Paul’s concept of “sufficiency” (Philippians 4:10-13) plays on the Stoic term autarkes. For Paul this means learning to be content in all circumstances, a concept of sufficiency at sharp odds with seeking satisfaction in the worldly success that supposedly results from self-reliance.
Even when Paul urges Christians to work and not be dependent on any one (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12), his concern is not with individual self-reliance but that the witness of the church community not be tarnished. As all able-bodied Christians pull their weight the economic independence of the community is assured. This is consistent with Paul’s stress on individual Christians living their lives so as to serve and build up the body of Christ. Indeed, at a broader level still, Paul’s collection of money to aid the famine-afflicted Christians in Jerusalem presupposes the dependence of Jewish and Gentile factions of the church on each other (Romans 15:27). All this in turn is consonant with Jesus’ life of dependence on God and of living to serve others.
The ”pursuit of self-reliance implies a life of working oneself out of grace” (Cosgrove, Cross-Cultural Paul, 78). This involves two fictions:
- That it is possible to be self-sustaining.
- That self-reliance is a good thing and makes us our best selves.
Many western Christians do not see any contradiction between the virtue of self-reliance and Christian teaching about generosity and concern for the poor, because they think Christian “charity” should aim at helping people toward financial independence. But this involves three distorted assumptions (Cosgrove, 79):
- That in America individuals earn their wealth in a way that makes them morally deserving of it.
- That everyone has roughly an equal economic opportunity.
- That only in relatively rare emergencies does any American really need to depend on strangers (charitable organisations, the government) for assistance.
Since all of these assumptions are radically flawed self-reliance is moral self-deception. Further, “when sanctioned by Christian theology, it is an idolatry” (Cosgrove). Romans 1:18 speaks of suppressing truth “in unrighteousness”. Cosgrove takes this to mean “through and for the sake of unrighteousness”.
Cosgrove rightly observes that the “creed of self-reliance is an ideology by which we Americans [we can add Australians and many in the West] justify economic inequalities that most of us would find morally unacceptable if we looked at them honestly” (79-80).
Posted October 28, 2008
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