Independence

Today is Independence Day in the United States, the day we commemorate declaring our independence from England. In temporal terms, independence is a good thing, at least in the sense that we don't depend on others. In this way, independence is much like self-reliance, a virtue that our church teaches. However, in spiritual terms, I'm not sure whether independence is desirable or even possible or not.

For at least as long as we are mortal, we will rely on the grace of God and on Christ's Atonement. We rely on God and His servants for direction. We depend on God for just about everything, including sustaining our life from one moment to the next. For now, at least, complete independence and self-reliance seems impossible.

Furthermore, spiritual self-reliance might be a bad thing, depending on how we interpret it. We shouldn't rely on others to strengthen our testimony, so that kind of self-reliance is good and important, but we also shouldn't rely on ourselves instead of relying on God. Even if we can survive without God's help, we couldn't survive spiritually without God's guidance. Our pursuit of self-reliance should not include rejecting God's help.

So, at least for now, complete independence is undesirable, but I don't know whether that will stay true forever. For now, we should and must rely on God, but I wonder whether that will hold true even when we become gods ourselves. Our ultimate goal is to become like God. Will we still need God's guidance after we've done that? Part of me thinks that we will, because as long as we are progressing, God is progressing, too. With such a head start on us, God will always be ahead of us in His spiritual progression, so He will always have guidance and insights to share with us, and it will always be wise for us to continue to learn from Him.

Is that the same thing as depending on Him? Perhaps not, but it's also not really being independent and self-reliant. So, no. While we should certainly learn to provide for ourselves and gain our own, independent testimony, I don't think that means that we'll ever grow to be completely independent from God.