Part 1: The Lay Of The Land
Part 1: The Lay Of The Land
The “okay news” of autonomy and the Good News of Jesus
This newsletter is the first part of this week’s series, “To Give Your Life Away”, where I write about how the Gospel of Jesus offers a better invitation than some current cultural ideas and mantras on how to improve your life.
A Hurting World and a Truncated Gospel
Currently, there are many things plaguing both young and old people in our society:
Depression and anxiety
Confusion on what information is accurate and what is misinformation
Declining global economic trends
A loss of purpose and meaning with life
Identity (be it sexual, gender, ethnic, career, etc.)
How does one move forward with our lives when it feels as if issue after issue is rearing it’s ugly head like a never-ending game of whack-a-mole?
As much as I really do appreciate and partake in some invitations from the health and wellness movement - at what point does looking inward reach its threshold and no longer offer any solution to our struggles?
Looking beyond ourselves and into what this world offers tends to lead nowhere as well. Whether your balm of choice is the government, your job, social media, or maybe even some hot yoga - all are but a short dose of assistance or dopamine that may help us in the moment, but unfortunately, do not make for a sustainable long-term solution.
For many who grew up in the Church, even following Jesus was not necessarily a palpable and felt solution to solve the internal (and external) issues that arose each day, week, month, and year. Why? Because following Jesus became a truncated call from full-life, full-body, soul, and mind discipleship to Him, rendered down to “accept Jesus in your heart and you’ll be in heaven.”
What an absolute shame.
When this truncated Gospel is perpetuated and passed down to the next generation and then to the next, it is no wonder many leave behind the Good News of Jesus and in turn, pledge allegiance to the inward-looking news of self-help, or the exhausting news of hustle culture, or the partially nihilistic news of Pitbull (“Life is not a waste of time, time is not a waste of life. So let's not waste any time, get wasted and have the time of our lives.”).
The Okay News of Autonomy
For boomers and Gen-xers, their fallout from the Catholic Church was more-or-less remedied with the widespread teaching of the neo-Reformed position of Gospel - “you are saved by grace through faith, not by works” (Ep. 2:8-9).
However, for this younger generation, I don’t know if that message hits as hard.
Don’t get me wrong, it absolutely is still relevant because all modern-day pseudo spiritualities are a spinoff of works based righteousness and clawing our ways back to God or some form of god.
But hear me out, I think as history has a tendency to repeat itself, the gospel of our age in which the Good News of Jesus contends with now is the gospel of autonomy.
Autonomy, in the Greek, breaks down to: “autos” (self) and “nomos” (law).
True autonomy is self-law, or self-governance.
For many Gen-Xers, the Mosaic Law or rather, the idea behind the Mosaic Law (that you must follow each Law to perfection) was their fight because this schema was overlayed on their vast upbringing in the Catholic tradition. The Good News of Jesus set them free from climbing the spiritual ladder and found true freedom in Christ.
But for Millennials and younger, autonomy, or self-law is what Jesus sets us free from.
If you’ve ever wondered where all of these modern-day liberation movements have come from, it’s from this place of autonomy.
To liberate oneself from the shackles of oppression (such as misogyny, patriarchy, racism, etc.) is a noble and excellent pursuit, don’t get me wrong. But there is a bit of irony at the end of the day with these modern-day liberation movements - whether it is the feminism movement, sexual-liberation movement, or whatever smaller liberation movements exists in between - we all still fall under some form of law at the end of the, and in this case it is the law of the self.
Here’s the crux of it all: if all liberation movements are successful and our true selves are actually set free, then we are left with just that: our true self.
And so this generation is now faced with their unique fork in the road: go left and down the path of self-law or go right and down the path of Jesus-law (the law of agape love).
This fork in the road is not novel. Far from actually.
Because Jesus Himself said the following: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24).
Can you deny yourself in our current cultural moment where everyone wants to agree with themselves?
It is no easy feat and it will be costly.
Give Your Life Away
I’ll be blunt about it: you can’t follow Jesus and desire autonomy. Why? Because pure autonomy leads to self-preservation while following Jesus leads to giving your life away because that’s exactly what Jesus’ life looked like and what it amounted to on the cross.
So if you’re tired of living for yourself.
If you’re tired of protecting your peace.
If you’re tired of being a hermit crab with your identity, finding new homes to define who you are.
If you find a declining and dwindling amount of purpose and identity to these lifestyles, consider the invitation of Jesus: to give your life away as He did with a heart of agape (unconditional) love for God and for people, especially those on the margins of society.
When we can take on the call of Jesus to deny oneself, I genuinely believe a newfound purpose and identity emerges.
I’m not saying it is the silver bullet that kills everything that I wrote at the beginning of this post, but it absolutely can provide clarity on a path forward for you in the person you are becoming. It can provide certainty to your purpose in life. And it can provide a grid or matrix of sorts with how to view this world and all that is beautiful and ugly on this side of eternity.
So will you live for yourself? Or live following the invitation and words of the living God whose life looked pretty good with loving those around Him?
I remembered! Or suspect I remember - it's kind of an on-going thing.
I see this at work, like you said, in the younger generation (saved and unsaved), but also happening in senior Christians. Christians who step away from the church or active participation when they hit retirement age. Or senior Christians who won't defer to leadership younger than themselves or leadership not to their preference. It doesn't surprise me that the younger generation struggles with it when the older generation doesn't lead by humble example.
We're working through some hefty church leadership growth right now - everyone wants to make the decisions and manage the money, no one wants to do the work. Legit had the team I'm trying to develop tell our senior pastor it's his job to connect with and care for the missionaries, it's theirs to approve and deny funds. Very Shark Tank. They are convinced they operate autonomously from the rest of the leadership of the church.
It's not their fault - it's how they were created by the previous pastor (who still sits in that and another board - despite NO LONGER ATTENDING THE CHURCH and actively working for another church). The desire to be autonomous is real, and the need to be saved from our perceived autonomy definitely doesn't disappear or get easier to recognize as we age.
Also with identity and purity - one of my best friends is 50 the the hardest things for her as a single woman in the dating world is finding a Christian guy who's willing to be abstinent until marriage. The general conversation is that it doesn't matter anymore and she's grown and "can make [her] own choices" - to which she tells them, "I am." The struggle is REAL.
I remember this hit in line with something really specific the day you wrote it, but can't remember what. Ditto the perspective though. We cannot be our own gods. It doesn't work.