'Self-Reliance' vs. God-reliance

A young man in prison has asked me to print out and send him a copy of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance.” When first locked up seven-and-a-half years ago, he was more likely to have asked for something by Kanye West. “Self-Reliance” is a step in the right direction, I thought—better than, say, welfare-reliance, or drug-reliance. It isn’t “God-reliance,” to be sure. And yet, didn’t even God commend something in the impulse when He said in the verse below that seems almost lifted from Emerson or Thoreau?

“[L]et each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor” (Galatians 6:4, ESV).

I decided to read the essay for myself. There are mentions of “God” throughout—a detail not to be taken for granted, since we would not expect such sightings in 21st century counterparts. But in 1841 “God” was still de rigueur, and even Harvard’s motto was still “Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae.”

Slippages are never seen at the time they occur (except by prophets), major shifts being discerned in hindsight only. And so the first few paragraphs of Emerson’s exhortation seem little different from a Christian’s urging of young men to find their own God-given gifts and not to be content to copy others: “Trust thyself” (paragraph 3). But the next sentence is “Accept the place the divine providence has found for you.” Then he refers to “the Almighty.” Are the impersonal monikers for God chosen for respect, or are they signs of creeping remoteness and unreality? Time will tell.

We become more nervous in paragraph 7 when we read: “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” One sees many similar sentiments on tombstones of the mid-19th century where I walk daily. The older markers will have “Because He lives I will live,” or something of the sort. We can thank the transcendentalists of Concord, Mass., for the shift from praising God to praising man.

Emerson cites with disdain the cautions of a local pastor who told him, “But these impulses may be from below, not from above.” Emerson’s response contains the seed of the principle that will animate LGBT parades: “I replied, ‘They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil’s child, I will live then from the Devil.’ No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature.” The Rubicon is crossed at this point, the full ghastly outworking being a matter of time.

Nevertheless, there is just enough residual religion in “Self-Reliance” to fool the unwary. When the author writes in paragraph 9, “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think,” we could almost mistake it for the Scripture’s injunctions against “fear of men.” And Emerson’s disdain for “the thousandfold Relief Societies” in the previous paragraph could seem a plausible exposition of Jesus’ “let the dead bury their own dead.”

In those leaving God behind there is at first still much Bible literacy. Emerson easily plucks examples for the superiority of his own philosophy from a reference to Joseph leaving his cloak behind in the harlot’s hand, an allusion completely unknown to modern defectors. In an early 20th century newspaper I read a politician comparing some policy to bringing water from a rock. No more.

By the end of the essay, Emerson starts capitalizing Self, Trustee, Spontaneity, and Instinct with abandon, and the jig is up, for God now has competitors in this panoply of gods, whatever perfunctory niche He still holds. Emerson throws Him a bone here and there but He will soon become unnecessary.

Shall I send the essay to the prisoner? Say ye yes? Or say ye no? Or say ye I should send it with a careful gospel counterpoint?