You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World

by Alan Noble

T. S. Eliot: “For us there is only the trying. / The rest is not our business.” We don’t get to calculate the effectiveness of faithfulness or love. We don’t get to reassess our commitment to justice when we don’t see change happen. If abortions increase and racial justice remains elusive and wars develop in new and even more dehumanizing forms, we don’t get to stop doing good. We have received orders from God to “do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). You may never see the fruits of your labor in this life, but it doesn’t matter. God did not call you to be successful. He called you to be faithful. However, if you are responsible for your own existence, only tangible, measurable, immediate success can come close to satisfying you. And you will grow increasingly frantic to see your political vision fulfilled, your cause triumph, and increasingly intolerant of failures and of people who disagree with you.