Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Every American citizen should read this book.

Wow. What an incredible, inspiring story.

In her closing paragraph of her acknowledgements, author Laura Hillenbrand writes,

“I come away from this book with the deepest appreciation for what these men endured, and what they sacrificed, for the good of humanity.”

Yes, as do I, Laura. And I thank you for bringing this story to life.

This book is a searing, unforgettable reminder that our freedom, comfort, security, and prosperity are a sacred trust, given to us by the incomprehensible suffering of brave men and women who have gone before us, never to be taken for granted.

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Just minutes ago I finished reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.

Jane Smiley writes of the book, “This awed reviewer hardly knows where to begin.”

My sentiments exactly.

This is a literary masterpiece. The work of a genius. Overpowering. In the upper echelon of any list of classics.

Every bit as life-changing, heart-wrenching, and memorable — dare I say more so — as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Kite Runner, The Good Earth, The Help, The Grapes of Wrath, et al.

Infinitely more than a story about a preacher’s family in Africa. It is gorged with symbolism, bejeweled by poetry, boiling with justifiable moral outrage.

An unflinching exposition and enduring indictment of humans at their worst. A testament to our indomitable will to survive, an irresistible imperative to become our best.

Setting aside the masterful story — just the language alone is more than worth the journey.

I am forever transformed after reading it.

I will be reading every scrap of paper ever published by Kingsolver — two more books of hers are on the way to my doorstep as we speak, minutes after I finished this one.

This is all to say: I urge you to buy and absorb it as fast as humanly possible.

Before turning the first page, prepare your family for your absence; you will be engulfed.

Here are this week’s must-read articles:

1. “The Roman Arena of the Death Penalty” by Leonard Pitts, Jr.

“People dress that need up in rags of righteousness and ethicality, but occasionally, the disguise slips and it shows itself for what it is: the atavistic impulse of those for whom justice is synonymous with blood. If people really meant the arguments of high morality, you’d expect them to regard the death penalty with reverent sobriety. You would not expect them to cheer.”

2. “Brother Beck Jumps the Shark” by Bryan Hyde

“Glenn Beck could use his considerable influence as a peacemaker — if he was willing to remove his ideological blinders. Instead he is choosing to foment that conflict by acting as a willing propagandist for the Israeli government.”

3. “Obama Rejects Obamaism” by David Brooks

“The White House has clearly decided that in a town of intransigent Republicans and mean ideologues, it has to be mean and intransigent too. The president was stung by the liberal charge that he was outmaneuvered during the debt-ceiling fight. So the White House has moved away from the Reasonable Man approach or the centrist Clinton approach.”

4. “On Empire” by Oliver DeMille

“The love of liberty is so natural to the human heart, that unfeeling tyrants think themselves obliged to accommodate their schemes as much as they can to the appearance of justice and reason, and to deceive those whom they resolve to…oppress…”

As a homeschooling family, my wife and I occasionally get the predictable, worn-out question, “But what about their social life?”

First of all, the question is utterly bizarre to me, given how much social interaction our kids get between several homeschool groups with tons of activities and outings, and myriad other activities, such as art classes, dance classes, cooking classes, Judo, flag football, etc., not to mention how much they play with neighborhood kids.

The idea that homeschoolers don’t get healthy social interaction is such a backwards, 20-years-ago perception.

Secondly, it makes me laugh when I think back to my public school experience.

Here’s what public school taught me about socialization:

• It’s okay — encouraged, even — to make fun of anyone “different” than you and your core group of friends, particularly the weak, weird, mentally and physically disabled, and poor.

• Within an “acceptable” range, everyone should dress, act, and think like everyone else, and those in any way and to the slightest degree outside of the norm should expect to be mocked mercilessly.

• Appearances are everything.

• You should only interact with those in your grade. Those in higher grades are cooler than you (and are therefore entitled to bully you and everyone else younger than them), and those in lower grades are less than you.

• You should compare yourself to and militantly compete with others.

• What your peers think of you is far more important than what you think of yourself, or what God thinks of you. Sacrifice everything for popularity.

• Don’t question authority; teachers and other authority figures know best. Stay in line. There’s an established, “right” way for everything — don’t deviate.

“The idea of learning acceptable social skills in a school is as absurd to me as learning nutrition from a grocery store.” -Lisa Russell

Based on most accounts I’ve heard, this is quite typical public school “socialization,” which is interesting in and of itself.

But here’s where it gets really interesting: Nowhere outside of high school have any of these been my experience, at least not nearly to the degree felt in high school.

Sure, I’ve experienced the very typical (and relatively benign) perceptions and comments regarding our non-traditional views on things like education, homebirthing, politics, etc.

But nothing even close to the overt and extremely aggressive ostracization, mocking, competitiveness, and bullying I witnessed in high school.

Rather than attending high school my junior and senior years, I attended a community college through a program called Running Start.

Not a single person in college ever cared about what clothes I wore, who I hung out with, what my interests were, how old I was, etc.

It was a completely different world than high school.

In fact, in college diversity was appreciated and encouraged much more than conformity. Everyone I interacted with was respectful and accepting.

It was encouraged to question commonly-accepted truths, habits, societal arrangements, etc.

Since leaving high school, I’ve never had a single friend who cared one whit about my fashion sense (or lack thereof, as the case may be).

I’ve yet to interact with an adult who thinks it’s really cool to make fun of those less privileged than them.

I’m still waiting for an adult to bully me because they’re a year older than me, or an adult to fear me because they’re younger than me.

If socialization outside of public school is nothing like, or is at least substantially different from socialization in public school, then what in the name of John Dewey are we socializing our kids for?

For those who disagree with my experience with and perception of public school socialization, who really value socialization and worry that your kids won’t get it outside of public school, I have a sincere question for you:

What do you want your kids to get from public school socialization (or socialization in general)?

I imagine your responses would include:

• You want them to be confident, emotionally mature, well-adapted, respectful, and considerate.
• You want them to be able to interact with, relate to, and positively influence anyone, regardless of age, race, culture, or any differences of opinions or perceptions.
• You want them to have the courage to stand up for what’s right, even and especially when it’s not popular.
• You want them to be a leader, not a follower.
• You want them to learn to strive for excellence, but without feeling the need to “beat” or denigrate others in the process.
• You want them to develop the maturity to respect authority for the right reasons without accepting it unquestioningly, and, as needed, to learn to question and change things wisely and effectively.

Right?

Well, we share those desires.

I’m not trying to convince anyone that homeschooling is better than public schooling — as a well-adjusted, socialized adult who believes in freedom, tolerance, and diversity, I wholeheartedly respect and embrace you, no matter your opinions on the subject.

But I am inviting those who advocate public school for the sake of socialization to question what your children are actually getting in the way of socialization.

As Manfred Zysk wrote in his thought-provoking article “Homeschooling and the Myth of Socialization,”

“A family member asked my wife, ‘Aren’t you concerned about his (our son’s) socialization with other kids?’. My wife gave this response: ‘Go to your local middle school, junior high, or high school, walk down the hallways, and tell me which behavior you see that you think our son should emulate.’”

And for those concerned that our homeschooled children aren’t getting enough or appropriate socialization, I’m inviting you to consider that there are other ways to achieve healthy socialization, and we’re not raising our kids to be cloistered, introverted misfits.

We’re not opting them out of society.

We’re just opting them out of the strange public school bubble that, in our experience, doesn’t even represent normal, healthy society.

In other words, we’re socializing them for what they’ll actually experience beyond high school.

Recommended Reading:

• “Socialization: Homeschooling Vs. Schools” by Michael Haverluck
• “Homeschooling and the Myth of Socialization” by Manfred Zysk
• “Public School vs. Homeschool Socialization” by Joan Vasquez

If you could have a life completely free of:

• Risk
• Stress
• Sickness
• Pain
• Struggle
• Mystery and uncertainty

…would you really want it?

Imagine if every decision you made was certain to result in exactly what you wanted.

Would that be a life worth living?

Of course not. We intuitively understand what a bland and utterly pointless existence that would be.

(To experience just how bland, read The Giver by Lois Lowry.)

Without those things, we have no context for experiencing true joy. As Robert McKee wrote in Story:

“The depth of joy you experience is in direct proportion to the pain you’re willing to bear.”

I wonder, then, why we resist those things so much.

If we really embraced their purpose, wouldn’t we be much more willing to take calculated, mission-driven risks?

Wouldn’t we stop second-guessing past decisions so much, and stop re-hashing regret?

Wouldn’t we be able to deal with trials with a much healthier and happier frame of mind?

Of course, none of us really craves extreme hardships.

But when they do come, think of what life would be without them.

When I meet someone new, my gut sniffs for this characteristic.

Those who possess it are those to whom I feel closest, the people with whom I want to spend my time and share my deepest thoughts.

It may sound silly to you — especially since there’s no way of really knowing for sure.

But I have an intuition about these things. And I bet you do, too.

So here’s my test of character: Would you support and hide Jews in Nazi Germany?

“…man’s capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little has been tried.” -Henry David Thoreau

Most of us barely scratch the surface of our potential.

We’re scared to death. We’re imprisoned by our own fears.

Fear is a product of perception. Change your perception and you either dissolve fear, or at least shift it to different perceived threats.

One of our most devastating perceptions is in regards to risk.

False perceptions of risk squander our potential perhaps more than any other factor.

Specifically, the most deceitful perception is that there is a hierarchy of risk, as in one choice is more or less risky than another.

See how this plays out in real life:

• Entrepreneurship is riskier than being an employee with a large corporation.
• Mountain climbing, rock climbing, and canyoneering are riskier than staying at home by a warm fire.
• Trusting intuition to tread new paths is riskier than following the crowd.
• Audaciously approaching that gorgeous girl/guy you’re dying to meet is riskier than sticking with the “comfortable” girls/guys who don’t make you nervous.

You get the point.

What’s ignored in this absurd construct is the biggest, most destructive risk of all: not achieving our potential and dreams and fulfilling our missions.

So we labor under this perception while hating our jobs, watching other people have adventures on TV, seeing our ideas implemented by others while exclaiming from our sofas, “I thought of that first!”, wishing we had the courage to pursue our dream relationships — in short, living mediocre lives.

And we’re stuck because all the motivational speakers and gurus and cultural factors tell us this: In order achieve greatness we must increase our risk tolerance.

Don’t Push Through Risk — Rethink & Revalue Instead

But there’s a much more accurate and enlightened way to overcome the fear of risk, and that is to rethink and revalue it.

The first step in this process is to recognize that EVERYTHING is risky.

It’s not that entrepreneurship is riskier than employeeship; it’s that each carry different risks. And our success or failure depend on how we value those respective risks.

In other words, risk perception is a function of personal values, not perceived results or the true risk inherent to any choice.

You’re not an employee in a job you hate because it is actually safer/less risky to have a job than it is to start a mini-factory.

You’re there because you value comfort and security more than you value growth and adventure and hard decision-making.

Because the reality is that your job is no less risky — in different ways — than entrepreneurship.

Exercise: What Do You Value?

After the first step of recognizing that everything is risky, step two is to sit down and get crystal clear on your values.

By doing the exercise thoroughly, you’ll encounter two things:

1. Accepting the reality that your actions and lifestyle may not align with your chosen values, then fixing that with integrity.
2. You can be more conscious about choosing different, more useful values.

The Fear of Loss

The definition of risk is “exposure to the chance of injury or loss; a hazard or dangerous chance.”

And, based on that definition, people say with a straight face that entrepreneurship is riskier than employeeship?

C’mon, now, let’s be real.

What about the exposure to the chance of losing out on our potential? Why is that not a greater consideration in our risk calculations?

The reason is simple: It’s hard to quantify, touch and feel our personal potential, which makes it difficult to be more conscious about our risk calculations.

Know Thyself

Now we’re getting to the real heart of the matter.

Our risk calculations are flawed when we don’t know who we are and don’t believe that we’re capable of greatness.

To quote from Thoreau again:

“What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.”

Or as James Allen wrote:

“Man is made or unmade by himself; in the armory of thought he forges the weapons by which he destroys himself; he also fashions the tools with which he builds for himself heavenly mansions of joy and strength and peace.”

Therefore, the most successful individuals are those with the brightest, clearest, most compelling vision of themselves and the strongest belief that they can achieve that vision.

Risk is No Longer a Valid Excuse for Mediocrity

Every possible course is rife with its own particular risks — things that will be lost by choosing one action over another.

Drop the nonsense that your choices are about avoiding risk, because they’re not; they’re about aligning with your values.

Get clear on your values, and align your daily actions with those values.

Create a compelling vision of your best self, from which will flow your goals.

Then, once you’ve identified those goals, consciously choose the values necessary to achieve those goals.

For example, suppose you currently value safety and security more than growth and adventure, but your goal is to become an entrepreneur and build a mini-factory.

Rather than falsely thinking you have to push through fear and accept the “higher” risk, simply choose different values, while acknowledging the risks of not making that shift.

Do this, and you’ll move the world.

Mediocrity will become a laughable dream from a past life. You’ll dance and sing and shimmer and shine while others shuffle through life as dull shells.

Most importantly, you’ll escape the most awful fate known to man: What might have been.

Essential Reading:

• As a Man Thinketh by James Allen
• Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Walden by Henry David Thoreau
• A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller
• Free the Beagle by Roy H. Williams

I’m incredibly bored of rehashing stale and flawed either/or, black/white arguments.

Conservative versus liberal. Republican versus Democrat. Capitalism versus socialism. Individualism versus collectivism.

As if one is all right and the other is all wrong. Please.

There’s truth in every perspective.

By buying into either/or debates we lose depth, substance, nuance. We stifle our intellectual progress. We make enemies unnecessarily. We lose a sense of balance.

Ultimately, we lose freedom.

Truly free citizens are independents. They see beyond black and white, right and wrong debates.

To put it concretely, they don’t view Republicans as good and Democrats as bad, or vice versa.

They identify and incorporate the good and reject the bad in every perspective.

Of course, this requires intellectual maturity. Slapping black and white labels on ideologies, ideas, and philosophies is a very natural thing to do.

It makes life easier for us. It means we don’t have to think as hard.

What makes this kind of thinking difficult is not that we’re trying to choose which side is right and which side is wrong, but rather that we’re trying to reconcile the good of two sides, which are seemingly contradictory.

As the Nobel prize-winning physicist Niels Bohr said:

“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”

One of my mentors, Roy H. Williams, put it this way:

“Good things come into conflict. And there is no choice so difficult as the choice between two good things.

• Justice or mercy?
• Honesty or loyalty?
• Inspiration or accuracy?
• Time or money?
• Science or romance?

Which way do you lean?

A weak student will choose one side of a duality and disparage the other side while a brilliant student will stand between the poles and feel the energy that passes between them.

F. Scott Fitzgerald put it this way, “The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

Life is a tightrope.
Leaning is dangerous.
Balance is what you need.

I’m not suggesting that you seek watery compromise, that mind-numbing “happy medium” cherished by the frightened and the weak. I’m suggesting you find the electricity that flows when two poles of a duality are brought into close proximity.

Electricity is not a compromise. It is an altogether third, new thing that emerges from two potentials.

Can you see the truth in opposite possibilities?
Your opponent isn’t always an idiot.
Your adversary isn’t always evil.
Learn to love your enemy and feel fully alive.
Reach for the electricity.

Roy also said:

“The key to miracles is to recognize the beauty of both sides of a duality – black and white – while not allowing yourself to get trapped in the perspective of either side.”

Not only is it important to see the good in all sides, but also to identify the bad.

One of my favorite books, Beyond Capitalism & Socialism edited by Tobias J. Lanz, is a perfect example of independent, judicious, dialectic thinking that recognizes the good and bad of both capitalism and socialism.

As one author writes:

“Communism emphasizes social use to the exclusion of personal rights, and capitalism emphasizes personal rights to the exclusion of social use. …both are wrong, for though the right to property is personal, the use is social…Monopolistic capitalism concentrates wealth in the hands of a few capitalists, and communism in the hands of a few bureaucrats, and both end in the proletarianization of the masses…The Christian concept denies there is an absolutely owned private property exclusive of limits set by the common good of the community and responsibility to the community.”

It’s not a debate between private property or communal property, individual rights or community responsibilities. That’s a flawed construct that can, by default, never lead to truth.

If you want to arrive at truth, you must first start with the right questions. In other words, the framework of the intellectual query must be structured properly.

The question must become not which of those is right or preferred, but rather a recognition that both are good and HOW to properly balance the two with your forms of government and culture.

How can you protect individual rights while simultaneously providing for communal goods, such as caring for the weak and poor, building schools, libraries, roads, etc.

The first step in answer the question of “how” is to take as many factors as possible into consideration, to see the whole picture and to approach it from a holistic perspective.

Most people fail to arrive at the correct framework because their debate is two-dimensional — limited to the two-party political sphere.

The debate revolves around the limited question “What is the proper role of government?”, rather than the more holistic question, “How is ideal society created and sustained?”

In our current two-party monopoly, generally speaking Democrats focus on the power of government, while Republicans focus on the power of business.

In the first place this creates a flawed construct of either government or business, where debaters label one good and the other bad.

But on an even deeper level, this debate doesn’t even take into consideration five other fundamental societal institutions, namely:

1. Family
2. Community
3. Religion
4. Academia
5. Media

When you include those in the mix, a whole new world of possibility opens that was never considered before.

Freedom is ultimately cultural, not political.

To preserve freedom, we must move beyond flawed either/or political and ideological debates. We must look for truth in every perspective. And we must consider many more factors than just government and business.

This is a follow-up to my last article, wherein I write that I prefer the term “submission” over the term “enlightened self-interest.”

My aversion to the term “enlightened self-interest” comes from its common usage in economic and narrowly practical terms.

In other words, it doesn’t go far and deep enough for what I wish to convey with “submission.”

And, once again, understand that this is written from my understanding of Christian epistemology and doctrine. You may take issue with my interpretation/understanding, but if you reject Christian epistemology, then we have no basis for debate.

Enlightened self-interest largely has its roots in Adam Smith’s concept of “the invisible hand,” as found in Wealth of Nations, wherein he writes:

“By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was not part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.”

Ayn Rand’s term for this is “rational selfishness.” In The Virtue of Selfishness Rand writes:

“The Objectivist ethics proudly advocates and upholds rational selfishness — which means: the values required for man’s survival qua man — which means: the values required for human survival — not the values produced by the desires, the emotions, the ‘aspirations,’ the feelings, the whims or the needs of irrational brutes, who have never outgrown the primordial practice of human sacrifices, have never discovered an industrial society and can conceive of no self-interest but that of grabbing the loot of the moment.
 
“The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone. It holds that the rational interests of men do not clash — that there is no conflict of interests among men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as traders, giving value for value.”

In either case, we find self-interest to be grounded in the material world, confined to a mental, or rational, sphere, and narrowly defined in terms of economic exchange.

Adding the spiritual element, according to my understanding, changes, or at least broadens, the whole picture. When animated by a spiritual connection with a Supreme Being, people do things that may appear to be irrational — at least to those who place the mental realm as the highest realm of existence.

Furthermore, they may do things that may appear to have no or limited economic value, in the strictest of terms.

For example, Christ’s willingness to take upon Himself our sins and weaknesses is ridiculous and irrational to the atheist/strict Objectivist.

(Per Rand’s statement, “In spiritual issues, a trader is a man who does not seek to be loved for his weaknesses or flaws, only for his virtues, and who does not grant his love to the weaknesses or the flaws of others, only to their virtues.”)

His sacrifice, borne of submission to His Father, was not calculated to bring him money, or to prosper in narrow economic terms.

Mother Teresa didn’t run her orphanages for the purpose of exchanging her labor for money for herself. She didn’t start out thinking of “promoting an end which was no part of [her] intention.” She actually intended to achieve altruistic ends.

The good she did in the world wasn’t a mere by-product of pursuing her own interest solely — it was the target, the conscious goal.

Washington didn’t suffer through Valley Forge because of rational, mental, self-interested, economic-based calculations. Left to himself, Washington would have been a quiet farmer his entire life.

But because he had submitted to God, not only did he sacrifice, but his sacrifices actually got him closer to his true self-interest than not making them could have.

(Of course, this is an assumption based on Christian epistemology and an eternal perspective.)

Submission: The Highest Form of Applied Self-Interest

Enlightened self-interest is not, in my estimation, the highest form of applied self-interest.

While it definitely is much more preferable to selfishness, or “irrational selfishness,” it doesn’t go far enough to describe my understanding of Christian doctrine. It’s predicated upon mental calculations intended to bring us the best returns.

And, as I wrote previously, since we can’t have full knowledge of what is in our best interest at any given time, we must rely upon an external source — God — to guide our calculations.

Submission to God seems to me a much better term for the highest form of self-interest. God doesn’t ask us to be irrational brutes; He merely asks us to have faith in Him.

We’re not to shut off our mental calculations; we’re simply to trust that His recommendations (revelation) — no matter how difficult or “irrational” they may seem at the moment — supersede our calculations and will lead to our best interest.

He may ask us to choose a lower-paying job over a higher-paying one for reasons that we don’t understand. He may ask us to do things we don’t like (e.g. Washington).

He may tear our heartstrings — as He did with Abraham — in order to expand our compassion and understanding. His revelations and guidance may lead to our suffering and death (e.g. Joan of Arc, Christ’s original apostles).

Without a belief in and relationship with God, we may never perform the sacrifices that would have led us, in actuality, to our highest self-interest.

Even with a relationship with God, our self-interest can still be limited if our actions are based upon what we see in any given moment. If we can’t see how an action will benefit us immediately, we’ll choose a different (lower) path.

To conclude, I don’t prefer the term “enlightened self-interest” because it’s become, through common usage, limited, narrow, and defined strictly in terms of economic exchange. Submission is my preferred term to describe the highest form of self-interest.

It’s expansive enough to include the concept of “losing our life to save our life.” It implicitly presupposes an omniscient Being to whom we must submit, a Being who knows far better what is in our self-interest than we ever can.

It doesn’t discourage nor negate rational thought; it expands and deepens it. It transcends the physical and mental realms and opens the door into the spiritual realm.

And by the way, I don’t even pretend to be a good example of what I’m describing. I echo Seneca who said,

“I persist in praising not the life that I lead, but that which I ought to lead. I follow it at a mighty distance, crawling.”

In one of my past articles, a reader took issue with “the idea that self-interest is somehow a vice, a detriment or a critical flaw” because it is “a denial of one the most most fundamental truths of nature…”

Allow me to clarify. First, understand that my perspective is based on Christian epistemology (at least my version of it), which means that if we do not share that epistemology there will be little, if any, grounds for debate.

I only write this to clarify my position, not to persuade non-Christians, agnostics, atheists, and/or Objectivists that my perspective is right, nor do I write to initiate debate with them.

The Real Flaw of Self-Interest

It’s undeniable that we’re hardwired to pursue our self-interest. Put in different terms, we seek pleasure, joy, happiness, and fulfillment and strive to avoid pain and sorrow.

The pursuit of self-interest is not a “vice, detriment, or critical flaw.” The real flaw, or limitation, of self-interest isn’t the pursuit of it; it’s simply that our knowledge of what is truly in our self-interest is limited at best.

Any parent can see the self-evident nature of this. A child, pursuing her self-interest, is drawn towards the flickering light of an open fireplace. We as parents, possessing greater knowledge, steer the child away.

A self-interested teenager pleads to go to a party, one that we as parents know will be harmful. A child complains about having to work in the home, wanting instead to play, watch TV, or play video games.

As parents, we understand that it is in the self-interest of the child to learn how to work, although the child does not.

In short, self-interest must be guided, or enlightened, by a source external to us, a Source with greater knowledge than us, a loving Source that has our best interest at heart, a Source with the wisdom to know when pain, sorrow, and sacrifice may be to our long-term benefit.

Parents serve this role for children. In a larger sense, as a Christian, I obviously believe this Source to be God.

This type of self-interest has been referred to as “enlightened self-interest.” If that term works for you, by all means use it.

I shy away from it because over time and with wide usage the meaning becomes diluted. I prefer “submission” instead, which will be explored later.

First, we must understand epistemology.

The Relevance of Epistemology

In the simplest terms, epistemology is how human beings determine what is true and untrue.

It deals with the questions, “What is knowledge?”, “How is knowledge acquired?”, “What do people know?”, “How do we know what we know?”

There are a number of epistemologies including, but not limited to, reason, empiricism, tradition, authority, and revelation.

Epistemology is fundamental to self-interest because it is the foundation of how we determine what is in our self-interest, or what is opposed to it. If tradition is my epistemology, then following tradition, cultural or otherwise, is in my self-interest.

If reason is my epistemology, reason will dictate what is in my self-interest. On the other hand, if revelation is my epistemology, then what God tells me determines what is in my best self-interest.

My personal epistemology is what I call “reveleason,” which is the combination of revelation and reason, with revelation being the ultimate authority on what determines truth.

God created us with the ability to reason, which we are expected to use to our advantage. However, He also interacts with, enlightens, and expands our reason and knowledge through revelation.

Again, since our knowledge is limited, we must seek the guidance of an external Source.

“Man Alone” Vs. “Man With God”

Assuming it’s true that we are children of God, then there are two ways to live: with or without God. Man Alone depends on epistemologies other than revelation.

Man Alone does not seek the guidance of metaphysical or spiritual sources to make decisions.

At worst, Man Alone degenerates into unchecked hedonism, exploitation of others, greed, and harmful selfishness. At best, Man Alone is a good citizen living far below his potential.

When it comes to sacrifice, Man Alone either fails to see any virtue in sacrifice, or what sacrifices he does make are limited to very practical, earthly terms.

For example, Man Alone using reason as epistemology may sacrifice time and money to go to college in order to earn more money. But this same person may fail to see any virtue in or purpose behind Abraham’s sacrifice.

Man With God, however, seeks the will of God in the pursuit of his self-interest. His self-interest dictates that he obey the laws of God — whatever he believes them to be — and even when he does not understand them fully.

Man With God is uplifted to achieve far greater things than Man Alone because he follows the will of One who knows what he needs to progress.

Man With God understands the virtue in sacrifice. He understands that God only asks him to do things that are ultimately in his self-interest, although he may not understand why or how at the time he is asked to sacrifice.

In short, Man With God submits his will to the will of God. He lays his uninformed self-interest upon God’s altar and trusts God’s judgment of what is in his best self-interest.

It doesn’t mean that he’s not self-interested or that pursuing his self-interest is a vice; it means that his self-interest is guided, enlightened, enhanced, and expanded by a Source external to Him.

One might say that he is pursuing God-interest, rather than self-interest, although the more he submits his will to God the more those two merge into one.

It is precisely this faith that gives him the desire and ability to sacrifice perceived personal benefit and endure hardship. It’s what the Founders referred to as public virtue.

Examples of Submission

Every great man and woman that I revere in history has displayed the characteristics and habits of Man With God. They have sacrificed and endured hardship because they submitted their self-interest to God.

Jesus Christ

When Christ retired to the Garden of Gethsemane, faced with the awful burden of suffering for our sins, he prayed, “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.” (Luke 22:42)

John 5:30 records,

“I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.”

John 6:38 explains,

“For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.”

Christ submitted his self-interest to the will of His Father, who led Christ to do excruciating things that were ultimately in his (Christ’s) self-interest.

George Washington

We’re familiar with Washington’s struggles to keep an inexperienced and undisciplined army together facing extreme shortages of food, clothing, shelter, and ammunition. We know of his countless sacrifices for his country and posterity when his greatest desire was to live a quiet life of farming in Mount Vernon.

But he sacrificed so much because he had submitted to God.

His prayer in Valley Forge, as recorded by Reverend Nathaniel Randolph Snowden, an ordained Presbyterian minister, graduate of Princeton with a degree from Dickinson College, in his “Diary and Remembrances.” He details the story of a Mr. Potts, who stumbled upon George Washington praying in the woods near Valley Forge. Mr. Potts recounted:

“It was a most distressing time of ye war, and all were for giving up the Ship but that great and good man. In that woods pointing to a close in view, I heard a plaintive sound as, of a man at prayer. I tied my horse to a sapling & went quietly into the woods & to my astonishment I saw the great George Washington on his knees alone, with his sword on one side and his cocked hat on the other. He was at Prayer to the God of the Armies, beseeching to interpose with his Divine aid, as it was ye Crisis, & the cause of the country, of humanity & of the world. Such a prayer I never heard from the lips of man.”

Reverend Snowden wrote:

“I felt much impressed in his presence and reflected upon the hand and wonderful Providence of God in raising him up and qualifying him with so many rare qualities and virtues for the good of this country and the world. Washington was not only brave and talented, but a truly excellent and pious man of God and of prayer. He always retired before a battle and in any emergency for prayer and direction.”

Washington also sheds light on his faith in his own words. A Reverend Israel Evans once delivered and printed a sermon to American soldiers. Washington received a printing of the sermon, and wrote to the Reverend and assured him that,

“…it will ever be the first wish of my heart to aid your pious endeavors to inculcate a due sense of the dependence we ought to place in that all wise and powerful Being on whom alone our success depends…”

Was Washington self-interested? Of course. Yet his submission to God led him to make sacrifices that most never make. He allowed God to lead him — through revelation — beyond uninformed self-interest to a much higher form of self-interest.

More Examples

Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for her sacrifices. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated for his beliefs and efforts, as was Gandhi. Mother Teresa devoted her life to serving “the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone.”

The signers of the Declaration of Independence challenged the greatest military force on earth in order to secure freedom for themselves and their posterity.

The list goes on. The point is to say that Men (and Women) With God think and act differently than Men Alone.

They willingly suffer and sacrifice more — not because they’re not self-interested, but because they submit to God and allow Him to guide the pursuit of their self-interest. They thus achieve and enjoy more.

Conclusion

We are hardwired to be self-interested. It is perhaps the most fundamental aspect of our nature. Desiring self-interest is not a flaw or a vice of human nature. It’s not wrong to pursue self-interest. The problem is that our self-interest is uninformed because of our limited knowledge.

In order for us to achieve our highest potential and do the most good in the world, both for ourselves and for others, we need an external Source to guide and enlighten our self-interest.

Without this external guidance, our lives and contributions are degenerate at worst, and limited at best.

We must submit to God, who, through personal revelation, asks us to sacrifice temporary benefit in order to fulfill long-term self-interest.

Submission requires faith, faith that submitting our will to God is ultimately in our best self-interest.

The goal, then, isn’t to stop pursuing self-interest. Rather, it’s to pursue a much higher form of self-interest than can be found without submitting to God. It’s a Divine Paradox.

“For whosoever will save his life,” taught Christ, “shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.”