What If You Can't?

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too.
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise ….

So begins Rudyard Kipling’s invitation to personal fulfillment. There follows a litany of other qualities that, if honored, guarantee success.

Many of us grew up having been inoculated with this or some such can-do creed. Americans in particular have often had their minds focused on what makes for victorious living. We long to point our fingers to the sky chanting, “we’re number One.” This call to greatness has encouraged many among us to excell and end up on top no matter the obstacles life may have thrown in the path.

Much of American Protestantism has baptized the invitation to strength, victory, and personal achievement. A generation or two ago Norman Vincent Peale called upon Christians to think and act positively as the key to personal success. Peale was the only religious figure that Donald Trump’s family knew, (and that may partly explain Trump’s obsession with winning). These days Joel Osteen challenges the 15,000 churchgoers who regularly fill what was once a great basketball arena, to put away every negative thought and impulse on their way to the top. Osteen is a leading proponent of what has been called “the prosperity gospel,” holding that God wants you to prosper, and that means among other things, achieve wealth. My guess is there are those who hear the message and drive their way up the economic ladder.

The American myth is that this is a land of opportunity, and no matter how poor you are you can through self-discipline achieve success. Those who don’t get to the top have no one to blame but themselves. If you remain poor you just haven’t tried hard enough or are enmeshed in negative thinking. The truth is, however, only a tiny percentage of the American people emerge with these promised riches, and for the masses who don’t make it, the shame is theirs.

Kipling concludes this call to greatness with the following:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run-
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

and which is more, you’ll be a Man, my son.

But what if you can’t? I have spent much of my ministerial life listening to people grapple with their failures, limitations, and inability to reach much beyond where they have found themselves. Their defeats, failures, missteps, or limitations tell them that they are worthless, unloved by God who wills their prosperity. If they never escape the limitations of birth, ability, education, vocation, or marriage, they may have concluded with Cassius that “The fault, dear Brutus, ls not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” It is not that they fail to obtain enormous wealth, but that nothing they do can help them out of the rut of poverty. A single mother works three jobs just to survive. A man learns that he will never get that next promotion. The factory closes or the business is bankrupt. Her resume produces the 50th “rejection.” There are tens of thousands without homes who try to make it on the streets. Medical bills or education loans loom eating all available income--- and more.

While identifying populations by a bell curve that places a few at the top, most of us fall below—in many cases far below that high goal called prosperity. While some drive their way up or are lucky enough to have inherited money without having to do a thing but be born to it, most of us must play the cards we are dealt.

If part of the American dream tells us that by hard work we can succeed, the reality lies in our care for each other. In America we have the obligation to do for others what theycannot do for themselves. That is why we have Medicare, Medicaid, Aid to Dependent Children, Food Stamps and other programs branded as welfare. And that is why universal health care is a must. The America many of us love is really at best a great extended family. During the 1976 Special Olympics a disabled contestant stumbled and fell. Instead of finishing the race, two other contestants ran back to help him, culminating with all three crossing the finish line together. That’s America! Blessings on those who can. Support for those who can’t.