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

by Alan Noble

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.