So, it seems that every week there is some new scandal or controversy on Facebook.  This week, it was the war between the people promoting this image of a self-supporting student about to graduate debt-free with her undergraduate degree:

…and the people promoting one columnist’s response to the “mythical bootstraps college student.” Given the general political slant of my friends’ list, I will say the latter was more common on my newsfeed.

I will admit that I’m not an overly political person, but I feel this newest Facebook kerfuffle affords as fruitful an opportunity to comment on the OWS (Occupy Wallstreet) movement as you can get.  And, though we may be tired of talking about them by now, I do think the protests going on around us all over the world do merit comment from the theological perspective.

The thing is, both sides of the debate tend to oversimplify the issues of individual vs. corporate responsibility when it comes to personal success and financial viability. “Mythical Bootstraps College Student” offers a fair critique of the “We are the 99%” blog, filled as it is with the woeful life stories, which occasionally come off overly dramatized and blaming “the man” for the author’s own lack of success, level of personal debt, and the reality that sometimes life is about hard work.

On the other had, self-righteous critics of OWS—like that supposed debt-free college senior—promote a dog-eat-dog, “everyone for themselves” worldview which I cannot find it in myself to endorse.

As the column I cited above notes, none of us are really able accomplish material success in this world totally alone.   Whether we were lucky enough to have parents with the means and the inclination to support us through the hoops of higher education or we just landed into the right place at the right time for our dream job, none of us totally get the credit for our own success.

Within the church, however, there’s a deeper theological truth for us to consider than just what scripture says about our inter-dependence on one another (but passages such as Matthew 25:31-46 certainly provide some food for thought).  The fact is that our lives are not our own—we belong to God.  As Jesus puts in it his Sermon on the Mount: “Do not worry saying ‘what will we eat’ or ‘what will we drink’ … But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well" (Matthew 6:31-33)

I’m sure the debate over whether we have the total responsibility for assuring our material wealth and success in this life or whether society has a role to play in ensuring the good of all its members will continue to rage on.  But let us not forget that none of us—not even those reviled 1%-ers—are wholly outside the sphere of God’s providence.