Building on this beautiful observation, one of the lies of our modern technological age is that the great telos of our lives is individual self-actualization. This drives us to long to escape any constraints which would keep us from experiencing our desires coming to pass or challenge our autonomy (self-rule).
Threats to this autonomous world order are treated as hostile, even though all of us would acknowledge if asked that we are ignorant of many subjects and frequently want things that we later come to discover would have been disastrous for us and/or those closest to us.
Despite how reflexively right these desires seem, they completely conflict with every significant aspect of our existence: we didn’t choose to be born, to whom to be born, or when to be born. We don’t volitionally keep our hearts beating, our brains working, our kidneys working, our lungs pumping, gall bladder gall bladdering, or maintain any of a host of other bodily functions.
We are born helpless. Unlike most mammals who are able to move around and live somewhat independently shortly after birth, we are completely reliant on the kindness of parents or others for everything for years.
All of this is meant to communicate to us that life and existence are not open-ended investments in our own vanity startups. They are an inheritance designed to be received and stewarded for the glory and purposes of the Giver of every good and perfect gift, including the gifts of working organs, bodies, minds, and lives. Stewardship and ownership are very different, and ought to produce different attitudes.
But this isn’t designed to be the relationship between a slave and a cruel master. How do we know? What kind of master is this God? He’s a father so kind that his only begotten son was willing to leave His side to justify His Father’s name and reputation by dying for his enemies and raising from the dead, adopting them into His family as fellow heirs, sharing His life so that they might see and know His goodness in the same way that he, the only righteous Son, knows him.
“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, [20] for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” - 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
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