If “every life is a servitude” and, in the end, we’re all “gonna have to serve somebody,” then whom shall we serve?

The Honor Code gives us an answer, albeit indirectly.  It declares not only that we must serve, but that we ought to be dutiful in service, i.e., that we should serve out of obligation; that we are to be enslaved to the master whom we owe.

Now the world is very fond of telling you that the master you owe is yourself.  We even have popular phrases like, “You owe it to yourself”—to take a vacation, to buy something nice, etc.  But the idea that we owe ourselves anything is, frankly, incoherent.  You cannot be both the lender and the debtor, the master and the slave.

So, what about our fellow man?  Perhaps we owe a life of dutiful service to others.  But do we really believe that we ought to give $5 to the homeless because we owe it to them?  And how, I might ask, did we become indebted to all mankind in the first place?  To be sure, dutiful service often takes the form of caring for others, but that doesn’t mean that others are the masters that we owe.

Perhaps the writer of Ecclesiastes has the answer: “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”   

A Columbus Classical Academy student is dutiful in service.  We ought to take care to pick the right master.