I worked as a server for four years in seminary. By my final semester, the freedom passages of the Bible, like the Exodus and Israel’s return from exile, began to pop. I longed to be free from burden-lifting and compulsory service. If you’ve ever worked a job you hated, you know this thirst for freedom. When I began that job, I felt grateful every time I walked in the doors. But by the final months, it felt like several hours chained to the bottom of a galley ship. What happened? My vision of my best life and best self changed.
When I began as a server, I was a grad student who needed flexible employment. As time went on, my vision shifted to what lay beyond, to the kinds of work I would be free to do after graduating. Working as a server felt less like a tool moving me towards this best self, and more like a chain holding me down. This happens a lot. An activity or a group that initially brings freedom becomes a form of loathsome slavery.
One man’s prison, though, is another man’s paradise (or the same man at different times). The veteran teacher who’s come through a failed marriage and failed business and the college graduate in his first job, thrilled to be impacting lives, can walk into the same classroom with opposite perspectives. Or two students sit in the same class—one in dejected bondage, the other feeling free and fearing the bondage awaiting after class.
What is freedom? If we assume that every person wants to maximize their freedom, it cannot merely be escaping the demands of other people. If that were the case, every person would seek to develop survival skills to live off the land in isolation. Some people prize this sort of minimalist utopia, but obviously not everyone. The difference is how you define self-actualization.
For many, building wealth is the pathway to self-actualization. More resources expand your choices, and therefore your freedom. Others see wealth as its own bondage. Your life becomes walled-in by money-management and all the people vying for their place in your decisions. Such contradictions lead us to conclude that the pursuit of freedom is none other than the fabled and elusive “pursuit of happiness.” In other words, the goal posts keep moving as your view of your best self evolves.
There’s a sad irony at work here. The more freedom you enjoy (politically, financially, vocationally), the more hazy your pursuit of freedom becomes. Even as you reach one sort of freedom, your mind will flick to a new horizon. No one ever arrives at a place where they think, “At last, I’m totally free—nothing is getting in my way. All my dreams are reality; I’m perfectly self-actualized.”
In order to live free, you must first answer the question of what does your best self look like? Without a solid vision of this goal, you will forever be chasing the fleeing back of a phantom freedom. Jesus is that solid and stable vision of your best self. You will live free as you cast off the things that take you away from that Jesus-self and add on the things that make you look more like him.
Bonus: Why I wrote a book on Christian Self-Actualization
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