"For the man who wants to save his own life will lose it; but the man who loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it." (St. Mark 8:35 TEV)

"We're only number two; we try harder!" I'm sure you've all seen the magazine ad of the car rental agency that uses this slogan. In a way the slogan strongly reflects some of our national thinking. One of the key doctrines of our American enterprise is hard work.

If a person's going to succeed in life, we say, he will have to exert himself. It is often pointed out that American capitalism got where it did because the country was full of self-made men. People knocked themselves out to rise from financial obscurity to fiscal soundness and even wealth. To this day we tend to admire the self-made man - the one who started at the bottom and work…