If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

John 8:31-32 (ESV)

A recent issue of Time magazine featured one hundred of the most influential people in the world today. One article featured a transgender person, self-identifying as a man, as one of the most influential persons in the world today because of their activism for transgender rights. The writer for this article self-identifies as a woman and expressed their own empathy toward the person being featured. She says, “I know intimately how freeing and fraught it can be to live your truth.” This one sentence was very enlightening to me because it summarized in one simple phrase the dogma of our culture which is simply “live your truth”.

Every society holds out for its people a picture of the good life that claims to lead to beauty, freedom, and joy. As the writer claimed in her article, living your truth is “freeing and fraught”. This seems to be America’s picture of what a truly good life would look like. If we live in a truth of our own making we will be free because we are living an authentic and genuine life. Yet our quest to live our truth to gain such freedom will be fraught with resistance that we must fight against at all costs because our very identities are on the line. Unfortunately, this quest to live our truth authentically against the grain of reality is held out as a true picture of heroism for everyone to emulate. Instead of a hero who sacrifices themselves and their own desires for the good of everyone else, the opposite seems to be true today. If you define your own truth and identity and assert it over everyone else, despite the consequences, you are seen as a true hero.

Does this dogma of living your own truth at all costs really lead to freedom? Is this the gospel of freedom we have all been looking for? My answer to these questions would be a resounding “no” for a couple reasons. First, if you live your truth as you define it, when will you get the verdict that you are the person that you knew you were supposed to be all along? If you think about it, living your truth, is oppressive because at no point will you ever feel like you have lived up to the standard you have set for yourself because your truth is grounded on your own definition that has no verifiable proof other than your own feelings. For instance, if you are a guy who thinks he is a girl then you have the constant pressure of living up to that truth and never acting inconsistently with that claim for fear of the judgment of other people claiming that you are a hypocrite. You must follow through with that and make that feeling a reality to the point where you change your anatomy and your hormonal chemistry entirely to appease your own desire to be authentic and live the truth you have designed for yourself. This is true on a much smaller level when it comes to the issue of career. If my truth is that I am meant to play in the NFL yet I am 5’4’’ and weigh 135 pounds there is no verifiable proof but I must live my truth even if it’s not reality. At some point, the truth and identity I have made for myself will crumble.

Second, living authentically in line with one’s own truth is amoral and as such is not good for society as an ultimate value. I could say I am a criminal who does whatever I want but the moment I take correction from someone and listen to it I am not living authentically which is wrong if that is what I ultimately value. If society starts to make authenticity more important than justice for the common good the result will be chaos because it doesn’t matter if you are a villain to society as long as you live consistently with that title. In addition, there will be no grounds to say that something is right or wrong because to claim such a thing would be intolerant of another person’s reality.  As we are starting to see within our own society, those who hold a view that is the most tolerant for the most people receive the most power and assert it over those who don’t agree. Thus, the most tolerant become the most intolerant of those who hold opposing views. So it seems at both a personal level and societal level defining truth for myself and defining who I am isn’t as freeing as it claims to be because it is “fraught” with deep confusion.

If living my truth and being authentic isn’t really freeing but dreadfully oppressive then what will lead to true freedom? I would contend that divine grace, only known in Christianity, is the only way to freedom. We claim that all men are created by God and have inherent dignity yet have fallen from that dignity and have become sinners according to the standard set by God, the Creator of the universe. We know this instinctively because our own consciences and experiences let us know that we are not in line with the standards that God has set. As a result, reality keeps pushing against us. In fact, as I previously mentioned we can’t even live up to our own standards we set for ourselves. We claim that this Creator God became a man in Jesus Christ of Nazareth and lived as we should live perfectly in our place and substituted his own life for ours on the cross under the just condemnation of God. Then he died, was buried, and on the third day rose again from the dead and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty ruling and reigning over all things. This is divine grace. God the Father sent his own Son to die in our place to grant us life eternal through his resurrection applied by the Holy Spirit apart from our works but by His works on our behalf through simply believing it. We are clothed with the righteousness of Christ and endowed with the dignity and the love of God that is due to Christ through faith.

The immediate reaction of most might be “well that’s just your truth”. Many theologically liberal Christians of the modern church might be tempted to say the same thing. But conservative Christians don’t claim that what they proclaim is simply their truth they claim it to be the truth that they are simply reporting on. The sum of our faith is news not feelings. Why? Because we base our truth on the historical event of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This reality is external to us. It stands as a reality no matter how we feel or what we want. People then might come back and say, “that’s dogmatic and narrow”. The simple answer is that everyone is dogmatic and narrow. Even if you say nobody should be dogmatic that is a dogma because you are believing something about the world that all people should believe and practice. But it depends on what your dogma is that determines true liberty and freedom. Christianity claims that though we are sinners we have been acquitted of all charges by God himself and have been granted eternal life by Jesus Christ as a historical fact. That’s a dogma of freedom because it’s true objectively and experienced personally. I don’t have to work to determine who I am or live up to my own oppressive standards or other people’s oppressive standards. I simply believe in the One who met the standards of the only Person who matters and learn how to live in accordance with how He designed me to be without fear of judgment or condemnation. Christianity contains a dogma of freedom because it is Truth that sets you free to live in line with reality and not against it so that you live as the person you were meant to be according to the word of God and not your own.