There’s something profoundly intriguing about how some of us have been conditioned from childhood.
The initial years are spent in complete dependence on parents, then as growth takes place with the capacity for explorations and expression, so there is a degree of self-determination. Along with that self-determination there’s a sense in which the parents want their children to become independent. More than that, the child grows and sees the kind of ‘freedom’ that the adults have that they don’t have because they are told that they are too young or should remain subject to the parental authority. So there’s a degree of tension as the child longs for the day when they are old enough to do their own thing. Enough examples around them abound about how great life is when they are independent and autonomous. They are the captain of their own fate, they can shape their own destiny.
At that stage, however, it also becomes apparent that society have put in boundaries and barriers that allows autonomy and independence to only be maintained with controls and responsibilities. These are expressed through law and convention. Few are the people who get to do anything they want to do – relational responsibilities, social responsibilities, physical constraints limit the range of options. Yet those few who attain the position dangle the carrot and perpetuate the vision of doing and being anything and everything you want to be – just like them.
It’s fascinating because it is not dissimilar to the offer that the serpent made to the first couple in the garden of Eden. The offer was for them to be able to become like God – autonomous, self-determining, the measure of good and evil for themselves detached from any dependence. The root of sin, then, is rebellion in a bid to become god.
Essentially, however, it’s all an illusion. The more we desire not have restraints and do what we want and be independent, the more there’s a descent into degrading behaviour, disorder and disaster. It doesn’t prove to be as great as we hoped. On the contrary that independence, autonomy and self-determination leaves us miserable and rootless.
Despite episode after episode that highlights this both on the public stage and in our own lives, there’s still a manic, desperate bid to still keep plugging away at the project.
Thankfully there is an alternative. There is the way, truth and life embodied in Someone who allowed us to see what it is to be truly human.
(Photo by Elias Schupmann on Unsplash)
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 