Self-Reliance

Psalm 20

One time, when I was a kid, my dad asked me (read:told me) to wash the car.  We lived on a dirt road and often, there were potholes filled with rain water that would splatter mud on our car as we would drive past.  It was pretty much always dirty, but my dad would try to clean it and care for it so it wouldn’t look too bad.

On this particular day, he wanted me to wash the car because he felt that I needed to learn how to do it.  He said to me, “Scott, you wash the car once the best way that you can, and then we’ll see how it looks.  If it’s not good, then I’ll show you how to wash it the right way.”  I think I made some feeble protest about twice the work, but a couple of moments later, I was hosing the car down to get it clean.

It was a sunny day in the small town where we lived.  It was hot and I actually enjoyed being a little wet while I completed my chore.  I hosed the bumpers, hood, roof, tires, trunk, fenders, bumpers, everything down and then proceeded to wash it down before rinsing it off.  I meticulously rubbed down each section, especially around the tires where the mud had caked on.  I finished rinsing the car off, looked with pride upon my nice clean car washing job, and ran to get my dad.  He was upstairs taking care of something and so it was a couple of minutes before he arrived.  While awaiting his verdict and praise, I went to the kitchen to grab a cold glass of iced tea.  He finally came down and we walked outside to see the fruits of my hard work.

I was quite surprised to find the car a streaky mess with water marks all over the metal that had been so clean only a few minutes before.  Needless to say, another car washing followed including a lecture about drying the car off when it is still wet to avoid streaks.

And then my dad said something that still sticks in my brain. 

“Scott.  It’s important that you know how to do things the right way.  If you learn how to do it wrong, you will always do it wrong.  If you know how to do it right, you will always do it right.  It’s important that people can depend on us doing things right.”

My dad was teaching me to have a work ethic.  He wanted to show me how to do a job in such a fashion that when I did it, it was done completely and done well.

I think that in some ways my dad succeeded.  I have a good work ethic.  I do work hard.  I get a lot of things done, and much of what I get done, I get done well.  I take pride in my work.

But in some ways, he failed.  He failed because he didn’t always model for me the best way to do things.  He was imperfect, and some of those imperfections were clear for his children to see. 

But I think that there was an even more important failure.  I know this one wasn’t intentional, but it seems to me that it still applies.

My dad taught me how to depend on myself.

“Okay,” you say.  “What’s the big deal?  That’s what we all want to do don’t we?  I don’t want my kids still being dependent upon me when I’m 60?”

You are right, of course.  I don’t want that either.  That’s clearly an important value that we want to teach our children, but sometimes in how we teach it, we teach them self-reliance that moves us to a place that we don’t want to go.

It moves us not to rely on God.

In Psalm 20, the writer starts off his song by encouraging the listener to depend on God’s provision in all things.

“May the Lord answer you when you are in distress…

“May he send you help…
“May he remember…

“May he give you…

“May the Lord grant all your requests.”

It’s interesting to me that this psalm, attributed to David; the king over all of God’s people, reflects dependence and reliance upon God instead of dependence and reliance upon one’s self. 

“Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.”

When you go to work in the morning, who do you depend on?

When something is hard and pushes you to the limit, where does your hope come from?

When I’m burdened and troubled, do I feel the need to grab my bootstraps to pull myself up, or do I drop to my knees to talk to the one who loves me, and lives within me?

I’m grateful that I have a good work ethic.  It has served me well.  But when I look to myself as the answer to all of my own problems, or depend on my own strength to get me out of trouble, I think that I need to unlearn my ethic a little.

I think that’s the excuse that I’m going to use for having a dirty car.  Yeah.  That’ll work.