In honor of the 4th of July, and in defiance of the rising din of distress and discord among our nation’s self-styled censors, I’ve decided that I want to write about Freedom. And not just “freedom” in a generalized “’Mer’ca” way, nor in a strictly political way, but I want to talk about “freedom” in its truest sense: human agency.
Maslow and his whole school of evidence-less psychologizing have made the concept of self-actualization to be the purported summum bonum of life on earth. The idea being that the more of one’s most basic needs are met the more capable a person is of achieving “self-actualization”. Never mind that Maslovian hierarchies have long ago been weighed and found wanting. The fact is, that many still perceive the top of the human pyramid (not the cheerleader kind) to be becoming one’s truest and fullest self.
The funny thing is, I think that the concept of self-actualization: becoming one’s truest and best self, is, indeed, if not the outright goal of creation, a very closely related byproduct of the purpose of our creation. God has created us not simply to be, but to become. God, as Lewis says in The Screwtape Letters, really does want to fill the universe with miniature versions of Himself. The problem I have, isn’t with Maslow’s goal, necessarily, but with his route to get there. If anything, we can see that in our current cultural climate, there are an awful lot of people who have all their physical needs met, and yet they are still destructive malcontents – what in the old days people called “spoiled brats”.
Indeed, in Austen’s immortal words, I would say the problem with many, if not most of the Antifa thugs and BLM Ribbon-Bullies is that “The real evils, indeed, of [the Wokeists] situation were the power of having rather too much [their] own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of [themselves]: these were the disadvantages which threatened alloy to her many enjoyments.” They don’t suffer from a lack of material advantages, indeed, as has been pointed out often, most of these people are among the most privileged human beings to have ever lived in the history of our planet! They have their needs met, and yet, they are far from being productive members of our society living in harmony with their fellow men – which I would say are two fairly obvious prerequisites for being “self-actualized”.
Why?
Why do so many of our privileged youth take to the streets to shout, to demand, to riot, to loot, to burn, to bully, to beat, to assault, to murder? Why do so many who have so much seem to wish to tear everything down around their own heads?
Obviously, there’s no single reason. There are many contributing factors that can be pointed out from many disciplines within the humanities. Historians point to the decadence of our society and to History’s lesson that decadent societies become self-destructive. A point Steinbeck makes in his monumentally underappreciated work The Short Reign of Pippin IV. Steinbeck, essentially, says that the better off a society is the more distrustful and greedy people become – human nature never accepts a gift horse without examining doing some amateur dentistry. Economists, Political Scientists, and others all have their reasons for why America’s Liberal Youth have decided that a riotous Rumspringa is the route to revolution – and why that revolution is even necessary in the first place.
But I’d like to set aside those questions, for the time being, and not look at WHY young persons are setting up their own independent countries within Maccas of Progressivism. Instead, I want to look at the consequences that we should expect. To derive these consequences, I want us to look at the life of David in II Samuel. We need some of the wisdom of the ancients to help us navigate our times. We need some Bronze Age truth to know how to handle today’s technophilic barbarians.
David, for most of his presence in I Samuel, is growing as a man and as a leader. We see him, more and more, taking charge of his own life. Indeed, even when he’s driven from Israel by Saul, we see him taking command. Essentially, what the author of the Samuel material is saying is that we watch David slowly but surely take more and more control of his life and environment as Saul slowly loses more and more control. David gains a following and land and wives and children. Saul loses all that – as well as his mind and soul!
As we move through the back and forth of the rise of David and the fall of the Saulide dynasty we see that the godly David, because he seeks to subject Himself to Yahweh’s rule, gains more and more control of his own life. In essence, because David submits to God and gives God authority in his own life, God gives it back. God gives David the freedom to act as he sees fit because David is a faithful steward of his life.
And this lesson is crucial to understanding the narrative arc of David’ life. David gains power and position in spite of persecution because of his holiness. But. And, yes, there is a “but”. But David’s choice to adulterate with Bathsheba and murder Uriah inverts the arc. David goes from having authority over his land and agency in his life to becoming a passive participant in the events that come to pass.
After David sins and is confronted by Nathan the prophet, we see, in little hints, and subtle narrative choices, that David is no longer in charge of events. Now, Absalom is the driver of the events in David’s life. David once was the king of everything because God made him so (at least that’s what he’d tell Sara Bareilles). But over the course of chapters 13-20 we see that David is not leading but he’s instead increasingly impotently responding to events around him. He is paralyzed when Amnon rapes Tamar. He does nothing when Absalom murders Amnon. He is pushed into bringing Absalom out of exile. He does nothing to stop Absalom’s growing rebellious power. David is driven from his palace and forced to depend on the kindness of strangers. He has to rely on Ahithophel’s wisdom being frustrated. His soldiers won’t let him fight. He cannot save Absalom’s life. And in the end, Joab is king in all but name.
The point that the writer of Samuel is trying to convey is that when we engage in sin we surrender our agency and become passive participants in our lives.
Another way to put that is that more we sin the more we are enslaved to it. Sin is enthralling (in the literal AND figurative senses)! David learned, to his sorrow, that yielding to temptation yields a rather bitter harvest. And Davey got a bumper-crop, too!
Sin robs us of our agency and enslaves us. We cannot be self-actualized when we’re engaging in godlessness. It’s simply impossible. Being your best self and sinning are contradictory, mutually exclusive, diametrically opposed propositions.
Moreover, sinning and being free are mutually exclusive. As the youth of America continue to reject Christ and live godless lives of sexual debauchery, greed, pride, sloth, rage, and violence, we should expect them to become LESS rational. I hear people cry out, “can’t these kids see what they’re doing is making things worse?”
No.
No. they cannot.
Because they have been deceived by sin into becoming passive participants in their own lives. They are enslaved to sin and in their thralldom, they consider themselves virtuous if they can destroy a building or shame a member of the bourgeoisie or silence someone speaking ‘hate speech”. Their critical thinking skills are being shut down because that’s what happens when you go in for godlessness: you lose control.
Peter wisely said that “you’re a slave to whatever masters you.”
Is it any wonder that those who are living the godless lives and being enslaved to sin are the ones who say that “whiteness” takes away the agency of minorities, women, homosexuals, transsexuals, neuro-atypicals, and whatever other cause célèbre du jour marginalized group we want to add? Is it any wonder that people who have abandoned their own moral and intellectual freedom are claiming that nobody has freedom because of the systemically racist homophobic capitalist patriarchy?
Can we be surprised that people who are enslaved to sin think that freedom is a myth?
We oughtn’t to be.