COMMENTARY: The lucky and the not-so-lucky

c. 1998 Religion News Service (Tom Ehrich is the author of”On a Journey,”daily meditations available through Journey Publishing Co. If you have feedback or want to suggest a question for a future column, send e-mail to: journey(AT)interpath.com) UNDATED _ My mind was drifting. Earnest words filled the high school auditorium. I hoped induction into the […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is the author of”On a Journey,”daily meditations available through Journey Publishing Co. If you have feedback or want to suggest a question for a future column, send e-mail to: journey(AT)interpath.com)

UNDATED _ My mind was drifting. Earnest words filled the high school auditorium.


I hoped induction into the National Honor Society would encourage my son to honor the life of the mind _ not just get into a good college and get a good job, but honor and use God’s gift of intelligence. I was waiting to capture a mind-snapshot of him walking across the stage.

Then Stephanie Stallings stepped to the microphone for the obligatory talk on”service.”Brown hair, flowered dress, nervous but poised.”How do I tell you about service, dear children of my generation, children who know naught of war and hardship and persecution?”she asked.”How do I tell you, children of privilege and innumerable blessings”_ I sat up _”of days and times not far from our own, where children of our own age have died, laid down their lives for a vision, for a dream of freedom?”How do I tell you of these wars, these struggles”_ I sat forward _”where the children have known nothing but suffering and lives of constant struggle?”These blessings we enjoy aren’t our own. We were not chosen for this life because we are any better than others. The truth is that we are the lucky ones.”With luck, freedom and plenty comes responsibility, she said.

Stephanie’s words _”we are the lucky ones”_ stirred something in me: not just an echo of 1960s idealism, but a glimpse of truth the blessed often overlook in their smug rush to take credit and build bigger storehouses.

Luck is simply luck. We who were born into American prosperity can’t claim superiority. Those born into the desperate poverty of Bangladesh or the warfare of Bosnia can’t be seen as inferior.

The child who is loved and treasured is fortunate. The child who is incested or beaten is unfortunate. Neither chose their fate.

Boys who survive the alcoholic adventures and crazy driving of youth are lucky. Girls who have sex but don’t get pregnant are lucky. The child whose parents don’t get divorced, don’t get laid off, and don’t get ill is lucky.

In our culture of”not enough”_ where no one is thin enough, pretty enough or safe enough, where gadgets become necessities and fads change lives, where we always need one more purchase to be whole _ the lucky are encouraged to see themselves as deserving and the unlucky as dangerous. Rather than express gratitude, the blessed buy guns and 401(k)s.

The lucky find each other in colleges whose marketers proclaim, in four-color precision, the boost to lifetime earnings comes from an elite diploma, where learning to think matters less than finding a marketable skill to perpetuate the fruits of good fortune.


The lucky find each other in churches where”good news to the poor”has become the”gospel of prosperity”and one who”laid down his life for many”is claimed by the privileged as the personal guarantor of further good fortune.

The lucky are even now finding each other in walled-off retirement centers, where”asset protection”becomes a life purpose and the unlucky are seen as sorry souls who should have worked harder.

The lucky, you see, never see themselves as lucky. It’s intolerable to see life as a crapshoot. The fortunate want to see life as cause and effect, good fortune as a consequence of inherent personal goodness, and God as one who blesses the deserving.

Stephanie Stallings’ words faded quickly in the sunshine outside the high school auditorium. Her call to service ran into the pressing business of making lunch plans. Students piled into cars. Parents returned to work.

I remembered speaking to graduating seniors in a wealthy suburb. The measure of their lives, I told them, wouldn’t be earning enough money to equal their parents’ style of living, but how they handled misfortune, suffering, failure and the consequences of chance.

Two drunken boys in the front row tried to rattle me by making faces. An outraged relative from another wealthy suburb called at 10 p.m. to tell me I should be ashamed of giving such a”down”message.


Maybe it takes misfortune to appreciate good fortune.

MJP END EHRICH

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!