First, congratulations! You made it! And you’re starting something fresh. This is “commencement” because you’re commencing something. It’s a new phase with new opportunity and new freedom.
And freedom is a very good thing. It must be because God clearly regards it so highly. He is completely free, and he’s created us in his image.
Freedom is also a very tricky thing. It means you and I are free to walk away from him and toward anything else, no matter how deadly or just plain ol’ stupid. I mean, Jesus just lets people walk away from him all the time in the Gospels. He doesn’t chase them down, saying, “Hey! Wait! Allow me to re-phrase…”
He wants us to love and obey him, but he seems totally committed to our freedom. He won’t overwhelm us. Like the father in the “prodigal son” story, he’ll let us go have our big freedom party. He won’t crash it.
I know there are people (far smarter than me) who think we don’t really have free will, that we don’t really choose things. I confess I don’t understand the Bible if that’s true. There are so many admonitions and warnings, like when Moses is giving his own sort of graduation speech. He’s pleading with his people, and he seems convinced they can make life-or-death choices:
Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live! You can make this choice by loving the LORD your God, obeying him, and committing yourself firmly to him. This is the key to your life. (Deuteronomy 30:19–20 NLT)
It’s not recorded in Scripture, but maybe there was a guy in the crowd listening to this, who replied, “Ah… actually, Moses, we don’t really get to ‘choose’ anything, and…” but I kind of doubt it. Moses is begging here. You’re free!… even to destroy yourselves if you like (see vv. 17–18).
We can choose to destroy ourselves, and we often do. This is an empirical fact, on display daily. Freedom is a wonderful thing, but like a lot of other wonderful things, when it becomes the thing, it mutates into something horrific.
Mark Sayers is an Australian author and cultural commentator who talks about how we need three things to really thrive in life: Community, meaning, and freedom. That he neglected to mention toast is an oversight on his part, but I still largely agree with his thesis.
He says we’ve overdosed on the “freedom” part. Our culture regards our personal freedom as the Ultimate Thing. We view all of life as hyper-consumers: Everything, we think, should be a matter of personal choice and preference. Every single thing.
But here’s a fair question: Does this actually work? Are people really more satisfied with life? Are people happier? I think we’re more desperate than ever for community and meaning.
Mother Teresa is quoted as saying, “Loneliness is the leprosy of the modern world,” (i) and there’s ample reason to believe it’s gotten much worse since she said it.
You can google “loneliness epidemic” and find mountains of reading material. The New Yorker published a “History of Loneliness” which began with the question, “Why did modern life get so lonely?” (ii)
Just a few days ago, I saw a multiple news items with headlines like this one from the Washington Post: “Therapists say they can’t meet high demand as anxiety, depression linger” with anecdotes about a mental health industry that is overwhelmed with people who simply “want to connect, people who feel alone, people who are really lost.”
“The young women I am seeing, I am just blown away with the anxiety,” another counselor quoted in this article says, “It’s this physical manifestation of anxiety, which I hadn’t seen to this extent before.”
Andrew Ross, an ER doctor, writes in CompactMag about how he, like so many others in his field, are seeing “deaths of despair”—from alcoholism, drug abuse, and suicide—becoming more and more common.
It is rare to make it through any of my overnight shifts without seeing a fentanyl overdose, fatal or not. Several years ago, I had the terrible task of informing parents that their son had died from an overdose, only to have them inform me that his sister had died the same way the year before.
In pediatrics, the ER is full of children awaiting inpatient hospitalization for acute psychiatric emergencies to a degree I would never have imagined 10 years ago… our emergency departments are now the last refuge for victims of some of modernity’s greatest scourges—loneliness and ennui arising from inadequate virtual relationships and actual fentanyl.
Another story pops up: Three prominent children’s health organizations declare that child and adolescent mental health is now a national emergency. More teenage boys now die from suicides than from motor accidents. The number of kids feeling hopeless is way up, and at record levels even among ten- to fourteen-year-olds.(iv)
So, again, it’s fair to question our own culture: “So, is this working?”
Humans for millennia have been born into community and meaning. They may have lacked freedom, compared to us (“My dad is a farmer, his dad was a farmer, his dad was a farmer… wonder what I’ll be?”) but they knew the stories of their community; knew the people around them; lived around multiple generations of family; knew when and where the festivals would be; and knew there were roles to play in the family, village, or neighborhood.
Now, we have so much more freedom… but maybe we don’t even know who we are.
Sure, I can be “free,” but it sure seems like freedom—without meaning and community—becomes its own dark, anxious, and lonely, prison.
The good news is that you and I don’t have to stay there. It’s when we bind ourselves to the right things, to true, life-giving things, we find meaning, community, and even new, healthy freedoms.
I gave up my freedom, in a sense, when I took a vow before a couple hundred people and married my wife, Carolyn. But now I’m free to know what it’s like to be loved by someone for 34 years and counting. I’m even free now to know what it’s like to tickle my tiny granddaughter. If I stayed The Ultimate Free Agent, I would not be free to do that.
I remember hearing Chris Martin from Coldplay talking about forcing himself to do his piano lessons when his friends were outside the window playing soccer. They’re free, right? He’s not. All that practice. Over and over. Bound to a piano bench.
But look who’s free to travel the world now? If you grew up practicing classical piano, you may not have been free to play as many fun video games as I did. But now who’s free now to play Rachmaninoff? Not me. No, you’ve got the freedom now to create beautiful things.
My son is in med school, working very hard to—he hopes—become a brain surgeon for CURE hospitals that serve poor children worldwide. He’s sacrificing so much freedom. But soon enough, he will be free to heal, and even save lives. Children, perhaps thousands, will then be free to grow up and laugh and play.
His loss of freedom, for now, means true freedom will abound, later.
* *
Our culture resists the God of the Bible in large part because of the loss-of-freedom thing. Particularly, as you know, when it comes to sexuality. His restrictions seem, to many, absurd. How can he possibly be good and so out of step?
The limits of sexuality can seem plain ridiculous in our current context. Sex is for marriage only? Marriage is male-female only? And for two people only? Why so restrictive? What kind of God would demand this? These are ancient rules, and we must be liberated from them.
We all know this is a fundamental issue of our time, and perhaps the biggest reason many, including many of my friends, neighbors, coworkers, etc., have moved away from trusting the God of the Bible. How could He possibly be worthy of trusting? How could He possibly be “good”?
It’s fair to have doubts. It’s good to ask questions. I’d argue, though, that his restrictions actually prove his goodness.
* *
So I propose a thought experiment, and I need to tell you something first: I’m well-aware I’m morally superior to no one. Jesus puts us all on a level playing field, so there’s no fooling myself about this. I’m desperately thankful for forgiveness. I need it as much as anyone. This isn’t about moral superiority. It’s about finding God to be unfair, or trustworthy.
Here, then, is the thought experiment: What if humans obeyed God in just the area of human sexuality?
Now, it’s a big area to be sure, but let’s just focus on this one rather than talk about, say, money or other big issues. What difference might it make?
Well, we wouldn’t have millions of families broken up by adultery and people, like me, dealing with the effects of those divorces.
The tragedy of fatherlessness would be almost non-existent (greatly impacting poverty rates, among other things).
There’d be no demand for an entire abortion industry. There are currently nearly a million abortions a year in the U.S. People on all sides of the issue generally agree the decision for women can be agonizing and traumatizing.
We wouldn’t have needed a “Me too” movement. There wouldn’t be millions of tragic stories of sexual harassment and abuse at the hands of predators at work or in churches or schools.
The massive porn industry, one that victimizes millions of women, men, boys, and girls worldwide? It wouldn’t exist.
There would be zero human sex trafficking and forced prostitution, exploiting millions of the most vulnerable people on the planet.
There would be no incest. No children would be sexually abused, period.
There would be no sexually transmitted diseases. There are 20 million people in the U.S. who get an STD each year, and the number of people suffering is going up, not down. (vi)
We could go on, but this is sad even without thinking about the cascading societal effects of each one of these things.
Again, it’s just a question and a little thought experiment. It might seem simplistic, and maybe I’m a simple person, but simple questions are often good ones to ask.
When I’ve talked to friends about this, I sometimes get, “Yes, but we must deal with the world as it currently is, not some fantasy world.”
And I agree! But let’s acknowledge why the world is the way it is: We chose this.
It’s like we’ve opened a nuclear Pandora’s box, and the fallout is everywhere. Maybe we should acknowledge it? Maybe consider that the path we’ve chosen actually… doesn’t work?
Is God being a horrible taskmaster, or is He lovingly trying to spare us from destruction?
And if His way works better, shouldn’t we acknowledge it rather than resent Him?
Again, this isn’t about moral superiority. I don’t know any adults who aren’t sexual sinners, including me. This isn’t about winning some kind of argument or forcing anyone to live a certain way. It’s about being honest with ourselves, and fair to a God whom we like to put on trial.
* *
I know how “weird” and even culturally offensive it is to argue for limits on our freedoms in favor of community and meaning. But I’m trying to make a case that even in this culture, which I believe is failing us, we see evidence that God is actually good.
If you agree that our culture is deeply dysfunctional, and if there is a Creator who wants us to thrive, wouldn’t that Creator tell us things that run deeply counter to our culture, and maybe offend it?
There’s no finger-pointing here. It’s a chance to marvel again at two things: God’s wisdom, and his patience with us.
After all, growing up I learned to dread Judgment Day, and The Great Unveiling to the Entire World of All the Selfish and Gross Things I’ve Done or at Least Thought About. But I now love what Frederick Buechner wrote about that event, a wonderful final word about the ultimate source of our peace:
The judge will be Christ. In other words, the one who judges us most finally will be the one who loves us most fully.(vii)
That’s great news, indeed. That is your deepest identity: No matter what happens, we are loved, even though we didn’t do anything to deserve it.
And you are truly free; free to choose blessings, or curses. Like Moses, I beg you to choose… life.
And may the Lord—this trustworthy Lord we’ve been talking about—truly bless you and keep you.
May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you.
And may he give you what only he can ultimately give.
Peace.
[ii] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/06/the-history-of-loneliness
[iii] https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/11/16/therapist-high-demand-mental-health/
[iv] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/teen-suicides-increased-many-states-pandemic-rcna25825
[v] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_statistics_in_the_United_States
[vii] Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words, 206.