Houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant.
AM Psalm 25 • PM Psalm 9, 15
Deut. 6:10-15 • Heb 1:1-14 • John 1:1-18
Many biblical commentators think this section of Deuteronomy is about God’s generosity but warns that this could all be taken away if the now prosperous Israelites reverted to worshipping idols.
But this admonishment can be seen in more modern terms, and without the need to genocidally slaughter every man, woman, and child of the Canaanites or any other inconvenient tribe already occupying the land exclusively promised to them.
This version is more about the success of individuals who became famous in their own lifetimes. And the point of this version is that there are really no entirely “self-made” people.
Einstein was asked by reporters who was the greatest physicist of all time. To their surprise, he did not name himself nor any other scientists living then. He said it was James Clerk Maxwell, which puzzled the reporters because they never heard of him. Maxwell had died when Einstein was only 8 months old. When Maxwell was asked much the same question during his life, he pointed back in time to Isaac Newton, who had died 104 years before Maxwell was born. And when Newton was asked he said he had stood on the shoulders of giants who went before him like Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo.
Each of these scientists, whose careers were sometimes separated by centuries, had made unforgettable scientific achievements and had become celebrities of a sort in their own time. But it appears that none of them got into the habit of worshipping themselves idolatrously as having been the sole source of their individual success. They gave credit to the people whose prior work had made their own success possible. In doing so, they did not diminish themselves or their own contribution. They just had some recognition that no one really does it alone.
Written by Tony Stankus
Tony Stankus, now 69, is the first librarian at the U of A to be promoted to the rank of Distinguished Professor. He became an Episcopalian at age 66 because he could no longer resist the transcendent liturgies at St. Paul’s nor the warmth of its priests and people.