GN Commentary: September 9, 2009 - President Addresses Students

There is a major point missing from President Obama's school address. While hard work is essential in establishing a profitable future, that future is not one written entirely on our own. On the contrary, the Bible reveals something far superior.

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Video Transcript

"Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up. No one's written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future."

So said the president in what became a highly controversial speech by President Obama to a Virginia school this past Tuesday. But what I want to talk about is not politics—not the right wing or the left, not intentions or agendas or propaganda or any of that.

What I want to talk about is the speech itself. In it, the President heavily emphasized the necessity of hard work—telling students about "the responsibility each of you has for your education" and explaining that "You can't drop out of school and just drop into a good job."

In our society, where the standard response to hardship is to cast ourselves as the victim, these words drive home a powerful message. To use the President's own words, "at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life—what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you've got going on at home...That's no excuse for not trying."

The Bible—not a book given to beating around the bush—contains many blunt and straightforward proverbs in the same vein of thought. For instance, "The desire of the lazy man kills him, for his hands refuse to labor" (Proverbs 21:25) and "In all labor there is profit, but idle chatter leads only to poverty" (Proverbs 14:23).

There is a major point missing from President Obama's school address. While hard work is essential in establishing a profitable future, that future is not one written entirely on our own. On the contrary, the Bible reveals something far superior.

God, speaking through the prophet Jeremiah, told His people, "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you,... thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope" (Jeremiah 29:11).

Not only is God heavily involved in shaping our future, He is crafting one filled with peace and hope—one in which, the prophet Isaiah writes, "the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing. For waters shall burst forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert... And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing, with everlasting joy on their heads. They shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away" (Isaiah 35:5-6, 10).

The President is right. Hard work and preparation are good, but in the end our future is in God's hands, and that future is bright indeed.

For GN Magazine, I'm Larry Salyer.