By Rudy Bazin
I wasted no time buying into the American Dream, the belief that if you work hard, you will reap the rewards, that this land is full of opportunity, that with enough grit you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
As a Haitian immigrant who arrived in this country with nothing but a suitcase, I needed those words to be true. I needed America to keep its promise if I was going to make it my home.
Ten years later, my naïveté was exposed. I watched people who were born on this soil still struggle to make ends meet. It was as if the boots they were given had no straps, while others were missing boots altogether.
Meanwhile, my life seemed to be moving in the opposite direction. I went back to school, earned an accounting degree, and eventually started an accounting, HR, and payroll firm serving small and mid-sized businesses across Mississippi and surrounding states.
That was when a dangerous seed started taking root. If not everyone can achieve the American Dream, but I can, then I must be special. “Look what I have done.” My ego grew quietly but steadily.
Yes, people who carry ideas and build something meaningful are special. But what if those ideas aren’t proof of superiority but evidence of God’s generosity, talents entrusted to us for stewardship, as Jesus described?
Seeing my work as something entrusted, not owned, changed how I saw everything. It grounded me. It reoriented my days around the heart of the Giver rather than the shine of the gift. I realized that crediting myself for “success” had bound me to the talent itself, leaving me strangely hollow.
As I paid attention, I realized God was continuously leading me along the same path He’d taken Himself – inviting me into a generosity that costs me something.
I did not map it out at first. But looking back, I can see how prayer was loosening my grip on the things that made me feel secure. God drew me uncomfortably close to the pain of those around me. Compassion followed – not to feel noble, but to participate in that pain. And just when I thought I had done enough, I was being nudged to care about what caused the harm in the first place.
I do not claim to have mastered this, but I am learning to live within this map as a cycle, one I call the Cycle of Justice, because it keeps teaching me that stewardship isn’t about holding what I have been given well, but giving it up continuously for the sake of the vulnerable.
Even now, when my flesh craves the credit for my generosity, God gently reminds me that the truest reward is not recognition here but freedom – freedom from needing to be seen at all.
Rudy Bazin is an accounting professional and writer who is passionate about generosity and the ways it loosens the grip of mammon on our lives. He is working on a book on this subject, expected in the fall of 2026.