I mention my friends on here from time to time. One friend, with whom I talk a fair bit, is a lovely Christian lady who suffers from chronic migraine - the insights on her blog always make me think deeply.
Recently, in her review of 2014 she said:
"I’ve discovered new things about myself and my own strength and resources; I’m also learning to be more dependent on other people and to ask for help."
And so I began (in the middle of the night, typically, when I ought to have been sleeping) to think on that.
John Donne (1572-1631), in Meditation XVII of his ‘Devotions upon Emergent Occasions’, wrote:
No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And the bible tells us:
Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptised by one Spirit so as to form one body - whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free - and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.
Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.
The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honourable we treat with special honour. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honour to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it. 1 Corinthians 12:12-26
So I think that learning to be dependent on others and to ask for help when we need it, is an important lesson - it's part of being built into the body of Christ. We are all, or should be, dependent on each other - a real community, or family, with each member using his (or her!) gifts and talents, and giving of himself, to bless each other member and the church as a whole. That requires each of us not only to be prepared to give, but to have the humility, and the willingness, to receive too.
Society nowadays conditions and expects us to be independent, and beholden to none, which means that this is truly a very hard lesson to learn. Needing others to help us is seen as a sign of weakness... But it shouldn't be at all - the bible tells us that we're made in the image of God, who is three persons linked inextricably in one (perhaps on some other occasion I should explore the doctrine of the trinity, but for now, just go with it!)! I suspect that the urge to 'go it alone' is a fairly fundamental aspect of the way we changed when we rebelled against God.
I'm not saying that doing things on one's own is sinful, but that the proud 'I can manage, I don't need any help' (particularly when we clearly do) is a sign of that rebellious streak. So, turning that on its head for a moment, I think that the realisation that we can't manage, and that we really do need the rest of Christ's body, the church, to get through life, is a major step in becoming more Christlike. And it goes right back into the depths of scripture, before the fall, when God says:
It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him. Genesis 2:18
A good marriage is, I suppose, the ultimate human expression of the 'togetherness' God intended for mankind, but we seem to be designed for other relationships, and to depend on others outside the exclusivity of that relationship, too.
Lastly, I do wonder whether this insistence that we be ‘strong’, and that we live life without seeking help from others, is, at least partly, responsible for the epidemic of mental health issues in modern-day western society. I don’t believe it can possibly be healthy to try to live that way.