We Did (n’t) Build It

“Amazing Grace.”  That’s what the Republican National Convention featured at 7:00 p.m., CST, on Tuesday evening, just before and after speeches about people who built their own businesses “on their own.”  I am awestruck.  Did I miss something?  How is it that these generous pretty people can see so clearly that they have “built it on their own” while welling up tears when singing the tender Christian hymn? 

I know, I know.  The “we didn’t build it” mantra is focused on “less government” and more local, small business control.  I understand.  Small businesses need not to be overly burdened with government restrictions.  There are issues that need to be addressed: support for small business tax breaks, limitations on large corporate tax loopholes / welfare; revisions of outdated health care and retirement programs; renewal of blighted neighborhoods; restrictions on horribly inadequate gun control laws; support for public education for all.

But fundamentally, at the root, we need a reality check.  We did not build it.  None of us.  Whatever It is.  We built it – we worked long and hard, no doubt – with the strengths and talents and family structures and support bases and tax system breaks and educational systems and inheritances and cultures and grossly inordinate blessings and local electricity and water infrastructures – to build it “ourselves.”

I am a successful, quite well off, relatively healthy, large home-owning, health insured family man.  I have large debt, but large resources.  I can get to the doctor tomorrow, if need be.  I can claim some superb tomatoes, zucchini, and eggplant.  I have an enviable family, and a superb wife.  I can boast as (occasionally) being an outstanding teacher.  I can quote others who say I write well.

But I did not build it myself.  I am who I am because of my grandfathers John Franklin Ivy and John Patty, frontier farmers and preachers and judges.  I am who I am because of a father, O.C., who worked his b… off day and night drilling for Midland white collar oil.  I am who I am because of a mother who modeled working hard and never accepting second best.  I am who I am because of Mrs. Turner and Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Acreman and a host of other public school teachers who a worked long and longer for us.  And I am who I am because of Les Perrin and Dan Hardin and Leon Crouch and John Fortner and  Doug Brown and Chris Morse and Dan McGee, and any number of other professors whose lives and hearts changed me.

Without my family’s influence, I would not have worked so hard.  Without my schools’ teaching (largely supported by every citizen’s taxes and every teacher’s learning), I would not have learned.  Without my church’s support and admonition and encouragement, I would not have learned faith.  Without my student loans – only possible because of U.S. support – I would not have gotten an education.  Without my network of powerful and successful people, I would not have a job.  Without my city’s taxed based services, I would not have a home, or water, or air conditioning, or the power to write this missive.  Without my friends, and mostly my wife, I would not be aware of how much I – I – did not make it happen on my own.  Without faith, I would not face the fact that I did not build it.  Any “it.”

“It” all depends on grace.  Pure and simple.