Everyone was designed to live a bounded existence. We are creatures, accountable to our Creator, and called to live in accord with his law and design. We all have certain responsibilities and obligations assigned to us. Some things are our responsibilities, some things aren’t — being able to draw the proper line between what I am responsible for and what I am not is a key to overcoming anxiety and burnout. It is not a sin to be finite. Further, we were never meant to live with unrestrained, unrestricted, uncontrolled freedom. We were made for ordered liberty under God‘s law. Pure autonomy (self-law) turns out to be incredibly destructive, no matter how alluring. Every man who is in authority should also be under authority. A man is the head of his household yes, but he’s accountable to other authorities around and above him. Pastors and elders have real authority in the context of a local church, but they are accountable to the wider church, particularly through presbyteries. Civil magistrates have real authority, but civil governors are always accountable to other magistrates, and there are legitimate ways to push back when they abuse their authority.
The damage that unfettered, disordered liberty can do is perhaps best seen in the sexual realm. The sexual revolution promised liberation but it actually brought bondage. Sexual liberation is actually sexual suicide. Our sexual lives need to be ordered and bounded and accountable. Chaotic, uncontrolled sexuality is destructive. God designed sex and covenant to go together; to separate them is abuse ourselves. Sexual sin will literally drive people mad. No matter how much people buy into the lies of the sexual revolution, sexual sin continues to have the same consequences, personally and socially, it has always had. We can rebel against God’s sexual design, but God’s design is stubborn. We can fight nature, but nature is stubborn; indeed, nature remain undefeated. Flaunting the laws of sex is as thrilling and deadly as flaunting the law of gravity — thrilling for a moment, yes, but deadly in the end.
God assigned men and women particular particular roles so that men do not have to invent manhood and women women do not have to invent womanhood. The burden of creating your own existence and meaning is too much for any person to bear. It might sound freeing, but its really crushing. You will never be a stable, mature person so long as you think you have to author your own life story. Creating your own essence ex nihlo is too much for any creature to bear. We need the roles that God has assigned us the same way fish need water. So far from bringing liberation, the idea that you can be anything you want to be (as we sometimes tell little kids) is actually crippling and paralyzing. You do not need unlimited options. You can be a range of things within what God has designed you to be. You can be a range of things within the the parameters of what God‘s law permits. You can be a range of things determined by the skills, talents, and opportunities God grants you. But you can’t “be anything you want.” That’s the worst possible thing we can tell someone. It’s the lie of the serpent — that you shall be a god, your own god. It’s not even good for us to have fifty different kinds of peanut butter to choose from at the grocery store; how much worse a totally open-ended, undefined, role-less life. We need scripts; thankfully God has given them to us.
Maybe this is what that depraved sage, Mark Twain, meant when he said, “The worst possible advice you can give someone is, ‘Be yourself.’” You should not be who you want yourself to be. You should be who God has designed you to be and called you to be and commanded you to be. You should not try to create an identity, but receive the identity God has bestowed upon you. You should not try to invent yourself; you should recognize how God created you, and live accordingly.
It is incredibly arrogant to think we know ourselves better than God. Traditional Christian societies saw the performance of our divinely assigned duties as the key to happiness. The pursuit of happiness is really and truly the pursuit of God’s will for your life. This is what the Reformers were getting at with their doctrine of vocation — God assigns each us a sentry post from which we are serve. Modern secular people think they will find happiness in escaping and negating duties. But fulfilling our duties, even when (maybe especially when) they are difficult is what gives life its significance. If we reject the meaning God has assigned ourselves, we will be chasing after our own meaning, all the way to hell. Because that’s where the road of autonomy leads.
Traditional Christian societies believed desires are not morally neutral; thus we have the responsibility to cultivate desire for what is good and crucify the desire for what is evil. Modern secular people allow desires and feelings to define identity and even reality. Traditional Christian societies taught people to look beyond themselves, to a transcendent reference point to find meaning; in other words, they anchored human meaning and significance in a relationship with God. Modern secular societies say man can find meaning by looking within, by finding the spark of the divine within himself. This has been the source of untold misery.
I saw a short video (one of those little clips that makes the rounds on social media) the other day in which a young wife and mother revealed that she had told her husband she wanted a divorce — apparently for no other reason that her boredom with life. She said her marriage had not lived up to her expectations — even though she bragged on how perfect her husband is. She said she couldn’t be herself with her husband. But she said she could not blame him for not really knowing her because, “I don’t even know who I am.” But someone should tell her who she is— she is a wife and a mother, and those roles come with rules and responsibilities. But no, she insists she must “find herself” — which she thinks she can only do by escaping from those responsibilities. She thinks of her existence as fluid; she has no anchor; nothing and no one outside herself that holds her accountable; she will answer to no one but herself. So rather than sacrifice herself for her family, she will sacrifice her family in her quest for….well, who knows what she will find on the other side, but it won’t be happiness. This is pure folly. But it’s the way of the autonomous modern person who insists, “I will have no other gods before me.” It’s narcissism. It’s pure selfishness. It’s the idolatry of the self. It’s complete self-absorption. It’s ends in misery and ruin. Play Satanic games, win Satanic prizes.
And so I say it again: We were designed to live a bounded existence. An anchored life. A life lived in accord with God’s law. A life lived in accord with God’s design for human nature. Human existence is not fluid; it is shaped by the way God made us. Pour your life into God’s mold and see what happens. Pour yourself out in sacrificial service and self-giving love. Fulfillment, meaning, significance, happiness — they can all only be found when we live life God’s way. God’s ways are the best ways. Man’s ways end in ruin. “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death” (Proverbs 14:12).
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