is that, when faced with seeking solutions to our problems, we limit our options to what we can do by ourselves – because a self-reliant person takes care of his or her own problems. So often we say, I can handle this on my own. Or we think, this is something I need to figure out by myself. Being self-reliant is a good thing unto itself – but it has its limits when we need to address a problem for which our own resources are inadequate. We think, if I just think about this enough and use the power of my intelligence, I can come up with the right thing to do.
And often, that is indeed the case. Religious liberals, especially, have great faith in their intellect – and I think it’s true that we are often able to see clearly what must be done, what steps must be taken to solve our problems. Having a good brain is an essential step toward the desire to solve the problem in the first place. However – there are so many solutions that cannot be arrived at by brainpower alone.
There are times when we have to admit that we can’t do it alone – that despite our best thinking, we are still baffled. At this point we have to abandon our fierce self-reliance, and this involves humility on our part – admitting that we are limited by ourselves. It is this humility, I believe, that brings us down to earth, that ultimately delivers us to the truth of ourselves. It is a kind of surrender that happens – when we say, “I give up – I need help with the answers because what I’m coming up with isn’t working.” It’s usually a big relief, when we let go of what’s been holding us back – ourselves. It’s this surrender that leads us into uncharted territory, which of course is terrifying at first, but it is also so often the route to our emancipation.
You may know that ‘humility’, ‘humanity’, and ‘humus’ all come from the same root. Humus means earthiness – which links our humility with our humanity. So it’s a coming down to earth, but it’s also like a coming home, in a deep sense, it’s an essential kind of honesty.
Another way of explaining the importance of humility is to think of it as a bridge between the brain and the heart. It is helpful to remember the difference between the brain and the intellect, and the heart and a sense of hope. The brain thinks it can work through a problem, the heart simply hopes that a solution can be found and is open to the unknown. This humility allows us to say that, ‘although I don’t understand now, one day I will.’ Humility is a kind of faith. Both the brain and the heart are important, and a good balance can be struck between the two when we allow our sense of humility to connect them.
This can be really hard to do! But it is harder NOT to do. Because it is staying locked up in our minds that so often serves as the force of denial in our lives. It is a false sense of self-reliance that we cling to when we say, ‘I have this under control,’ when in fact, we don’t. The forces of denial are especially strong in a perfectionist society – it’s very hard to admit our problems because perfect people don’t have problems.
There’s lots of people who could use professional help or support groups but refuse to because they are embarrassed or think that it makes them a weak person. But whoever said you have to be stoic and strong all the time?
This business of reaching out to others when you need help is motivated by religious beliefs. If there is such an emphasis on self-reliance in your spiritual beliefs, you will probably tend to keep your problems to yourself, thereby limiting your options. But if your spiritual beliefs emphasize wholeness in relation to others, you are more apt to reach out to others who can help you. A lot of times we think our problems are very unique to ourselves until we seek help and find out there are a lot of people like us. The problem with self-reliance is that we can think we are quite alone, when we work on our problems by ourselves in isolation.
But we’re never alone, and that is my point. Self-reliance has its limits. We need friends, we need family, sometimes we need therapy and support groups, and many of us decide we need God, too.
That was the case for me, when I decided a few years ago I needed to stop drinking. I’ve been going to AA for about a year and a half now, and I’ve been learning a lot about alcoholics. Before we get help, we are a real stubborn bunch – not only do we think the drinking is under control, but we think we’ve got it all under control. But we wake up one day and realize, not only can I not fix the drinking, I can’t fix a lot of things by myself. My life is out of control. AA suggests finding faith in God, or a higher power, so the alcoholic can let go of that false sense of control.
When I was a practicing alcoholic, this false sense of control I had was my case of extreme self-reliance at its worst. Growing up UU, God was always a non-issue. I never really thought much about it. But when I had to begin recovery for my alcoholism, God became very important because it helped me to finally surrender, and say, I can’t do this by myself. It’s true that very few alcoholics can recover by themselves, which is why AA is such a helpful program for addicts – not only does it provide the fellowship of other alcoholics, but it helps make God accessible in a way that reminds the addict they are never alone. The program has also helped me to see that the greatest gift of my sobriety is that once again I have choices – a healthy sense of free will has been returned to me.
And how is free will different from self reliance? What is free will? Free will is a matter of personal empowerment, but not in a direction that may be destined to isolate us. At the heart of free will, is the luxury of choice. You have choices; thou may do something, or thou may not. It is a luxury, because not everyone in the world has choices. Millions of women and men are born into situations where their choices are incredibly limited, due to poverty, due to oppressive cultural and political situations.
But in a country like the United States, and in a religion that has fairly high socio-economical standards, we actually enjoy access to quite a wide swath of free-will, or choices. The difference with self-reliance, is that your choices are going to be limited to yourself and what you can do. However, a strong ethic of free will recognizes that there are many choices and options outside of one’s self.
Above all, free will is about taking responsibility for yourself. The ironic thing is that taking responsibility for yourself can mean choosing to rely on others more – to go a little easier on yourself instead of trying to do everything alone. Free will allows for many choices and options and says that it’s your responsibility to choose the best one.
As you know, it’s near impossible to change anyone – we all have to take responsibility for changing ourselves. We can’t change anyone because people have to WANT to change. That desire to change is a matter of free will – many of us opt NOT to change.
But when we do decide we want to change, we are much better off when we choose to keep our options open – and it is a matter of free will, to allow these options to be accessible, to be possibilities for ourselves.
I hope I have made it clear what the differences are between self-reliance and free will. Maybe I haven’t, because it is confusing, and perhaps this sermon did end up being too philosophical. Maybe you can tell that this topic is very important to me. What I am really trying to get at is this: I worry that sometimes we UUs are a little too hard on ourselves! Maybe sometimes we try too hard to be what Emerson tried to be – that perfect person of countless talents who is successful at everything, that person who knows everything, or always has the intelligent, profound thing to say. But we don’t know everything! And we can’t BE everything either.
And sometimes our convictions to be “right” about everything can often translate into a lot of self-righteousness that doesn’t have much to do with religion at all. If I had to describe what the best of religious faith is in plain language it would be this: that we’re all in this mess together! That the saving grace in life is that I always have someone to lean on who cares about me, that the most sacred times in life are when we are helping each other. That is where we can always find the holy. It is this mutual exchange of energy, love and inspiration that helps us to find our courage. We can’t do these things alone!
Let us not do these things alone. Let your faith be strengthened and founded on the belief that it is always better to heal, to change, and to find freedom from your difficulties in the company of others.
Thou may, or thou may not. It is up to you.
