John F. Kennedy famously said, “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” With those words, he accurately identified one of the great problems we have in our modern Western culture: we invert who ought to be in service of whom. We get into painful situations because we constantly put ourselves above things when we are rightly beneath them.

Is my marriage serving my needs? Does this community match my preferences? Is my church supporting my beliefs? Does my conception of God align with my interests?

All of these are backward. Marriages languish because couples don’t submit themselves to the betterment of it. Society’s fracture because households don’t contribute to the whole. Churches go astray because parishioners rewrite its doctrine. God is lost because His children try to make Him in their own image.

Yes, the individual is important but never forget that some things are bigger than you, and you should be serving them, not the other way around.