One of the terrible burdens of our time is the so-called freedom to define yourself and to decide for yourself who you are, what you want, and how to live it out. There was a time when I thought this is what I wanted. In the end, I found it all exhausting. It consumed my time and energy until I surrendered to what I had learned from my parents, what I had been taught in church, what I had seen in the lives of my family, and what the Scriptures said. Thankfully, this journey of so-called self-discovery did not last very long. The power of the examples around me and my upbringing within a community of faith laid calm on the sea of upset that this supposed liberty offered to me had created. Sadly, there are too many people for whom the journey had no ending and has no end. They are caught in the prison of this freedom and nothing else can exist before these basic questions are answered. This is no gift. It is a curse.
The sexual revolution said that sex was for everything but marriage and children. It has become so embedded in our culture and in our lives that it is no longer questioned. Even worse, the revolution expanded beyond the realm of desire and into a basic question of gender thrust upon the child as well as the adult. You must figure out not only who turns you on but also who you are -- without DNA or sex organs to inform that decision. Then you can use all the various forms to prevent the sexual union of man and woman from fulfilling its primary purpose and clean up the mess when it doesn't with a cheap and readily available morning after pill.
Work is no longer simply for the benefit of those in your care and to provide for yourself, it has become encumbered with the need to give us happiness more than purpose. Our labors must provide us not simply with the needs of this body and life but interest, entertainment, and satisfaction. Where my grandparents and parents knew almost instinctively who they were and what was the purpose of their lives, my grandchildren will have to treat these questions as a treasure map that might just take the majority of their lives to discover. Work and money had meaning because of the people within your care -- those for whom you labored in unpleasant and unsatisfying tedium and those who benefited from the dollars the job provided. But now it is more complicated.
Our children learn this stress too early, their childhoods robbed from by the intrusion of adult sized challenges and puzzles which must be solved before play. Screens not only provide entertainment but shape the brain to love the search as much as the destination and inform in subtle ways the values and truths no longer built upon fact or faith but expedience. Anxiety has been our gift to the children we should have insulated from these adult sized fears and questions.
The gift of faith is the gift of peace -- peace that comes first from the answer of who we are and why we are here, the order that shapes our lives not to curse us but to help us fulfill our purpose and find rest from the constant pressures of sex, money, work, entertainment, and happiness. The rest that our Lord promises is not sleep but an end to the constant questions that prevent sleep and create turmoil where there was meant to be peace. He gives us this peace, not as the world gives, but as only He can give. Thanks be to God. What we have to offer the world is not a restricted life which is bounded by unfair demands but the true and real freedom born of a death to end death and a life strong enough to live forever.
1 comment:
You have pointed out the crisis of our day. People are stressed, confused about life, where they fit in, what is important, how to live. It is actually an old problem. It need not be overwhelming, however, as it has often been pointed out that Christians who walk by faith in Christ each day are able to find more contentment, hope, and peace of mind than those who try to find satisfaction elsewhere. A Christian should not have an ‘identity crisis” We are followers of Jesus, sinners saved by grace. We have God’s assurances, His words, His means of grace, and His church. We have fellow believers. We are not alone. If we regard our faith as foundational to our way of thinking, our life meaning, and our pearl of wisdom, than we will be habitually relying on Christ and following Him, and no “existential’ crisis will afflict us enough to lose our faith. Soli Deo Gloria
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