Things you don't have to earn

No, really, it's true.

Photo of hands around a flower is by Lina Trochez on Unsplash.

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From the beginning of our schooling, children in the United States are taught that our country was built by self-starters. Early settlers sought self-determination, eventually throwing off the yoke of British rule by fighting a bloody - and at times seemingly hopeless - war. Our forebears made their way in the world by “discovering” land (and all the natural resources therein) and building homes and finding ingenious ways to sustain themselves and amass wealth.

There is a lot of revisionist history, including the erasure of Indigenous peoples and their cultures and the glossing over of slavery and its role in American capitalism, in this mythical understanding of the country’s founding. Even when we intellectually know that, though, the underlying thrust of the romanticized version of history often remains operational around us and in us: we have to earn everything we get or else we don’t deserve it. I hear this sentiment all the time. I wrestle with it myself, even as I remain convicted that it is not compatible with Christianity.

So here, as a reminder to myself and (hopefully) as an encouragement to you, are some things that none of us has to earn: