It is not good for man to be alone.
That is, unless he’s a real man. Self-made. Self-educated. Self-starting. Self-motivated. Self-helped.
A true American—like Benjamin Franklin. In his autobiography, Old Ben remembers a 17 year-old teenager who entered Philadelphia with a dollar and a dream: “I knew no soul nor where to look for lodging.” As he tells it, young Franklin spent his last three pence at a bakery and “went down Chestnut Street and part of Walnut Street, eating my roll all the way.”
Franklin didn’t need money or connections to succeed—he carved his own path through hard work and business savvy. He built his own printing house, forged his own political alliances, formed his own virtue, made his own luck.
But it is not good for man to be alone.
Born into a poor family, Franklin was his own teacher, cutting his teeth on his father’s copies of The Pilgrim’s Progress and Plutarch’s Lives until his connections with booksellers’ apprentices allowed him access to “better books,” which he borrowed on the sly. “Often I sat up in my room reading the greatest part of the night,” he writes, whenever he had to return the book before the shop opened next morning.
Benjamin Vaughan wrote a ringing endorsement of Franklin’s personal narrative (which the author obligingly includes in toto): “Your discovery that [preparedness for a reasonable course of life] is in many a man’s private power will be invaluable!” In his estimation, Franklin’s autobiography would “not merely teach self-education, but the education of the wise man . . . and invite all wise men to become like yourself.”
If only we could all be like Ben Franklin: able to walk into Philadelphia a penniless teenager and die its patron saint on the sheer force of one’s own will, virtue, and character.
If only we were all so self-sufficient. If only we could all succeed—and without help.
It has to be this way for a man like Franklin. Because in a deist’s universe, God doesn’t help those who help themselves; God doesn’t help at all.
Franklin didn’t believe in the God of the Bible; he makes that plain in his autobiography and in his manner of living. Because that God declares in the second chapter of Genesis: “It is not good for man to be alone; I will make a helper fit for him.” (Gen 2:18)
As human beings, we need help. The self-made Christian “is not good.” In fact, the self-made Christian does not exist. We are sons in need of a Father (Mt 6:32). We are students in need of a Teacher (Mk 4:38). We are orphans in need of a Helper (Jn 14:26).
There is no great virtue in being “self-” anything. It is contrary to human nature to try to succeed in any endeavor apart from the help of God and others. And there is no great shame in needing help. We all need help—in all things—because it is not good for man to be alone.
Our Fletcher made Libby’s Banana Bread this evening—and all by himself (insert winky face emoji).
What’s fun about this is that he couldn’t have done it without the help of his Great-Great-Great Aunt Libby on the Fox side or without the hours upon hours of on the job experience in the Ashby kitchen.
Even when we do it “all by ourselves,” we never really do.