Me, my self-reliance, and I

I gave the EQ lesson this last Sunday, which was on Bishop Edgley's talk from conference a few weeks ago. His talk mentions self-reliance, and I had a few thoughts about that term that didn't make it into the lesson. (Azoy vert dos kichel tzekrochen!) So I thought I would share them here. You're welcome.

I have lots of problems with the concept of self-reliance, and the emphasis we Mormons place on this. There's so much that we simply cannot do by ourselves. We certainly can't return to God on our own, for example.

But maybe this is like the problem some people have with the parable of the ten virgins. As they wait for the bridegroom, five of them run out of oil for their lamps and ask to borrow from the other five. But they refuse to share. The parable used to bother me because the obvious parallel is to us humans waiting for the Messiah, and there are lots of things that we can do to help each other as we wait. But then I realized that the parable is just not about those things. It's about the things we can't share. For example, I must repent if I want to be ready to see God. And no matter how much my brother Herschel repents, he can not repent for me. He can not share that repentance.

So maybe self-reliance is the same. I get mad because there are things we can't rely on ourselves for. But that's silly. I should instead ask myself: How can I make self-reliance a useful principle for me?

It might help if I start with an expanded vision of self. After all, we can talk about a family or a church community or a nation being self-reliant, right? So the self we're talking about can be larger than one person.

Given the nature of our God, is this really so strange? We're told to be one with God, and with each other.

So in the end, I guess I would say that I believe in being self-reliant, because I believe that together with God and with my fellows, I can accomplish anything.

--MOISHE