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.

we belong, and living before Him frees us from the unbearable burden of self-belonging.

But, if we are not in fact our own, then living “authentically” will not produce human flourishing, and a society that compels us to live “authentically” will only make us increasingly distressed, exhausted, and alienated.1

At the turn of the twentieth century, poets and authors and artists faced an acute challenge: fewer and fewer people shared a common collection of symbols, myths, beliefs, and images in the West. Without common references, it’s hard for artists to communicate. Secularization, globalization, and industrialization shattered the old cosmos with its relatively stable and common set of symbols and ideas, leaving us with an exponentially growing index of private symbols and meanings. Consider, for example, how mass advertising and mass media changed the number and variety of images a person sees per day.4 Artists could no longer assume that their audience would resonate with Christian imagery or allusions to Greek literature or even certain basic experiences of nature that prior generations would have shared: harvests, the changing of seasons, or nightfall, as electricity changed the way we experience night.

At their best, local churches remind us that we are not our own but belong to God, and in so doing, they disrupt contemporary understandings of meaning and identity. It must be said, however, that far too many churches have adopted the contemporary anthropology. They assume that we are our own and provide us with options for meaning and identity like any other community.

But we perceive these values as highly negotiable options, what the philosopher Zygmunt Bauman called “the until-further-noticeness of human bonds and networks.”7 As in, “I believe in the sanctity of marriage until a more attractive person comes along, at which time I’ll give notice of my new values.”

The fluidity of ethics in the modern world could lead to a condition called “anomie,” a lack of social norms to guide our behavior and life.

A final example: Pornography provides a way for couples to “belong” to each other legally and yet be emotionally and physically autonomous. Sex, it turns out—or at least sex in a healthy marriage—requires a great deal of time, effort, vulnerability, and self-denial. If you’re not married, trust me. If you are married and have not had this experience, be patient. Good sex doesn’t abide autonomy. The act itself is the most intimate, affirming, vulnerable, self-giving expression you can share with a person. Once the common storms of life—stress, work, children, money problems, boredom, age—kick in, cultivating a rich love life with your spouse is difficult. For periods it may feel impossible. And the thing about porn is you can experience almost any sexual fantasy whenever you want, without any emotional labor or self-giving, and usually for free. This means that in a marriage where the couple does not want to separate but are no longer are “in love,” society has provided an efficient way for each spouse to experience some form of sexual stimulation without the destabilizing effects of an affair.

“The more we view ourselves as self-made and self-sufficient, the less likely we are to care for the fate of those less fortunate than ourselves. If my success is my doing, their failure must be their fault. This logic makes meritocracy corrosive of commonality.”16

As Ehrenberg notes, “Depression and addiction are the two sides of the sovereign individual, the person who believes herself to be the author of her own life.”3

Techniques, by Jacque Ellul’s definition, value efficiency above all else. Efficiency is not a human virtue. It’s not a traditional virtue at all. It’s a metric for machines with clearly defined purposes—but not for humans.

If you are your own and belong to Christ, then your personhood is a real creation, objectively sustained by God. And as a creation of God, you have no obligation to create your self. Your identity is based on God’s perfect will, not your own subjective, uncertain will. All your efforts to craft a perfect, marketable image add nothing to your personhood. The reason the opinions of others don’t define you isn’t because your opinion is the only one that counts, but because you are not reducible to any human efforts of definition. The only being who can fully know you and understand you without reducing you to a stereotype or an idol is God.

Nietzsche saw that the loss of God as a foundational belief in Europe would result in disequilibrium because the old order of the cosmos would retreat only to be replaced by private order imposed on the world by each of us individually. We feel as if we are untethered, floating in space. Free to move but unable to touch the ground.

But here’s the thing: the housewife who can name and denounce the lie that meaningfulness in life is entirely tied to career success still lives under a government that perceives her as less valuable. She still lives with neighbors who believe the lie and judge her according to it. She still is exposed to endless techniques for improving her parenting or cooking or posture or sex life, each of which is a sign of her failure, reminding her that she can’t measure up. She still shops at stores filled with poorly made plastic, disposable products that end up in landfills and were manufactured by people on another continent whose lives she cannot possibly imagine and for whom labor is rarely ever dignifying or human, a job only tolerable because it feeds their children. Believing that you are not your own but belong to God truly is a comfort in life and death. It is our only real comfort—all others are derivative. But comfort is not peace. And so long as our society is premised on a false anthropology, we will live in deep tension. The lion remains in the zoo, even after he discovers that it is not his true home.

Once you accept that contemporary life is inhuman, that God gives us good gifts to comfort us, and that even when there are ideal forms of leisure it is still fine to take pleasure in simple gifts, it ought to humble you and give you grace for your neighbors and yourself.

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.4

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.

What God asks of us is prodigal action—to work to love your city, to make beautiful things, and to care for the welfare of your neighbors, even if there are more “efficient” means available. Waiting on God’s work of grace, which defies our expectations as it did Jonah’s, appears to be foolish. What a waste of time and energy! And yet it is precisely this resting in God’s work, not our own, that challenges the spirit of autonomy.

business.” We don’t get to calculate the effectiveness of faithfulness or love. We don’t get to reassess our commitment to justice when we don’t see change happen.

“In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength” (Isaiah 30:15).

when we affirm the existence of our neighbors because of their given created-ness and not their self-created identity.

If we are our own and belong to God, we have the freedom to rest. We do not have to hold up the world or even ourselves—which is good because the Responsibilities of Self-Belonging are unbearable.

How does our presence in our community contribute to or distract from the humanity of our neighbors? How do our jobs or businesses encourage people to believe that they are their own? How does marketing contribute to the lie that we must discover and express our identity? What cultural idols are we overlooking for the sake of prosperity or comfort? Does this technology aid us in delighting in God’s creation and loving our neighbor, or does it inculcate pride? In our daily conversations and actions, how do we compete for attention and significance? Can we do this task while desiring and pursuing the good of our neighbor? In our daily conversations and actions, how do we encourage others to pursue the Responsibilities of Self-Belonging? Can we rest, be silent, and know that He is God? Where are we elevating efficiency, productivity, or profit over beauty, goodness, or truth? Do we make a practice of leisure and invite our neighbors to join us? Are our churches known as places where people feast, prodigally delighting in God’s good gifts with gratitude?

Where our society continually says, “Yes, you may. For a price!” we must learn when to say, “No, we may not, not for any price.”

Wherever you are in your community, whatever sphere of influence you have, you are called to desire and pursue the good of your neighbor because we belong to Christ, not ourselves. Self-interest is simply not an option for us.

Again, as Eliot reminds us, “For us, there is only the trying. / The rest is not our business.”

Autonomy sounds comforting and freedom is valorized by society as one of the highest goods, but in practice freedom without limits is a kind of hell, as John Milton knew. It’s a hell that we carry within us.

Through belonging to Christ, we can belong to others in a subsidiary and conditional way. Those conditions, however, are not personal whims, but divine norms. I belong to Christ, who I can trust to desire and bring about my good, and He defines how I belong to my wife, my family, my church, and my neighbor. We find comfort in belonging to Christ because Christ is the only one we can belong to without harm or loss of our humanity.

If it were the case that the only comfort offered in belonging to Christ was hopelessness, it would be a false comfort and Christ would not be a good God. No—the denial of self at the heart of Christianity is not a denial of our humanity, beauty, goodness, or joy. It is an affirmation of that humanity.