The final stanza of William Ernest Henley’s poem Invictus may be one of the most oft-quoted selections in English verse:

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

We like the sound of that, don’t we? Few concepts offer a more forceful thrill to the human ego than that of self-determination. In this country especially, we take immense pride in our love of individual action — the first official document of American society is aptly called the Declaration of Independence. We’ve fought wars over the right of every person to shape his or her destiny without overbearing government interference, and without the shackles of involuntary bondage.

None of us likes to be told what to do, or even that we have to do anything. We don’t like taking orders from others. We prefer charting our own course. We enjoy telling the rest of the world, in the words of a popular TV show theme, “You’re not the boss of me.”

So militant are we about our insistence upon self-governance that many of us even try to tell God, “You’re not the boss of me.” We resist the concept of required obedience, of a God who issues commandments and expects His created beings to obey them. Far better, to our way of thinking, is a God who loves us, who cares and provides for and dotes upon us, then leaves us alone to do as we please — a God who will accept our worship, in whatever form or manner that worship may take, when we choose to offer it, and then stays clear of our business the whole rest of the time.

But our existence isn’t that simple. We are the handiwork of a God whose written word describes Him as “Him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:13). This is a God who warns that He “will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil” (Ecclesiastes 12:14); a God who “has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness” (Acts 17:31); a God who will mete out to every person who has ever lived the due penalty for “the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10). This is a God who, whether we like it or don’t — and whether we even believe in Him or don’t — is truly “the boss” of each of us.

Much of religious tradition, old-fashioned or newfangled, is built around man’s feeble attempt to bend God to human will. The religions of men all try to make God subservient to the desires of men, rather than the other way around. We want to tell God how we will worship, how we will serve, how we will live, what law we will accept and which we will disregard.

Such a mindset has always been the ruin of humankind, even as it was of Israel in times of old: “For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God” (Romans 10:3); even as it was for the ancient Gentiles, “who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25).

God tells us forthrightly that we are obligated to obey His directives or suffer the eternal consequences (Deuteronomy 6:2; 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9). But He also assures us that His way is always best (Isaiah 55:8-9) and that His commandments, though stringent and demanding, are not intended to burden us (1 John 5:3), but are for our good (Deuteronomy 10:12-13; Psalm 19:7-11; John 14:21; Matthew 11:28-30).

If we reject God’s will as revealed in His Son Jesus, we do so at our everlasting peril: “See that you do not refuse Him who speaks. For if they did not escape who refused Him who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from Him who speaks from heaven” (Hebrews 12:25). Try though we might to assert our own will — to captain our own ships and master our own souls — there comes an awesome day when we will no longer be able to resist His authority (Romans 14:10-11; Philippians 2:9-11; Hebrews 10:29-31). Better that I use this day to submit to Christ’s supreme Lordship — to acknowledge that He is, indeed, “the boss of me.”