Pause for Thought - BBC Radio 2 - Joel Edwards
A QUESTION OF INDEPENDENCE
This is the 4th July. The day when all good Americans visit Buckingham Palace and Parliament Square with a special smirk.
Independence is after all the mark of adulthood isn’t it? The point at which the kids grow up and fly the nest. Independence is that line we cross when we tell our employers to get lost and strike out on our own. It’s buying your own flat or making that last mortgage payment.
Or maybe it’s escaping from a stifling relationship.
Independence is standing tall all by yourself doing what you want, when you want, and more importantly, if you want.
Or is it?
I think real maturity, is neither total self-sufficiency – or total dependence. To be grown up, is to be inter-dependent. You’ve come of age when you’re big enough to admit that you need of other people to complement you as you are.
It’s what it means to be human.
And from a God’s-eye view of independence, being human means that we recognise our dependence on Him. It’s not so much that God has to direct every detail of what we do everyday. But it does matter to him, that we recognise just how much our humanity is tied in to his very existence.
To quote a pagan poem, in the Bible, "In him we live and move and have our being." Our lives are bound up in who He is, because we are made in the image of God.
If God is dead we are forever entombed.
Individual effort and solo flights have their place. But we are at our very best, not in those moments of fierce successful solitude. Our spiritual health comes when we find others with whom we can connect, and with the God in whose image we are made.
It reminds me of the thirty-something businessman I met some years ago. His ambition was to earn his first million by the time he was thirty. And he did it. The only problem was that he sacrificed people for profits. He made his million. But he had no one with whom to share it.
Living with God in community, is ultimate independence.
Because freedom always feels better with other people.
Rev. Joel Edwards
