The Gospel of Self-Determination Part II

Every graduation speech hinges on somebody invoking the gospel of self-determination, “If you can dream it, you can do it.”  These types of sayings can lead to disappointment and failure, because not all accomplishment are open to all people.  Relentlessly hard work is necessary for any great accomplishment, but these goals must be correctly attained.  College is going to be a grind, when you begin your career it will be a grind, when you get married at times it will be a grind, and when you have children… you get the point. 

            How exactly does a dream die?  Most high school freshmen boys will raise their hand when I ask which of them will be playing a pro sport, but by the senior year the dream is over as most have not put in the overwhelming effort and time to get to the point where they get courted by colleges.  The problem is that the damage has been done. Kids, now young adults, who thought they were going to play a pro sport put little stock in working hard at their academics to prepare for the rigors of college.  For the athletes who make it to the college level athletically, they will have to wait until a later step in the filtration process to have that bubble burst.  An NCAA report by Clint Newlin in 2011 found that For every 10,000 high school senior varsity football players only eight will be drafted by the NFL. Furthermore, anyone who casually follows football knows that many of these draftees will be cut within the first few weeks of the preseason, so the actual probability is even more staggering.

Many students do seem to understand on some level the odds that face them, so they talk about a backup plan.  This plan is usually academic in nature, but the problem with this mentality is that students see it as a back-up plan and fail to put enough time into their studies.   This leads to subpar skills that make doing the challenging work of college impossible. 

            Simply put, the lower your skills, the more often you will need tutoring in the form of professors, study groups or even hired help.  If you had C’s in high school, you will probably struggle because your skills won’t be there for you.  You will need to devote more time to the process of studying because you have not developed study habits that can allow you to learn information more quickly.  The more you know, the more you can skip things you already know.  This gives some people an advantage over you.  The equalizer in all this is laziness, meaning theirs. While they party and sleep in, you will be studying. You should be able to make up the difference through hard work.

The Gospel of Self-Determination

Just as bitterness can flow from unforgiveness it can also flow from a sense of shattered plans and disappointment. The world says that you can do anything that you want if you just believe in yourself, work hard and don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t do it.  There is a lie in all this.  In the book of Acts, Saul was dragging Christians off to jail; he was a man to be feared.  On the way to Damascus he was converted by the presence of Jesus.  He was led, blind into the city and awaited a brave Christian to pray over him. Ananias was the man that God chose, but he was scared (Acts 9:13-16). That last phrase blows me away, “I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.”  God wants us to lay our lives at His feet; we don’t get to call the shots.

When I think about the gospel of self-determination “you can do anything you want to do, just believe in yourself” I’m envisioning some star baseball player saying how slow and small he was when he was a kid.  He will say he didn’t listen to the “haters and discouragers,” worked hard, never gave up, and got what he wanted.  This is true, but only for him and a select few, but not for the tens of thousands of other football players whose dreams perished along the path to glory.  The baseball star fails to mention is that he was extremely fortunate to have many things fall into place.  John Holway, in his book The Baseball Astrologer and other Weird Tales analyzed pro baseball players birthdays and found that that ball players have a 50-60% better chance of making it to the big leagues if they were born in August.  This would make a ball player the oldest player on a team when they all start playing t-ball and naturally have a physiological head start.  This player would usually play more, ride the bench less, and be more likely to play all-stars, thereby extending playing time.  This and many other silent advantages built talent and encourage even more practice.  All pro players have worked really hard, but they have also benefitted from many unseen factors that they do not understand. 

The lottery is for fools, because the probability of winning is extremely low.  It would be foolish to neglect a career to play the lottery every day.  Just as it is foolish to put your hopes on the lottery, it is also foolish to put your hopes on anything resembling a lottery in the way that it works (Proverbs 28:19).  Some careers are essentially a lottery, whereby only a few make it past the many filtration barriers. Wouldn’t it stink to be one of the few athletes who made it only to have some freak injury sideline you?  This happens every Sunday. 

Accepting our Lot in Life

There is a great children’s book called A Frog Thing by Eric Drachman, and it wonderfully illustrates an essential concept for you.  In this story a young frog named Frankie has the audacious dream to fly like a bird someday.  Determined to see his dream come to fruition, Frankie works tirelessly to “practice” his flying. His parents and friends lovingly try to explain that flying is a bird thing, but he is undeterred.

Finally, the reality and disappointment of the broken dream dawn on Frankie. In that sad moment he witnesses a baby bird falling into the pond.  Knowing that he must act fast, Frankie dives in, saves the baby, and safely delivers it to her mom.  The grateful mom rewards Frankie by taking him for an awe inspiring flight.  Amazed, Frankie’s parents and friends congratulate him on achieving his dream of flying.  Frankie responds that he realizes that he is a frog and understands that he will never fly, but being a good swimmer is a gift to be cherished. 

            If Frankie had sworn off swimming because he couldn’t fly then that baby bird would have died.  There is a delicate balance between going after your goal and understanding your gifts and limitations.  You have been fashioned specifically for a purpose that leads to your maximum happiness (Jeremiah 29:11) (John 10:9-11).

    If you go after something else you may miss out on something better.  This something better is going to take hard work, so don’t wimp out.  Do not let something that is hard, make you feel that it is unattainable; you will have to work hard to accomplish things that matter.   You must listen to the voice of God to point the way, because the way you feel is right may not be what is best for you (Proverbs 14:12).

           

Chasing the Dream Part II

            I developed a passion for sprinting in elementary school that began in second grade when my teacher signed me up to do the 100 yard sprint for the school Olympics.  On the day of the race I was wore brown corduroy pants and Traxx shoes from K-mart.  They lined me up with a bunch of the boys, the gun went off, and I ran for all I was worth.  I won, and a legend was born, at least in my mind.  I honestly believed that I was the fastest kid in school all through elementary school.  My number of wins diminished throughout elementary school, but I still believed in the legend.  My speed, and with it my athletic confidence, left me in junior high school.  I played no sports until my sophomore year of high school when the track coach asked me to come join the team.  At the time I was honored, but as I look back we had a small team and he asked every kid to join.  He put me on hurdles, and I stuck with it because I felt he saw something special in me that would make a good hurdler.  Looking back, I noticed he put everyone who joined on hurdles because he knew if he could train hurdlers and pole-vaulters he could win most of the meets.

            I really worked at it and my technique became almost flawless.  I won a lot of races just because of that.  Over time I got better and by the senior year I just barely missed the school record.  I pictured myself a budding Olympian, but there was this nagging problem, I was not super-fast.  My heart was finally broken at Mount Miguel High School when this kid with awful technique beat me by a good 10 feet.  I was crushed, but in a way I was upset at myself because I knew the truth.  In the back of my mind I knew that I had fair speed but not blazing speed.  This was my broken dream moment. All the signs were there but I just got wrapped up in the fantasy of it all and chose to overlook the obvious.        

It’s not bad to play sports but it is silly to plan to play sports as a profession.  This also goes for professional singers, actors and the like.  These dreams or fantasies are killing us as a society and they create false hopes (Proverbs 12:11).  The odd thing about all this is that often we know it is a false hope, but don’t admit it to ourselves.  It is easy to just look past a glaring truth if you do not want to deal with the realities of that truth (Romans 1:18-20).  Our dreams must line up with something beyond us to truly fulfill us.  If we allow God to shape our dreams, we will be most happy (John 10:10).  Anything else is looking past the glaring truth.

Chasing the Dream

Philippians 2:5-1

When truth is adjusted just slightly, it can actually sound better than the truth.  There is an insidious force out there called self-determination that can fool you into false thinking about your abilities.   Self-determination is the idea that we can get what we want on our own, but this belief is the ultimate rejection of God.  Self-determination is encouraged in our society, because everywhere you go, you will hear the mantra that anything is possible through hard work.  This seems logical because it seems there are examples of people who have remade themselves into something great through sheer self-determination.  The truth about the nature of success is much more complicated. 

We often talk about the “American Dream” where anyone can become great.   This just seems to make sense, but it is a slight adjustment of the truth. The oft quoted Biblical verse, “God helps those who help themselves” is not Biblical.  It came from one of Aesop’s fables and was later popularized by Ben Franklin.  The self help mantra sounds so good, but is exactly opposite of what the Bible teaches (James 4:13-17).  The reason the saying makes sense is that it jives with a part of us that does not want to submit to God.  We do not like the sound of the word submit because it means there can be unpleasant obligations.  Jesus welcomes you into this submission, but offers solace for all your troubles (Matthew 11:29-30). 

God has created you for a relationship with Him and part of this relationship is dependence on Him for things that are not under your control.  In reality, very little is under your control. As I get closer to God, I am becoming more amazed at the regularities of life as real and true gifts.  My job is a gift, my children are a gift, and the food in my refrigerator is a gift.    Hard work is a Biblical command that carries logical benefits, but you need to understand the results are in His hands (Proverbs 19:21). 

Poverty can befall anyone (Job 1:8-12).  We say that those who are poor are that way by choice because they are lazy, have an addiction etc., but we often utilize this thought process to shuck our duty to help those in need. This is flat-out wrong thinking because we have a duty to serve the poor and oppressed (Matthew 25:41). Don’t get caught up in deciding if people are worthy to be helped.  If God is telling you to give, you should give (Proverbs 14:12-14).