You Are Not Your Own pt. 1
Exploring identity in an inhuman world
Bottom’s Up is a weekly publication looking at the upside-down nature of the Kingdom of God and the ways of Jesus. How can we live in the midst of the kingdoms of this world while being faithful to the ways of Jesus? I’m trying to figure it out and would love for you to join me
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Alan Noble’s You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World is one of my favorite reads.1 Alan’s cultural analysis is truly a gift to his readers. As he dissects the inhumanity of our current culture, your eyes will be opened in seeing all the ways the world we’ve created dehumanizes us will become inescapable. (You’ve been warned). I’ve read the book twice all the way through and revisit portions from time to time. I’ve spoken at a youth retreat where I formed the lessons around the content of the book, led a class at my previous church where we went through the book, and here I am writing about the ideas. I’m not sure how much more of a recommendation you need. Over the next several weeks, I want to unpack some of the ideas within the book.
You Can Be Whatever You Want To Be
Surely at some point in your life you were told “you can be anything you want to be!” As the child of parents who are both under 5’9”, I quickly learned I couldn’t be an NBA player no matter how much I wanted to be. And we all know that it is not entirely true that we can be whatever we want to be, but there is a lot of truth to it. In my 37 years of life, I’ve made a lot of choices - if I was going to go to college, where I was going to college, what I was going to major in, to take or not take a variety of jobs, who I would date, who I would propose to, what house I would put an offer in on, and the list goes on. I wasn’t solely responsible for many of those decisions, but I had within my power to not make any of those decisions. I determined much of my life as it is today.
The default belief our world has is “I am my own and I belong to myself.” Now, as Christians you may immediately be able to spot the lie. And after titling this post and promoting You Are Not Your Own, you know where I’m going with this. And yes, that’s where I want us to end up.But for now, I actually want us to work with the assumption that most in the Western world have, and I would say that very much includes Christians - I am my own and I belong to myself. I want to take some time to look at the obvious and the subtle ways that this default belief influences so much of our lives. Ultimately, I hope to make the case that the ability (and right?) to choose who we are and the idea of belonging to ourselves is packaged as freedom but ends up becoming a prison. You may or may not already agree, but let’s try to set aside assumptions as we start.
Identity Formation
Do you have any formative moments in your life that you willingly or unwillingly carry with you? I’ll share one of each. Somewhere along the way, I picked up that I was lazy. I honestly don’t remember if someone said that to me in a moment and it stuck or if it was a slow build over time. Certainly I am a laid back, even keeled person. I’m also very prone to Newton’s first law of motion - an object in motion tends to stay in motion and an object at rest tends to stay at rest. It can be hard for me to get going, but once I get going I’m gonna get a lot done. Anyway, toward the end of high school and through my early 20s, I definitely had that label of “LAZY” on me. I tried wearing it as a badge of honor and making it a funny part of my personality. But as I aged, I realized that just backfired. I wasn’t lazy, but I leaned into it and now it shaped the way I viewed myself and the ways some others viewed me. I’d have to work hard (AGAIN, NOT ALWAYS MY STRONG SUIT!) to shed that label.
On a more positive note, I had positive words spoken to me and over me that have stuck with me. I went to a Christian high school and the Pastor who taught Senior Bible was a tough teacher, but he seemingly saw something in me. At graduation night, he went down the line and shook all of our hands. When he got to me, he leaned in and whispered, “God will use you in great ways if you let him.” I think most of my teachers saw potential in me, but more than a few probably thought I’d waste that potential. I was seemingly more interested in being funny and popular than I was at achieving anything or even serving God. But Pastor Franklin saw through all of my defenses and called something out in me. Those words have stuck with me and, while I haven’t been totally consistent, I’ve tried to keep my heart and mind open to whatever it is God is doing in and through me.
But these labels that we get from outside and internal sources can define us. There are times where we get the pick of the litter and can choose whatever label we want. We get to define ourselves. Other times it feels like we are late to the party and whoever we wanted to be is taken and we’re forced into some other category we didn’t think would fit us, but we’re stuck. But regardless if you’ve actively chosen the labels you wear or they’ve been given to you, you have been told that you have the freedom to be whatever you want, but that doesn’t always line up with your experience. Pair that with the responsibility we feel to live a life of purpose, to define our identity, to interpret meaningful life events, to choose our values, and to elect where we belong (both which groups and which location) and it can be quite the weight to live under. If we are our own, you are the only one who can set limits on yourself. This is freedom, but this is a terrible burden.
The Burden of Personal Freedom
I think we see this burden of personal belonging playing out in all spheres of life. There’s a sociologist2 who talks about how every society has foreground and background decisions. Background decisions are the decisions that are baked into the societal cake. They are there and made for you. They are the assumptions societies make for one another. Foreground decisions are the decisions that the individual makes for themselves. The theory is that the more background decisions, the more stable the society. This is because there are more shared social norms for the society to stand on. A society with more foreground decisions is less stable and more anxiety inducing.
Now, this isn’t to say that one is necessarily better than the other or that we should push everything to the background. Authoritarian societies are often full of background decisions people don’t have to (nor are they permitted to) make for themselves. High control environments have a type of stability, but that doesn’t necessarily make them healthier.
But following this line of thought, it is clear that in 2024 there are less background decisions than there were in 1954, for instance. Depending on who you ask, this is a good thing. And certainly, many of these decisions should be celebrated. But they also lead to less stability and higher levels of anxiety. These decisions range from the mild and mundane to what was once foundational. Due to the rise of streaming, we have less shared media. We don’t have the whole country sitting down to watch TGIF on ABC each week. Instead of Top-40 radio, we have Spotify where you can listen to any number of artists that no one you know has heard of. Our ideas about race, sexuality, and religion also take a lot less for granted than they did in decades past.
The Complicity of the Church
This burden of freedom isn’t something that just exists “out there.” You can’t point to the “woke progressives” and blame them. You can’t point to the secular right and their move toward authoritarianism either. The American Church also assumes you are your own and belong to yourself. Few, if any, in the church would use that language but we operate as if it is true. Even the language of “a personal relationship with Jesus” falls prey to this way of thinking and living. We no longer belong to a broader community of believers, but instead have our own personal Lord and Savior to whom we are beholden. There is obviously some level of truth to this, but we were never meant to follow Jesus on our own. Community has always been integral to the whole thing, and radically so. Where denominations and local congregations were once where we belonged, we now can “Church shop” for the place that “feels like home.” That is, of course, until it doesn’t. Then we can repeat the cycle. Say something I don’t like? I’ll find a new church. Don’t say the thing I want you to say? I’ll find someone who will. Or, far too often, I’ll just leave the church behind altogether because I can worship anywhere. Again…this is true. But you can’t, or at least shouldn’t, be worshipping alone.
Next week, I’ll look at a few ways in which our society has been constructed to make us less human, look at the responsibilities of self-belonging, and share a Calvin and Hobbes strip.
He’s also one of my favorite interviews from my podcast days. I was able to talk with him three times (once for each of his books). They’re available below if you’re interested in listening:
This vague citing of sources doesn’t make me sound very trustworthy, I know. I did some Googling and I couldn’t find the original source. I know Skye Jethani of Holy Post Podcast often cites this theory as well.