Self-reliance and Self-effort Can Be Dangerous to Our Spiritual Lives

We’ve all heard the old adage about pulling yourself up by your own boot straps. The adage expresses the philosophy, attitude, and narrative that fuel the American dream. The narrative is about self-reliance and self-effort. All a person needs is an opportunity. Given the opportunity, self-reliance and self-effort lead to success.

This narrative about self-reliance and self-effort impacts almost every aspect of American life. It fuels immigration – that of our ancestors who immigrated here as well as that of those who seek entrance into our nation today. American is the land of opportunity. This narrative fueled the western expansion of the nation. Vast quantities of available land provided unparalleled opportunity. This narrative underlies the nation’s emphasis on public education. Education provides the opportunity to rise above our situation in life. This narrative supports the Puritan work ethic upon which capitalism thrives. Hard work is all that is needed to succeed.

Because this narrative about self-reliance and self-effort permeates our American culture, it inevitably infects our religious life … with devastating consequences! When it comes to our spiritual lives, the narrative of self-reliance and self-effort is dangerous. It ignores spiritual teaching, undermining authentic spirituality while producing an Americanized version of Christianity.

Self-reliance and self-effort are about achieving. In religious life, they focus on measuring up to religious expectations, particularly expectations regarding behavior, belief, and church involvement.

Relying on self-effort to measure up to expectations produces several predictable outcomes.

Initially, self-reliance and self-effort produce a try-harder-to-do-better mentality. That way of thinking and functioning creates a self-defeating cycle of guilt and self-condemnation. We resolve to try harder to do better only to fail once again. We respond to the failure with remorse and self-condemnation, resolving to overcome the failure to measure up by trying harder to do better. We often make promises to God in exchange for God’s forgiveness of this latest failure. Fueled by guilt and self-reproach, our resolve is strong as once again we try harder to do better. Our resolve, however, quickly dissolves in repeated failure which, in turn, leads to more remorse and self-reproach as we once again resolve to try harder to do better. Such spirituality (if it can be called that), fueled by guilt and self-condemnation, keeps us stuck spiritually.

Eventually, we tire of this try-harder-to-do-better kind of Christianity. Not knowing how to break out of the self-defeating cycle of resolve-failure-remorse-self-condemnation-resolve, we surrender to doing “as best I can.” As-best-I-can generally translates into involvement in church activities and church life. For others, it leads them to retreat to the fringes of church life. At best, it produces religious mediocrity. It fosters superficial relationships devoid of honest sharing of the struggles inherent to the spiritual journey. It produces a superficial spiritual life, devoid of any depth or meaningful fulfillment.

 Sometimes self-reliance and self-effort lead to spiritual blindness. We become so focused on how we are measuring up to the expectations that we become blind to the interior realm of the attitudes and spirit that govern our lives. Our spiritual blindness is evident in a critical, judgmental spirit. We condemn those who fail to measure up, excluding them from our religious circle.

Self-reliance and self-effort appeal to the egocentric self – the self we constructed by measuring up to religious expectations.

Self-reliance and self-effort in the religious realm ignore core spiritual truths that are clearly taught in scripture.

Self-reliance and self-effort ignore what it means to be a follower of Jesus. In Mark 8:34, Jesus said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” The “self” we are to deny is the egocentric self we constructed by measuring up to expectations – what Thomas Merton called the false self; what I call the constructed self. The self-serving spirit of this constructed self is the opposite of the servant spirit that lies at the heart of being a follower of Jesus (Mark 9:34-35; 10:41-45). Being a follower of Jesus involves denying or dying to this constructed self aside.

Self-reliance and self-effort with their focus on behavior ignore the interior realm of the heart – the interior realm of attitudes and the spirit out of which we live. While self-reliance and self-effort can sometimes help us change what we do (behavior), they cannot change the heart. Attitudes and the spirit out of which we live are not responsive to the will.

Self-reliance and self-effort deny the centrality of grace in the spiritual life. Self-reliance and self-effort, with their focus on measuring up, are dimensions of merit-based thinking and living. As such, they are barriers to growing in and living out of grace. Living out of self-reliance and self-effort, we never learn to trust God, resting in his grace.

Self-reliance and self-effort keep us stuck in the world’s way of thinking and living. They are hindrances to spiritual progress and barriers to spiritual growth.

Self-reliance and self-effort prevent us from tapping into the power of God that is available to us through the Spirit – power to do what we cannot do in our own strength. In 2 Corinthians 12:9, Paul recorded God’s response to his prayer about the thorn in his flesh: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect (literally: brought to its intended end) in weakness.” The intended end of God’s power is to empower us in our weakness. Paul’s conclusion was “So I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. For whenever I am weak, then I am strong,” 2 Corinthians 12:9-10. As long as we rely upon our own strength through self-effort, we can never access the power of the Spirit in our lives. We can never know what is possible as we live in partnership with God through the indwelling Spirit.

Boot straps are a part of the American culture, but there are no boot straps in the spiritual realm . . . only the grace of God.