Self-sufficiency

From meerkats to macaques, social animals tend to live longer, take more time to reach maturity, and have more extended reproductive periods than their more solitary counterparts, according to research from the University of Oxford.

However, living in social groups comes with clear tradeoffs. On one hand, social animals can share resources, protect each other from predators, and help raise offspring together. On the other hand, they face increased risks of disease transmission, competition for resources, and social conflicts. Yet despite these challenges, scientists say the benefits of social living appear to outweigh the costs.

Rather than simply categorizing animals as either social or non-social, the researchers developed a novel spectrum of sociality with distinct levels. At one end are solitary animals like tigers and cheetahs, which spend most of their time alone except for breeding. In the middle are “gregarious” animals like wildebeest and zebras that form loose groups. At the far end of the spectrum are highly social species like elephants, most primates, and honeybees, which form stable, organized groups with complex social structures.

The findings have particular relevance in our post-COVID era, where humans have experienced firsthand the impacts of social isolation.

Lead author Rob Salguero-Gómez says, “This study has demonstrated that species that are more social display longer life spans and reproductive windows than more solitary species. In a post-COVID era, the impacts of isolation have been quite tangible to humans. The research demonstrates that being more social is associated with some tangible benefits.”

In his book Adrift, New York University professor Scott Galloway writes:

We used to be more involved in our communities. In the 1990s most Americans attended some form of religious service, and large numbers got involved in community-based clubs like Rotary and enrolled their kids in team-building programs like the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. But over the course of the past 30 years, something's changed. Now fewer than half of Americans go to a church, temple, or mosque, and many of us no longer talk to our neighbors.

Supporting these statements, he offers statistics like these:

Percentage of Americans with church membership in 1990: 68%. In 2020: 47% Percentage of Americans who talked to their neighbors in 2008: 71%. In 2017: 54%

Two Christian university professors had an unusual assignment for students over a long break. Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon told their students while they were on school break to take a long, good look at their belly button. Why? They explain:

Nothing is quite as revealing as our belly button ... by noting that we are creatures, creations of mothers and fathers, the Bible tells us that we have life as a gift. We are begotten, not manufactured. Someone even changed our diapers; our first hint of what grace must be like. No wonder some of us resent our parents, for they are a visible, ever-present reminder that we were created, that the significance of our lives is not exclusively self-derived.

In contrast, it is all too easy in today's Western culture for us to imagine that we are self-made people. But your belly button does not merely remind you of Mom and Dad, but of your Creator and Redeemer, from whom you have life, meaning, and purpose.

Three members of a local family set off on a long-term camping adventure, intent on living off the grid. Their endeavor took a fatal turn when their three decomposed bodies were discovered recently at a remote campsite.

Gunnison County Coroner Michael Barnes identified the deceased as Rebecca Vance, 42; her 14-year-old son whose name is undisclosed for privacy reasons, and Christine Vance, 41, all from Colorado Springs. Trevala Jara, a Vance stepsister, revealed they didn't disclose their destination before embarking on the journey. The family likely began camping in July 2022, and eventually succumbed to the elements during the harsh winter months.

Friends and family say that Rebecca Vance was motivated by an intense dissatisfaction with the direction of ongoing world and local events—including fallout from the pandemic—and sought an isolated life to shield her family from external influences. The Vances remained committed to their off-grid choice, despite attempts to dissuade them. “We tried to stop them,” said Jara. “But they wouldn’t listen.”

The Vances attempted to subsist on canned food and prepackaged items. After the bodies were discovered, exact causes of death were uncertain, but malnutrition and exposure in the high-altitude winter remain undeniable factors. Gunnison County Sheriff Adam Murdie highlighted the unusual nature of the incident. “This is not a typical occurrence anywhere, by any means,” said Murdie.

Living off the grid, a pursuit of self-sufficiency without public utilities, has gained attention, though experts suggest that for people it's not economically practical. This tragedy underscores the challenges of disconnecting from society, emphasizing the need for balance between safety, security, and self-sufficiency.

Possible Preaching Angle:

As followers of Christ, we are called to be a united family, supporting, and uplifting one another. Let us not retreat into isolation, but rather open our hearts to the blessings of fellowship and community.

When Heather Kopp arrived at rehab, she was a 40-something mom of two and a veteran of Christian publishing. She had never been in jail or on the streets, she’d simply let a nightly glass of wine turn into two, which turned into a bottle, which eventually led to additional mini bottles hidden and secretly chugged in the bathroom. Soon enough, every moment of her life revolved around her next chance to sneak away for a drink.

Karen’s story opens a window into the mind of a burgeoning alcoholic. But as she moved through her rehab and recovery phases into her struggle to understand God’s presence amid her alcoholism, she arrives at a universal truth: Substance abuse is a physical manifestation of a spiritual addiction to sin. And everyone, it turns out, is an addict.

But this isn’t a story of how addiction led Karen to God, or how God pulled her out of addiction. Instead, Karen’s story is one of confronting the nature of sin and understanding more fully the necessity and beauty of God’s grace.

Karen now reflects on her sobriety, “(People) think I just resist temptation over and over because I’m a good person or because I have all this willpower. Can you imagine? How do you explain to people that it’s not anything like that?” Recovery is a living example of the miracle of grace. When addiction removes the illusion of self-sufficiency, the addict must reach a point of surrender from which to accept grace without conditions, and to have confidence that God really is in control, no matter what.

Possible Preaching Angle

It’s tempting for the nonalcoholic to hear Karen’s story about alcoholism as a detached observer. We can marvel at the depths from which God can save a person from pursuits that bring only harm, pain, and grief—and thank him that we haven’t fallen as far. But Karen’s story reminds us that we are each living our own addiction story. And we can’t lose sight of the complete and total dependence on God’s sustaining grace that offers any hope of a way out. Whatever your addiction, God’s grace is the only hope for a way out.

The search for self-esteem through religion and moral virtue presents a greater problem. No matter how good we have been and what we have done for God and others, there is always somebody whose relative goodness makes us feel less than.

Consider the example of John and Libby Moritz who lost all three of their children in a car crash. In response to their grief, they founded a nonprofit for vulnerable children. They sponsored orphanages in Mexico and Grenada, provided scholarships in Kenya and India, alleviated hunger in the Philippines, and provided shoes in Guatemala. They bought a large farm and turned it into a foster home. In virtually everything, they became other-centered. They used their own money to fund the work. In the summers, John tended to his swimming pool business. During off months, they visited the orphanages and programs they sponsored.

Unsurprisingly, the article about the Moritz’s began, “Prepare to feel a little guilty. It’s not that John and Libby Moritz would want anybody to feel guilty. It’s just that if you want to compare good deeds checks list with them, yours will probably come up short.”

A high-level NFL star (it’s Tom Brady if you want to use his name) recently expressed the essence of works-righteousness that lurks in all our hearts apart from Christ. After what he called an “amicable divorce,” he said, “All you can do is the best you can do, and that's what I'll just continue to do as long as I'm working, as long as I'm being a dad."

Then he defined what it means to be a “professional” athlete:

So I think the interesting thing for, you know, a football player, an athlete in general is, you're out there--I always say we're not actors, even though we're on TV--that is our real self out there and we're trying to do our best … We all have our unique challenges in life and we're all humans and we do the best we can do.

He concluded:

I want to … always try to do things the right way as well. And to deal with things that are in your life, that have challenges--you want to deal with them in the best possible way. So, I want to always be able to hold my head high on and off the field, and I'm going to try to continue to do that for as long as I'm here.

Possible Preaching Angles:

This illustration is not meant to criticize this athlete. It shows our need for a Savior because no matter how much we try to do our best it will never give the new life Jesus promises. This athlete shows the futility of works righteousness for all of us.

Beatrice Fediuk decided to write a resumé for heaven as her obituary. When she finally passed at age 94, the Winnipeg Free Press printed the resumé in its entirety. It starts: "Dear Lord, please accept my application for Eternal Life. My resumé is as follows." She divided her obituary into sections—like a real resumé—objectives, references, training, experience, volunteer work, and hobbies.

Beatrice gave a summary of her life history, saying she was born on October 22, 1927, to “loving parents Eugenie and Alfred. ... I have left my daughter Michelle, her husband Perry, my granddaughter Kali, and many nieces and nephews on earth, as there are no openings for them in Heaven just yet."

She shared her memories, saying: "Lord, you know that (as a teacher) I never had any 'teacher's pets.’ Rather, I put my heart into teaching those with learning challenges, or difficult family situations. It was here that I feel I did my best work. … I also continued volunteer work, knitting scarves for underprivileged children.”

Summing up her CV, she added: "Lord, I hope that you will find that I have met my Objectives and deserve a place in Your heavenly home. You know where to find me to further discuss my qualifications."

Possible Preaching Angle:

Sadly, this is how many good people plan to arrive in heaven—on the basis of good works and good intentions. But as Scripture clearly says, “He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy (Titus 3:5).

Brett McCracken writes in his book, The Wisdom Pyramid:

I live in Southern California, where climate-controlled houses and air-conditioned cars give us a measure of mastery over summer's triple-digit temperatures or winter's atmospheric river storms. But we can't escape nature completely. A mudslide washes away parts of Highway 1, making it impassable. The Santa Ana winds will blow, causing us to cough on the air that "tastes like a stubbed-out cigarette" as the poet Dana Gioia (aptly) says. Months of no rain crisp the Sonoran landscape, making it ripe for autumn wildfires. The weather doesn't ask for our opinion. Nature reminds us there is a world bigger than the one we've made.

A headline in the Los Angeles Times that sums it up well: "We may live in a post-truth era, but nature does not." Perhaps that's one of the reasons I've always loved nature—God's beautiful and terrifying creation. In a world where man thinks he is the measure of all things, nature begs to differ. There is a givenness to nature that is sanity in an insane world. It is there to sustain our lives, to be enjoyed, but also to challenge us, to put us in our place, and to impart to us wisdom—if we are willing to listen.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Scripture is our supreme and only infallible source of knowledge of God. But Scripture itself tells us that wisdom can be found in God's creation (Psa. 19:1-6; Rom. 1:19-20). Nature’s glory is not an end unto itself. It’s not a god to worship. It’s a prism and amplifier of God’s glory. It’s a theater, a canvas, a cathedral, but God is always at center stage.

In Yosemite National Park stands a 3,000-foot wall of granite known as El Capitan. It's long been a rock climber's dream, but it's a daring dream. Reaching the top "used to take days to complete with the aid of ropes, safety gear, and a partner," Olga R. Rodriguez reported in TIME. "In the past few decades, speed climbers working in tandem and using ropes have set records in reaching the top of the steep cliff."

On June 3, 2017, Alex Honnold smashed those records, taking about four hours to summit El Capitan—without ropes, safety gear, or a partner.

Honnold, a native of Northern California, is 31 years old but has 20 years of climbing experience—at 11, he started indoor rock climbing. He left the University of California Berkeley in order "to conquer major summits around the world."

He prepared for this El Capitan climb for two years. While the climb is certainly an extraordinary physical challenge—at one point "2,300 feet off the ground … there are very small holds where only a thumb can fit"—Honnold said that the "mental hurdle" was even harder.

"To walk up to the base of the climb without rope and harness, it just feels a little outrageous," he said. "Getting over that side of it was the hardest part."

Potential Preaching Angles: With his incredible feat, Honnold proved to the world that El Capitan can be conquered solo—but just because we can do something on our own doesn't mean that we always should. What we need is a community around us and a reliance on our God. Take these famous words from Proverbs: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart / and lean not on your own understanding … " (Prov. 3:5).

Kurt Gödel was a history-making logician and mathematician who died in 1978. In his later years, while working at the renowned Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, he became convinced that someone was out to poison him. He relied entirely on his beloved wife, Adele, to cook his meals and to be his taste tester whenever they were away from home.

In 1977 Adele was hospitalized and could no longer help her eccentric husband. His friends tried everything to get him to eat, but he refused. Eventually the masterful logician succumbed—at the end, weighing just sixty-five pounds. According to the official death certificate, he died of "malnutrition and inanition caused by personality disturbance." In plain language, he starved himself to death.

Possible Preaching Angles: We all have "faith" in something. But faith is only as good as the object we place it in. Gödel was obviously a brilliant person, but he believed so strongly that people were out to poison him that it overwhelmed even his will to survive.

In an interview in The New York Times, award-winning actor Ben Affleck reflected on the pressure to hide our broken areas. When he watches other movies that strain to make their heroes entirely likable and valiant, Mr. Affleck said: "I find that boring. Instead, I think it's interesting how we manage the best version of ourselves, despite our flaws and our weaknesses and our tendencies to do the wrong thing."

The article noted, "[Affleck] has also realized that for all of his Hollywood success, some part of him will always feel like a relentless striver who must prove, through his work, that he has a right to be there." Affleck put it this way:

That [relentless striving] never goes away. All these habits that we develop, that help us at some point, they have flip sides. In this case, it's hard to turn that feeling off … The urge of making it good and trying to make sure that it works, that you've done the most interesting version that you can—it's like a neurosis that drives me to work every day.

The Walk is the 2015 motion picture, and true story, about high-wire artist Philippe Petit. In 1974 he fulfilled his dream of walking between the World Trade Center towers, but in an early scene from the film he's in a Big Top circus in France tying a rope to a beam. Philippe says, "So [my mentor] Papa Rudy let me travel with his troupe. Of course I never did any performance. But any time the big top was empty, I would practice on the wire."

In the next scene, Philippe is high up just under the tent's ceiling and balancing himself on a wire with a pole. Papa Rudy enters the tent and looks up at Philippe, who was walking carefully but confidently across the thin wire. He hesitates as he is about to reach the platform and then takes a more assertive forward step. But suddenly Philippe and his wire start shaking precariously. He falls to the side, grabbing on to the wire with both hands, barely avoiding falling to his death as the pole plummets to the ground.

As he hangs onto the wire with both hands, the ground a great distance below, he slowly works his way to the platform. Breathing heavily and making his way down the ladder he faces Papa Rudy who tells him, "Most wire walkers, they die when they arrive. They think they have arrived, but they're still on the wire. If you have three steps to do, and you take those steps arrogantly, if you think you are invincible, you're going to die."

Editor's Note: This scene starts at Chapter 5 at 25:29 and runs to 27:02.

On February 22, 1911, Gaston Hervieu climbed the Eiffel Tower to test a new parachute for pilots. He checked the wind, took a nervous breath, and began the test. His silk parachute filled with air, then sailed safely to the ground. Hervieu did not make the jump himself; he used a 160-pound test dummy. To one man this was an outrage. Franz Reichelt was an Austrian tailor who was developing a parachute of his own. He denounced Hervieu's use of a dummy as a "sham" and, one year later, on the morning of Sunday, February 4, 1912, arrived at the Eiffel Tower to conduct his own experiment.

As Reichelt posed for pictures he announced, "I am so convinced my device will work properly that I will jump myself." Gaston Hervieu pulled him aside and tried to stop him. Hervieu claimed there were technical reasons why Reichelt's parachute would not work. The two men had a heated discussion until, finally, Reichelt walked away.

Modern parachutes use 700 square feet of fabric and should be deployed only above 250 feet; Reichelt's parachute used less than 350 square feet of fabric, and he deployed it at 187 feet. He had neither the surface area nor the altitude needed to make a successful jump. Hervieu was not the only one who had told Reichelt that his parachute suit would not work. It had also been rejected by a team of experts who told him, "The surface of your device is too small. You will break your neck."

He not only ignored experts, he also ignored his own data. He tested his parachute using dummies, and they crashed. He tested his parachute by jumping thirty feet into a haystack, and he crashed. He tested his parachute by jumping twenty feet without a haystack, and he crashed and broke his leg. Instead of changing his invention, he clung to his bad idea in the face of all evidence and advice.

Reichelt fell for four seconds, accelerating constantly, until he hit the ground at sixty miles an hour, making a cloud of frost and dust and a dent six inches deep. He was killed on impact.

There's nothing wrong with thinking that you're smart. You probably are pretty smart, and we commend your healthy esteem and belief in yourself. But healthy self-esteem has its limits. Those limits were pushed a couple years ago, when dating website OkCupid revealed how thousands of its users had answered one particular question in a survey to measure partner compatibility: Are you a genius?

Amazingly, according to OKCupid's blogger Christian Rudder, two in five people (and nearly half of all men!) said yes to that question. Rudder said, "2 out of 5 think they are one in a thousand." Now, as there's no single scientific definition of "genius," Rudder's "one in a thousand" is kind of arbitrary. But to qualify for most high IQ societies—"genius clubs" like MENSA—you usually need to have an IQ at least in the 98th to 99th percentile. That's about one in a hundred. So there's something seriously wrong when 50 percent of men think they are geniuses.

What could a team of medical doctors possibly learn about practicing medicine from a Formula One racing team? If the doctors remain teachable, maybe they could learn a lot. That's what happened at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. After completing a twelve-hour emergency transplant, the head doctor watched a Formula One race. As a car pulled into the pit, he noted that the crew changed the tires, filled it with fuel, cleared the air intakes, and sent it off in seven seconds.

It struck him that it often took thirty minutes for his team of doctors and nurses to untangle and unplug all the wires and tubes and transfer a patient from surgery to ICU. He wondered if a racing team could teach a hospital how to run an emergency room.

Imagine the pushback from the trained medical staff when the McLaren and Ferrari racing teams showed up to advise them on how to improve their emergency services. After all, what did they know about surgery or patient care? Nothing. But what did they know about speeding up complex processes? Everything.

As a result, after visiting with the Formula One racing team, the hospital staff initiated major changes, including better training, new procedures, a step-by-step checklist covering each stage of the handover, and a diagram so that everyone knew their exact physical position as well as their precise task. It almost halved handover errors.

The hospital team's problems were solved by a group of people who knew nothing about the practice of emergency room medicine. But the Formula One team's expertise allowed them to easily spot what the hospital tribe had missed. And the medical team had the humility and teachability to learn from the outsiders.

One of the greatest fears for kings in the ancient world was death by poison. Most kings made slaves pre-taste the wine to test it for deadly toxins. But in the first century B.C., a king named Mithradates went even further. Mithradates was a ruthless king and visionary rebel who challenged the power of Rome, but he was also known for his obsession to find an antidote to any poison. He invented many and various anti-poison potions, and tested them on pre-poisoned prisoners. The cocktail he finally came up with involved forty-one often unusual ingredients (for example, diced viper's flesh). It tasted awful, but Mithradates drank some of the stuff every day, to insure he was un-poisonable. For years his mastery of poisons allowed him to foil assassination attempts and eliminate rivals.

Unfortunately for Mithradates, no-one can cover everything. He was eventually overthrown by his son. The story goes that, holed up in a tower, the king tried to kill himself but, ironically, found that no poison had any effect. Finally, he had to ask one of his guards to stab him to death.

Possible Preaching Angles: Self-sufficiency; Control; Providence of God; Trust—When we don't fear God and trust in his care and providence, we have to take charge of our circumstances. Our quest for control will always end badly.

A few years ago, Google released a database of over 5 million books published between 1500 and 2008. You can now type a search word into the database and discover how often words have been used over the centuries.

Based on this data, The New York Times columnist David Brooks offers what he calls the "story of the last half-century." The first part of this story is the rise of individualism. In the past 50 years, "individualistic words and phrases increasingly overshadowed communal words and phrases." For instance, the following individualistic words have been used more frequently: "self," "personalized," "I come first," "I can do it myself." In contrast, the following communal words have been used less frequently: "community," "share," "band together," "common good."

The second part to the story Brooks sees is the decline in moral virtue. Certain words were especially hard hit, including words associated with courage or gratitude. But all of the following words have dropped in usage: "modesty," "humbleness," "discipline," "honesty," "patience," "faith," "wisdom," and even "evil."

Brooks offers his interpretation for these trends:

So the story I'd like to tell is this: Over the past half-century, society has become more individualistic. As it has become more individualistic, it has also become less morally aware, because social and moral fabrics are inextricably linked. [The first two trends] have led to certain forms of social breakdown, which government has tried to address, sometimes successfully and often impotently.

The World Puzzle Championship takes place every year at locations around the globe. In 2023 the event was held in Valladolid, Spain and drew contestants from 54 countries. According to an article, these connoisseurs of puzzles "eat, dream, and on rare occasions when they sleep, dream about puzzles full time." They're the true fanatics and geniuses of the puzzle world. But the article also noted that hundreds of millions of people around the world do crossword puzzles, play Sudoku, or participate in puzzles on their computers, phones, or tablets.

Why are puzzles so wildly popular all around the globe? Will Shortz, the crossword editor of The New York Times and NPR, has this to say:

We're faced with problems every day in life, and we almost never get clarity. We jump into the middle of a problem, we carry it through to whatever extent we can to find an answer, and then … we just find the next thing. [But] with a human made puzzle you have the satisfaction of being completely in control: you start the challenge from the beginning, and you move all the way to the end. That's a satisfaction you don't get much in real life. You feel in control, and that's a great feeling.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Control; Self-reliance; Self-sufficiency; Pride—This story illustrates our human but prideful tendency to control our own lives rather than surrender to the Lord, asking for his help in the challenges of life. (2) Mystery—God is not a puzzle that we can figure out and control. God will always remain beyond our grasp.

The actors Brad Pitt and Hugh Jackman both grew up in Christian homes and both men have since distanced themselves from their faith. Here's how Brad Pitt described his spiritual journey:

I found [my Christian upbringing] very stifling. I always had a lot of questions about the world, even in kindergarten. A big question to me was fairness. If I'd grown up in some other religion, would I get the same shot at heaven as a Christian has? When I got untethered from the comfort of religion, it wasn't a loss of faith for me; it was a discovery of self. I had faith that I'm capable enough to handle any situation. There's peace in understanding that I have only one life, here and now, and I'm responsible.

Hugh Jackman grew up in "a deeply religious family, his parents having been converted to conservative Protestantism by Billy Graham." But in a 2013 interview Jackman said, "I was involved with so many things in the church. It was my social group. It was where I met girls. It was sort of my life out of school. Then around 16 or 17, I started questioning. 'How come all these nonbelievers are going to hell?'"

The same interview reported, "Today, [Jackman] is not particularly religious and says he never prays, though he believes in some form of God and afterlife and meditates twice daily for 30 minutes." Jackman said, "It is about quieting that part of the brain and just seeing and being."

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Doubts and Questions—How do we handle the doubts and questions that people, especially young adults, have about God? Do we honor or dismiss their questions? (2) Rebellion, Self-sufficiency—At some level, both Pitt and Jackman decided to walk away from faith in God and to trust themselves above God. (3) Hell and Judgment—For both men, the rejection of Christianity centered on one issue—hell, judgment, God's Wrath.