You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World

by Alan Noble

Christians have an obligation to promote a human culture, one that reflects the goodness of creation, the uniqueness of human persons as image bearers, and Christ’s love.

This is the fundamental lie of modernity: that we are our own. Until we see this lie for what it is, until we work to uproot it from our culture and replant a conception of human persons as belonging to God and not ourselves, most of our efforts at improving the world will be glorified Band-Aids.

We strive to independently define our identity, but we are always dependent upon others for the recognition of that identity.

Just because you don’t notice millions of depressed people doesn’t mean that we’re okay. We aren’t.

It’s not that your life is existentially validated because you choose to see it that way. No, your existence is good and right and significant because a loving God intentionally created you and continues to give you your every breath. Your life is significant whether you choose to see it that way or not, which is almost the opposite of the responsibility to self-justify.

No matter how much we consciously affirm that our existence is already justified through God, virtually every other voice we interact with will tell us, “No. Keep striving. You haven’t done enough. If you quit now, your life will be a waste. Do something else to make it worthwhile.” At its best, the church will be a sanctuary from this idolatrous babble, and here, if nowhere else, you should find other souls who will remind you that your life is not a quest for significance or self-actualization, but an act of joyful participation in God’s grace.

The tension we feel in standing transparently before God is resolved through Christ. Not us. Not our storytelling. Not our words of affirmation or positivity. But objectively, in time and space, Christ’s death resolves this tension.

Rather, when we acknowledge that we are not our own but belong to Christ, when we accept that Christ died for our sins and seek to live before Him, God looks at our face and sees the beauty and righteousness of His Son. And the judge of all assures us that we are loved, accepted, and adored. We live before a personal God, not the mechanical god of proceduralism or efficiency. The relentless, impersonal, litigious, crushing force of progress and self-improvement is ended in Christ.

There is no identity for you to discover or create because your identity was never actually in question.

And there is no need for you to express your identity to make it more solid or to compete in the ever-growing marketplace of images because your personhood doesn’t need affirmation from other humans to make it valid.

The danger for Christians who urge others to find their identity in Christ is that most modern people have a secular understanding of identity, one rooted in that contemporary anthropology, where identity has more to do with lifestyle and image than personhood.

Our identity is grounded in the loving gaze of God. When we stand transparently before God, abandoning our efforts of self-establishment and confessing our sins and accepting His grace, we feel that loving gaze upon us.

But if you can get over yourself and stop thinking in terms of efficiency, you can honor God and love your neighbor while having faith that He will set things to right. Don’t let yourself ask, “Is this good deed making any real difference?” If it really is the right thing to do, the efficiency does not matter.

There is comfort in death through belonging to Christ, but it is a hard comfort. Because it asks us to stand before God every moment, never denouncing or rejecting the gift of life, but taking each opportunity to delight in God, enjoy His creation, and extend His grace to others so long as we physically can. This is true even when we suffer physically and mentally, even as we lose control over our body and must depend more on others. We can be comforted that before God there is no burden to use our life efficiently, to accomplish enough or achieve enough, to do enough with our limited time to justify our life.